Monday after taking care of all of our Pday stuff we then caught a train to Stockholm for zone conference. It was pretty crazy, we were talking with people the entire way. We talked with the two guys who shared a table with us, and one other guy that was there too. We even gave one of them a card. Then we get to Stockholm and catch a tunnelbana (the metro) and talked to another two people. It was pretty awesome.
Tuesday was my last zone conference. WHAT!? At least it was a good one. We talked a lot about becoming "Preach My Gospel Missionaries" and renewing our emphasis on studying it which was awesome. We also talked a lot about the concept of repentance. I always feel so uplifted and energized after zone conference. We then had a musical number by one of the new missionaries which was "Come Unto Christ" which was the youth mutual theme from a few years ago. Right after that we had a short testimony segment, one of the traditions is that all the missionaries heading home bear their testimony... and this time I fit that category... weird. It was awesome though because I had been pondering about what to say and during the musical number it hit me. It was one of the songs our group had sung together in a sacrament meeting in the MTC and it's essentially both what we do as missionaries and invite others to do. During my mission I have come to know my Savior so much better and understand His Gospel. It's been a wonderful opportunity to be able to then share that then with the people of Sweden.
Wednesday was our usual busy day with RIA, a member visit, and that night we had our first coordination meeting with our branch presidency since we no longer have a branch mission leader. It went pretty well.
The next day we did a lot of finding. We spent time talking to people in town. We had a member meal, and we also got some time to tract as well.,
Friday was... interesting. We had weekly planning and then met this young man that we had met last week. We were able to teach the Restoration and show him around the church and it went super well. What did not go super well however was my bike. The air in my back tire kept leaking out. We pumped it up a few times and hurried to a member meal after the lesson but by the time we got it... The Flat Tire Strikes Back. We were super far from home and there was no way we could ride that back. We take it by a member that lived nearby and borrowed his bike pump hoping to at least be able to pump it up enough to get home. We get it all nice and inflated when WHOOSH The tire was once again completely limp, and there was no chance of revival at this point. We walked by another member to say hi real quick and then had to lock the bikes at the church and take the bus home.
Saturday we got a whole bunch of finding in and then we got to watch the first session of General Conference! (The morning session starts at 6 PM here) What exciting changes with the change of church meeting schedules and emphasizing studies at home. I think it will be a really great adjustment. And the talks were all fantastic.
On Sunday General Conference continued and every talk seemed great, and just when you think it couldn't get better, the next talk brought a whole new flood of inspiration and insight. It was a fantastic conference experience. In addition we had about 2 hours in between sessions of general conference to go out finding. We tried a neighborhood that we had walked through at one point heading home on Friday night and thought "maybe this would be a good place to try sometime". It proved to be a challenging area. Not many people answered and few gave us much of a chance to speak. We decided our time might be more effective trying to swing by some people on our way back to watch the last session and we had done the entire inside of a ring. However, the thought came "why not just knock a few last houses that were on the other side of the street on the way out of the neighborhood?" So we did. The first of the two houses answered and we started talking to this man about his family and he mentioned that his family, especially his parents, were fairly religious and suggested we come by when his parents were home as they were returning home from a trip that evening. We gladly accepted and gave him a Book of Mormon and said that we could explain more when we came by to visit. We are going by tonight!
It's amazing to be able to see the work going on here in Sweden and to be able serve the Lord. It is an amazing privilege to have modern day prophets and apostles who speak to us today. The Lord is hastening His work, the only question is are we ready to keep up?
Have a great week everyone!
--Elder Ashford
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