Week 43 - So Train Me Maybe?!?

This week has been quite the roller coaster so here we go!

Monday we were eating dinner when a potential investigator we had wanted to meet but had never confirmed texted us and asked if we were meeting, after a little confusion we established that we were meeting and rushed out the door to get to the church to meet with him. The lesson went pretty well so that was good after our little adventure of cutting dinner short to rush out there but it all worked out in the end.

Tuesday we did a little bit finding. We were out tracting in Brandbergen when we got a call from President Youngberg. We stop and find a slightly secluded spot and he tells us that we're both training! We were both super excited! The rest of the day we continued knocking doors other than a brief break for a member meal.

Wednesday we had district meeting a day early so that the assistants could some and join us so that was fun. We all had lunch together at the church and then Elder Wilson and I went on splits back in Vendelsö. We met with a recent convert so that was fun. We then went tracting and accidentally tracted into one of our member families! It was super funny, we laughed and they invited us in and we got to practice for our member meal at another family's house right afterward.

Thursday we switched back and we had a great lesson with one of our investigators at a member's house and it was fun because we were reading from the Book of Mormon in 3 languages, English, Swedish, Amharic.(Mom's Note: Amharic is the national language of Ethiopia. Thank you Google!) 

Friday we went to Train the Trainers in Täby! It was a big party. there were 19 trainers there, 7 of us were from my group and 3 more have been my companions at some point so that was pretty cool. We had some awesome training before heading home. We had a great member meal and knocked some more doors.

Saturday we did more finding, We usually trade off every time someone answers a door for who is the one to start talking and I must have had a spree of at least 20 doors in a row that didn't answer so that was interesting.

Sunday morning, we were halfway through planning for our day when we get a call from President... 2 Elders and a Sister had to wait for their visas and won't be coming in on time and Elder Anthon and I will be the trainers waiting for those missionaries. President said we find out Monday night if they even make it at all this transfer or if we get to stay together for another 6 weeks. So we shall see what happens next week! We had church after planning and Sacrament meeting was about Personal revelation. One of the speakers mentioned something interesting which was that we have to be humble enough to receive revelation.  We need to be humble enough to follow the Lord's council and guidance and do things His way instead of ours. I really like that thought.  We had a great day in church and we had a fun member meal with a Nigerian family as well.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and we'll see what happens next week!

Pictures are of us elders coming back from splits.

--Elder Ashford

Week 42 - Interviews

We've had a number of fun encounters this week so here we go.

Monday after P-day we went out contacting for a little while and we ran into these guys who believe in this thing which I believe is called "The Book of Knowledge". It's interesting because it essentially blends all of the major religions in the world and yet they believe in something very similar to the Plan of Salvation. They believe that we are here on earth to go through experiences and trials so that we we can learn and improve and that we receive a heaven after this life according to our actions.  There were a number of other things too that were interesting about it.  For me it actually just testified more of the Restoration of the Gospel. When different groups split off from being God's people they still had small pieces of truth that then warped over time, yet somehow when someone tried to kind of combine all of these they were able to get some ideas pretty close, yet they still didn't have God's priesthood authority and so they weren't able to establish truth in it's fullness.  It was still a very interesting conversation and we got one of their numbers so we'll so what else I can find out when we meet with him.

Tuesday was wild. We went contacting in Brandbergen for awhile with no luck but then we came across this one man that we had kind of walked past a few times. We were both headed into the mall there and I said hi and then he stopped and started talking to us, we sat down because he was curious because we kept running into each other so he wanted to know more about what we were out doing. We talked for about an hour and taught the basics of most of the Restoration. He then invited us to his place for lunch so we went with him, and he started making us lunch. As we were eating one of our members walked into the kitchen... We were all quite surprised. Apparently the member and the man we met share the apartment with a few other people but we had no idea when we got there. After lunch we walked outside and were going to make our way to the bus home to do companionship study when this other guy calls us over. He says he sees us all the time and doesn't usually have time to listen but that day he did and was curious as to what we were out doing. He was walking his dog so we walked with him for about an hour and a half and talked about who we were what we did, and explained about the church by teaching the restoration to him. We even gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. At this point the schedule we had planned was completely shot and the Mission President had texted us to see if we could do interviews that night so we headed back to the apartment, did studies and dinner, and then went to the church to call some people while we waited for our turn for interviews. It's always nice to have interviews. For ten minutes you get to have a one on one with the Mission president, it's great!

Wednesday we had correlation with our mission leader which is always great. It's nice to talk with a member of the ward for how we can work with the ward members.  We did a lot of tracting throughout the day. We also had an interesting member meal. They had planned to feed us but most of the family was sick so the dad just bought us pizza and drove us home so that we could eat it while he brought more pizza home for the family.

Thursday was district meeting and we talked about acting as missionaries with power and authority. Our authority comes from our calling as missionaries and our power is evident when we act. It was super good.  We then had a member meal and they took us out to a lunch buffet which was fun.

Friday we spent the morning planning and then knocked doors for most of the day but we texted one of our investigators and asked if she had time to meet over the weekend. She texted back saying that she could do Saturday evening and we looked and saw that we had a member meal, after confirming with the family we then texted her back and invited her and her two sons to come with us. It worked out perfectly!

The missionary that I replaced here in Vendelsö had told us that he kept thinking about this one family out in Söderby and suggested that we swing by so on Saturday morning we went out there. We knocked on the door, they answered and... they weren't interested.  We tried another door that said to come back later... they weren't interested either.  We had tracted in the area before so we decided to pick up where we left off. After knocking on doors for a while we came across a lady who went to school as a kid with a member, we talked a little bit about the apostasy and restoration and explained about the Book of Mormon. We asked if she was interested and she said sure and even said that we could come back later when her husband was also home. We gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and traded phone numbers. We walked away super excited, while we had been hoping to meet with a different family, we were in the right area at the right time to meet this woman and now we have a family we can potentially teach! Later that day we had our member meal and it went super well. The two boys were very energetic but the family we were with did a great job of keeping them busy. After the meal we were able to teach our investigator about the Plan of Salvation there in the members' home. The Spirit was there and it was great! 

Sunday we had two investigators come to church. After Sacrament meeting we met with them in a spare classroom with a member and taught them the Plan of Salvation. It went pretty well! The member did a great job of testifying of the Plan and the Spirit was definitely there. We had a great rest of church and went out knocking doors again in the afternoon. We also had a member meal for dinner. 

It's been a great week and I am so grateful for the opportunities I have to teach people about the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation all the time.  They really do fill me with joy with the knowledge that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and has restored the fulness of the gospel here to the Earth today!

Have a great week!

Pictures are of a highly advanced security system we came across, 

a massive snail we saw 

and us (Äldste Anthon and Äldste Ashford) on the way to church.

Week 41 - Zone Conference!

This week we started off great by trying to do our laundry on P-day only to find out that the "Flood Protection" had activated so it didn't work, so that was great. We went out tracting that night though and ran into a guy from Lithuania that took a Book of Mormon so that was cool.

Tuesday we had Zone Conference! President and Syster Youngberg were going through some house keeping and Syster Youngberg's segment was on Health and Safety and she went over the 10 points listed on the missionary portal. She got to step 6 "Protection from animals and insects"... I laughed, the story of my dog incident has apparently spread across the mission. We had some great training from the Assistants though based on the theme "Being an Example of the Believers" based on 1 Timothy 4:12. There is also a general conference talk by Russell M. Nelson titled "Be Thou an Example of the Believers" that is also super good and tied into our discussion. We talked about how we as missionaries could be an example of all of the attributes listed in the verse from Timothy. We also had the Stake President come as a guest speaker to discuss member missionary work and it was great!

Wednesday our determined that our washing machine was clearly past our capacity to fix. Our land lady was super nice though and said that we could borrow their washing machine until we got everything sorted out so we were in fact able to wash our clothes for the week. We also had one of the Senior couples come because we had some bike locks on our bikes that we don't actually have the keys for so they came with an angle grinder and cut them off and gave us new bike locks. It was a very entertaining image seeing a 65 year old man in a nice suit go to town with an angle grinder with sparks flying everywhere.  We also started tracting in a little bit different area of town which was fun.

Thursday we did a lot of finding work but we had dinner with one of the members of our bishopric which was a lot of fun. [Mom's note: a bishopric is the presiding leadership of a congregation. Is consists of a Bishop, the leader of the ward (congregation) and 2 Counselors.]

Friday we did more finding and had a couple of conversations with people and were able to give out a Book of Mormon. 

Saturday we did some finding work and we had a lesson all set up and had a member there and everything except that then we texted the guy to see if he was coming and he said he wasn't going to make it... awkward. We went home for dinner after that and had a good conversation with our member friend on the bus ride back. We then got to drop off a Twi Book of Mormon to a lady from Ghana we met with a few weeks ago. She's pretty positive but has just been super busy so it can be hard to meet with her because of her schedule. 

Yesterday we had church and it was wonderful as always. We had a couple from the US visiting so Elder Anthon translated for them and I was the one trying to look up all the scripture references for him as best as I could.  We knocked doors for a little while as well.

I decided to study Patience as a Christlike attribute this week and found a really great example in Alma 26. It speaks of Ammon rejoicing with his brothers about the wonders they have seen during their mission among the Lamanites. They had to endure their many trials and hardships but they persevered and were able to see miracles!

- Elder Ashford

Week 40 - Still No Super Powers

My arm has just about healed by now. So that's nice.  It has been almost two weeks though and unlike Spider Man I have yet to gain any dog related super powers... so that was bit of a let down.

As for what actually happened this week, we knocked a lot of doors.

On Wednesday we managed to contact 3 different Jehovah''s Witnesses in a row walking through Brandbergen so that was interesting.  Later in the day we had a pretty cool experience though. We had planned in the morning that we were going to knock on doors somewhere and we had seen a few new places that we wanted to try but I felt like we should go through one of the areas we had been knocking on and try to go through a few streets we hadn't been through yet, there was one in particular I wanted to try. We had started by tracting in a different area but felt like it wasn't going very well and felt like we should try that one street that we had talked about before.  We got out there and then decided to start at the far end of the street and work our way back.  The first few houses were not interested but as we climbed up the hill to this next house (there were no steps) we met a young guy who was working on fixing it up. We talked for awhile and got to know him a little bit better and found that he actually had a few Mormon friends. We continued talking and explained some parts of the Restoration of the Gospel and the Book of Mormon. He accepted a Book of Mormon and said he would read it. He said we were welcome to come back some other time to talk more about it but that he was normally only there on the weekends and lived in the city during the week.  As we left it struck me as well as my companion, Elder Anthon, that that meeting was not by chance. In our district meetings there has been a lot of focus on following the Spirit and we definitely felt guided by the Lord. There were so many things that directed us there at that time in that short window when that man was actually there when he normally wouldn't be. It was a really amazing experience. We then went out and got dinner with a member. Plus I hit 9 months on the mission!

On Thursday we had district meeting and the Zone Leaders were there with us. It was pretty fun and we continued talking about being led by the Spirit in our finding efforts. We got to practice with some role plays which went really well.

Friday we did some planning in the morning, knocked a bunch of doors, and then had a pretty fun member meal. The wife was one of the women who bore her testimony during the missionary work focused lesson that I talked about last week. She had had a lot of experiences with the church before but it wasn't until a friend lovingly encouraged to at least meet with the missionaries once before she really saw the truthfulness of the Gospel and how the Lord had prepared her. It was fun to be able to have dinner with her, her husband and their kids and get to know them a little better.

Saturday we tracted a bunch more and then we talked to a guy on his way to a party. We had a real quick discussion and we got his number so that we could meet again and give him a Book of Mormon. 

Sunday we had a Fast and Testimony meeting in church. We had an investigator come and we taught him about the Restoration during the second hour class and it went super well.

We have Zone Conference tomorrow and it we were told to study a little bit about the Great Apostasy and the Restoration. It was something I had already been thinking about a little bit and it was great to be able to study it a little bit more. The Gospel of Jesus Christ was twisted a lot after the death of Christ's Apostles. I love though that God restored that Gospel through Joseph Smith and through the Book of Mormon to teach us again about those beautiful, powerful, and simple truths. I love teaching people about how God loves us and has always called prophets to teach the people and how He continues to do so. I love the Book of Mormon. I know it to be true. I hope you all have a wonderful week and take some time to read it and ponder the miracle that it truly is.

The pictures are of a moose we saw while out proselyting Monday night, 

a sign to a day care playground which says 

"Welcome to Trumman -Be scared of our children, always close and lock the gate, thanks!"

Finally there is the classic warning that you see in every Swedish elevator 

warning of the danger of having objects to close to the door in an elevator... 

I swear, Swedes must have nightmares about it or something because it is everywhere.

- Elder Ashford