February 12, 2018 From Fröslunda to (Västra) Frölunda

Saying goodbye to members...

Amrita and Johan Persson

Well the day has come to leave the land of my fathers and travel to the promised land (at least I hope it's a promised land...). We received transfer calls last night and found out that after 6 months here in Eskilstuna, I will be transferring to Västra Frölunda, Göteborg. Saying goodbye to the branch and investigators here has been difficult, but I look forward to the opportunities that await me in VF. Tuesday night we will visit Mekonen one last time in Fröslunda, Eskilstuna, and then Wednesday morning I will hop on a 3.5 hour train ride to Västra Frölunda.

Karwo, Younus, and Yosef

This last week has once again deepened my testimony of the power of fasting. On the first Sunday of this month I fasted for help in finding new investigators, and it was only a matter of hours before I received the help and answers I was searching for. That very same evening, we went to contact a referral that we had received from a member, and were pleasantly surprised when there was no port-code on the building so we could knock directly on his apartment door. When no one answered, we decided that we might as well tract the area, which we had never been to before. We had knocked about 15 doors without success when suddenly an old investigator, Hamid, opened the door. I was absolutely shocked to be standing face to face with him after about 3 months of no contact, and he seemed just as surprised and happy to let us in. We were able to catch up with him, and in the course of our conversation we discovered that he had moved to the apartment just two days before. We set up a return appointment with him, and have since had the opportunity to teach him again. While Hamid may not be a "new investigator" by traditional standards, we are now able to meet him regularly, he is once again making progress, and I consider it an absolute miraculous answer to fasting and prayer.

Nina and Sarah

In the course of our tracting this week,we were in an apartment building with four doors per floor, and in order to save power, the lights in the hallway would turn off after about 10 seconds of standing still. Unfortunately this made our work rather difficult, as you typically wait for someone to answer the door after knocking, and it would be rather awkward for someone to answer the door while we're standing in the dark... Usually buildings like this have a button on the wall that you push to reactivate the lights, but the buttons in this building didn't work, and they lights seemed to be motion activated. The weird thing was that the lights would only sometimes turn on when we moved, and sometimes they would turn on when we didn't move at all. Not wanting someone to answer their door while we were standing in the dark, we did our best to fight the lights, which included a lot of frustrated waving and moving around. After tracting the whole building, I was putting notes in the phone when Elder Cotton started laughing and said, "You'll never believe what I just discovered." My gaze followed the direction he was pointing, only to discover a white box on the wall, attached to the lights, that said "Acoustic Detector". The whole time we had thought our motion was activating the lights, when in reality it was the sound caused by our motion. Suddenly everything became clear, and we couldn't help but laugh at all our frustrated waving when all we needed to do was make a sound.


Our experience trying to activate the lights is similar to the way we receive blessings. In D&C 130:20-21 it says, "There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundation of the world, upon which all blessings are predicated. And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to the law upon which it is predicated." When we entered that apartment building, the lights were activated by sound, nothing we could do would change that, just as nothing we do can change the laws of God. Regardless of whether or not we believe in God, we will receive the blessings that come from adhering to His laws. Someone who has absolutely no belief in God will still be blessed for keeping the Word of Wisdom or Law of Chastity, just as we were able to activate the lights at times without knowing they were sound activated. However, The knowledge of the gospel is like the knowledge that the lights are activated by sound. When we know and accept the gospel, we know exactly what we need to do to receive blessings. No longer do blessings seem to come at random, and we are spared the efforts of "frantically waving in the dark" in search of blessings. God doesn't give us commandments to limit or restrict us, he gives us commandments so that he might more richly bless us. If we desire any blessing in our life, we must first search the words of the scriptures and prophets to know what we must do (we need to understand how that particular blessing is "activated"), and then we must act in faith, believing that when we do as the scriptures instruct, we will receive the blessings promised.


Äldste Sirrine