Monday was the Good ol' P-day, it was pretty relaxed and we even got fika at a bakery that one of the members owns. We then caught a train to Stockholm and stayed the night at the mission office as we had zone conference the next day.
Tuesday was zone conference. It was fantastic! No way I could put everything I learned from it in here so I won't even try but I learned a lot about seeking revelation, having and increasing faith in the work and in miracles, and even in the Restoration. We also found out that we are having a Book of Mormon initiative coming out this coming Friday so that will be really exciting! On our way home we sat down and talked with the two guys sitting next to us and one of them was also headed to Gävle so we were able to talk the whole train ride and he even asked to switch numbers with us. It was awesome!
On Wednesday we barely had a chance to breath. We had service, a few lessons, and a few meetings so it was just non-stop but it was awesome! We had an awesome church tour. One of our more recent members wanted to have her daughter meet us so we showed her around the church and talked for a while and gave her a Book of Mormon. Our Branch mission leader gave an awesome testimony of his conversion story and we added our own testimonies as well. The Spirit was super strong it was awesome. Then as we were wrapping up someone walks in and after we say goodbye to the one lady and her daughter I turn around and ask "What are you doing here?" It was the Herrey's, some members that I know from Gotland that were on a road trip and just happened to stop by when we were there. It was awesome.
Thursday we made some banana bread and took it by a few people and we had dinner with two members that come from Macedonia and they gave us Chinese food so that was awesome. Other than that it was most of the usual.
Friday after we had finished planning for the week we get a call from a member who just came last sunday after disappearing for awhile and he wanted to meet so we were able to meet him at the church later that night and got to know him better and talked about our relationship to God. He started talking about the prodigal son and I love that story, and the church's bible video for it was so good that we showed it to him. After that we headed to a member's for a kräftskiva. Apparently it is a thing in August for Swedes to throw a party and eat kräfter (otherwise known as crawfish) so that was pretty cool. I hadn't ever eaten crawfish before but it was an exciting experience.
Saturday we had innebandy in the morning, we did some finding, and then we had a branch activity with tacos and minute-to-win-it. People were laughing as we tried to move M&Ms with a straw, ping pong balls with a spoon in your mouth, and it was chaos as people attempted to keep balloons from touching the floor.
Sunday we had some great meetings in church. That night we were out knocking doors and it didn't really feel like it was going anywhere. Äldste Balls suggested that we try saying a prayer and seeing if we were where we needed to be. We said a prayer and the thought came to mind to try going somewhere nearby where the church is but a different place from where we have already been working. A little unsure of exactly what to do we got on our bikes and started there. As we get going the feeling comes to turn around, yet at the same time continue out to where we were on our way. A little confused we stop and try to figure it out. After discussing for a bit we decided to try praying again and both feelings were still there but the feeling to head towards the church was still there. On our way we decided to turn not to far from the church and go by a less-active that we have had a hard time holding contact with. We park our bikes and as we are walking up we meet a guy who was sitting outside his tvättstuga waiting for his clothes to wash and we were able to talk with him for about 20 minutes, he had been taught by missionaries before but then stopped meeting them. He still didn't seem interested unfortunately but then we continued around the corner to the door and call the portcode and the member was home! He let us in and we were able to talk for about 10-15 minutes and say a prayer with him. He had just arrived home and actually had just seen us as we were outside talking. If we hadn't changed our plans completely, if we hadn't stopped again when we were unsure, or if we hadn't stopped to talk with the other man, we would have arrived too early. We were led without knowing beforehand where we should go but as we followed the Spirit everything worked out.
Awesome things are happening. A thought that has come to mind recently is just how much the Lord is hastening his work. Here are just a few of the things that have happened during my mission. The missionary schedule was changed right after we got into the field. We got a new mission president. There has been a renewed focus on working with members and following the Spirit. We have gotten a new prophet and 2 new apostles. We were here when an apostle visited Sweden and addressed them in Swedish for the first time ever. We were here for when Preach My Gospel was newly updated since it came out 10-15 years ago (we still haven't even gotten printed versions in English, much less Swedish), Ministering is now a thing, and the Sweden Stockholm Mission is now a technology mission with access to Facebook which is widely used by Swedes as Twitter isn't really that popular here.
It's a great time to be a Sweden Stockholm missionary! Have a great week!
--Elder Ashford
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