Week 18 - Mission Tour

To start with, sorry to all of you who did not get my email last week.  I tried to send it but maybe it didn't make it.  Go ahead and check the blogspot at the bottom of the email once my mom updates it.

Anyways...  This week was quite interesting.

Tuesday we had two appointments cancel which was unfortunate but we had a great lesson with a member.  At one point we got more Semlor because it was semla day so everybody was getting them.  They are really good!  We did language study and packed our stuff because we had to travel to Göteborg (Gothenburg in English but that sounds really weird to me now).  We had a two hour train ride there and the other missionaries in our zone were all actually on the same train.  We stayed with the zone leaders in Göteborg along with the Vaxjö Elders for the night which was fun.

Wednesday was Mission Tour!  We were there a little early so we got to talk to other missionaries.  Äldste Wilkenson from my group was there so it was great to see him after so long. 

We had President Kearon from the Europe Area Presidency there touring the mission.  He is awesome!  He gave some really great training.  Äldste Murtonen even got to have a short interview with him afterwards.  We then got to take the train all the way back to Landskrona.

(Mom's note: to see more photos and details about the Mission Tour see the Mission Blog http://swedenstockholmldsmission.blogspot.com/2017/03/2017-mission-tour.html)

Thursday we did some contacting.  We tried to swing by an older guy in the ward at an assisted living home but uhhh... we got there and it was a school parking lot...  So that didn't go as planned we're going to try to find his actual address but it was a fun adventure.  We called people and then later that night we had an awesome lesson about the priesthood at a member meal.  It must have been inspired because I didn't remember this analogy until I started sharing it.  Someone who has the Priesthood is like a lightning rod.  They receive power from above.  Lightning only hits the lightning rod and then disperses from there to earth.  The same with Priesthood holders.  They don't control God's power but they provide a point for it to come down to Earth.  The more I think about it that analogy blows my mind!

Friday we had another 2 lessons fall through but we had a good lesson with a member again and then contacted a bit.  We did some family history for an hour which was a lot of fun.  I actually found two children for some of my ancestors that weren't on my records before!

Saturday we had another lesson fall through but we did some language study instead.  We had another member dinner too.

Sunday we had a Stake Conference broadcast so it was awesome to hear from general authorities give council just for the members in Northern Europe.  It was a great conference and it was a lot of fun.

This week was a weird schedule and we had a lot of appointments fall through but the key is to be patient and to keep trying.  Sometimes things don't work out as we planned so just keep trying.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

--Elder Ashford

Photos: 

The first one is us and the Vaxjö elders in Göteborg 

and then the others are from our semlor.