Week 59 - Last Week Until Christmas!

I know this is a day later than usual but we moved our P-day to go to the temple.

We had a crazy week so let's get started!

Tuesday we went to the senior center again. It was kind of cool because I got to talk to someone who is from Landskrona which is where I lived when I was in Helsingborg so that is super cool! 

Wednesday we went to Sankta Lucia. They have a choir in the Swedish church that sings while holding candles and it was super awesome. You can probably look it up online if you want to. We had a pretty fun member meal that night as well.

Thursday we met with Josefina, one of our recent converts, and had a really awesome lesson with her. We also did some finding and then came home and made a big dinner because we had the 4 Sundsvall Elders staying with us. We had a pretty fun time trying to squeeze into our apartment. 

Friday was Christmas zone conference and it was Norrland and Stockholm South zones combined, hence why Sundsvall stayed the night with us. Zone Conference was fantastic! We had some great training and President Youngberg wants us to read the entire Book of Mormon between Christmas and New Year's so for a whole week we are to spend 3-4 hours a day reading. It's going to be awesome! The second half of zone conference was participating in some of the Youngberg's Christmas traditions so we got to watch 'It's a Wonderful Life' and read a Christmas story so that was really cool. We also went to the Musical but the mission has gone through all of the Book of Mormons they had so we were forced to simply offer to deliver. (To give you an idea, the mission ordered 10,000 copies just for the musical for this fall.) 

Saturday we helped a member rearrange some furniture and had lunch with them. We also had our Christmas Concert so we were there for that. They had a fika afterwards which is a swedish word for essentially snack time. They had some rolls and julmust for people to eat. They had a lot of rolls left over so we got sent home with an entire bag.  We then also went to the musical late that night again.

Sunday we had a great day in church. We had a great sacrament meeting. We tried calling a bunch of people and tried to get some stuff set up for the week as well as a bit of finding.

Yesterday we did not have P-day so we went out working. We visited the Senior center. We had a quick lesson at a member home that went really well so that was awesome. We went straight from there to meet a potential investigator. We asked the family to pray for us and for the lesson to go well and it did! It was super awesome!

Today we had our P-day and we visited the temple. It was really great. I love the temple. It is such a peaceful place.

Christmas is less than a week away. I am so grateful for the Savior and this time of year to celebrate his birth. God Jul!

--Elder Ashford

Pictures are at the temple, 

our Christmas tree with ornaments we got at zone conference that look like name tags, 

the temple again, 

 and this crazy car we saw on our way to the musical just driving around Stockholm blasting Christmas music. 

The guys inside were dressed like Santa Claus.

Here are some pictures we took last week with all of the snow. (The snow has since melted away)

Week 58 - Exchanges

Monday was a pretty relaxed P-day and then we went on exchanges that night with with the Elders in Hägersten so I went there with Elder Lee.

Tuesday I was in Hägersten so we were working there. We gave out 3 Book of Mormons so that was awesome. We also had a lesson with one of their previous investigators and it went pretty well. It was mostly just answering their questions.  We also had a lesson with one of their baptismal dates and it was awesome.

Wednesday we watched the First Presidency Christmas message.  We also got to help clean the temple this week as they were doing a deep clean of it all week and asked for missionaries to help.

Thursday we had District meeting and that was cool. We talked about the Book of Mormon and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We also had a senior couple come and inspect our apartment and they gave us a quick thought which was pretty cool.

Friday we went to Stockholm so that Elder Langford could file with the tax agency so that was our little adventure for the week. We also had weekly planning and visited a man who's sister is a member in Norrköping.

Saturday was just a bunch of finding and calling people although we did have a member lesson so that was fun.

Sunday we had a really good fast and testimony meeting in church.  We then had dinner with a member and had a great lesson. We then finished by knocking doors while it was snowing like crazy.

The pictures didn't load but I promise I had pictures this week. Maybe I'll send it next week.

--Elder Ashford

Week 57 - Do You Believe in Miracles!?

So much has happened this week... Oh my goodness...

Last P-day we went to Stockholm and that was pretty fun. We ran into the assistants not once but twice so that was kind of funny. There was also a couple visiting from the US (he served his mission in Sweden about 30-40 years ago) so we talked to them. We also did some finding work and we showed one guy the Christmas initiative video for #LIGHTtheWORLD and he really liked it and said he would check it out along with the advent calendar. (go check it out on https://www.mormon.org/)

Tuesday I accidentally bumped our door alarm and we didn't know the code so it just kept making noise. We ended up just leaving it but our landlord turned it off for us later so that was awesome.  We went to the Senior Center again which was fun and Elder Langford even got in on a few games of pool. We also went to a member's home and did a practice lesson.  We talked about faith and repentance and we tied Ether 12:27 to repentance which is something I have never done before but it was super cool. The Spirit was super strong and when we invited them to write down 5 names of people to reach out to about the Gospel or to invite to the Christmas concert they had 10 names within about 2 minutes. It was so cool!

Wednesday we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders so I was here in Vendelsö with Elder Malone. We swung by a previous investigator and we talked with him about the Christmas Initiative and he really opened up to us. We managed to get inside and just talk for about 15 minutes but it was super cool. We even invited him to our ward Christmas concert and he said he might come. We also did a lot of finding with some good success.

Thursday we had district meeting and that was pretty fun. We had a good discussion on where all of our areas are at right now. We then went home and we visited a less active and read Alma 7 with him which was pretty fun.  We then went out contacting. We had been out contacting for a bit and there was a member family that lived nearby. We decided to real quick stop by, knock on there door, say hi, and then tell them we were working in the area and ask if they would pray for us. We did so and their two teenagers opened the door and gladly accepted! We then started walking again to find people and a few streets over not even 5 minutes later there is a lady and a young girl coming towards us and the woman said hello to us from about 50 meters away. It was one of our previous investigators we have been trying to reconnect with! She seemed happy to see us and even said she might come to church soon and was very interested in the upcoming Christmas Concert. It was awesome!

Friday we had a lesson with one of our recent converts and we went through the sacrament prayers in Moroni and discussed what they mean and it was a really awesome experience to see her understand more of what it talks about. We then started off Christmas initiative strong by writing thank you letters to our ward mission leader and bishopric and delivering them. We also had another practice lesson with a member family and it went super well.

Saturday we did some finding and ran into that same guy that we have run into twice now (we now know that his name is Kennith) and we talked for a little bit so that was good. We also had the adult session of Stake Conference that we attended and that was super cool. Elder Phillips of the Seventy was there and spoke along with our mission president. After we got back from stake conference, had enough time to eat dinner, and then left to go to The Book of Mormon Musical for the late night showing to pass out copies of the Book of Mormon. We were waiting at the bus stop and this lady comes up and sits down on the bench. I asked her where she was going and she said she was on her way to go salsa dancing which started a fun conversation. Pretty quickly it came up that we were missionaries and we started talking a little bit. She got onto the same bus as us although we didn't sit next to each other but she also got onto the same tunnelbana (subway) and was even headed to the same stop. We started our conversation again, this time talking about her plans for Christmas and we invited her to our upcoming Christmas concert and gave her our card with the time written on it. She asked a little bit further about what was different about our church and I pulled out a Book of Mormon and used the pictures to explain about it, we even got off in the midst of the explanation and walked out of the station with her. We offered her the book and she accepted! We didn't get her number but we were definitely there at the right time and place and we are hoping to see her at the Christmas concert! 

Sunday we had Stake Conference and we got there early to practice for the stake choir. We had a great stake conference! A topic that was brought up a lot was in reference to Elder Ballard's broadcast to Europe from about 2 months ago that encouraged us to believe in miracles and help make them happen.  We then got to go to the musical again as well and between that and travel it took up a lot of our day.

It's has been an awesome week and next week looks to be a good one too!

The pictures are of Stockholm at about 4:30pm.

--Elder Ashford