July 16, 2018 I thought Sweden was supposed to be cold...

We went on a boat ride for P-day. Enjoy some pictures of Stockholm!

Despite Sweden typically being cold and rainy, this has been the warmest, driest summer Sweden has seen in quite a long time, and the lack of water is causing some problems. Interestingly enough, it seems like that's what I heard about the weather every year in Utah while growing up, so maybe the weather just follows me... Either way, it's certainly been nice to have such warm weather, but hopefully we get a little rain soon.

Traveling to 

ZoneConference 

with Elder Bills!

This week we had zone conference, and we had the privilege of learning Swedish from a Swedish lady who translates general conference and hymns for the church. To help us understand in a small way what we might sound like to Swedes, she read the text from the hymn "Oh say, what is truth?" with Swedish pronunciation. Despite being familiar with the song, and the text being in English, it was nearly unrecognizable when she read it in that manner. She then pointed out that Swedes would have just as hard a time understanding us if we try to pronounce Swedish words with English pronunciation. The lesson was profound, and she then proceeded to teach us the correct pronunciation of Swedish letters. While I've certainly learned pronunciation before, it was good practice and had a different meaning coming from a Swede who is so capable in the language. I was grateful for her and her husbands willingness to give up an afternoon to serve the missionaries by helping with such a major and important part of our work.

During zone conference, President also talked about Elder Uchtdorfs training for all the new mission Presidents this year where he talked about the bulls eye of missionary work. Elder Uchtdorf said that while our purpose is "To invite others to come unto Christ by helping the received the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.", that is simply the target. The Bullseye would be Matthew 22:37, "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." and that because "Upon these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets", everything we do as missionaries should be because of our love for the Savior and His children.

Things are going really well here in Stockholm, and we've been continuing to teach and help several people, including Gabriel and Erik. Earlier this week we felt we needed to go visit Erik, so we went to his place, and upon arriving he told us that it had been a really rough week for him. He was grateful to see us though, and he was more receptive than ever to our message, which offered hope and peace. Later that day he sent us a text saying he was really grateful we had come by, that it had really helped him feel better, and then later this week he introduced us to one of his friends, Hanna, because he wanted us to be able to help her also. She was quite interested in what we had to say, and we'll be meeting her again this week or next to continue sharing the gospel with her. Erik also introduced us to one of his other friends, Henrik, who seemed super awesome and wants to learn more as well. In addition to starting to teach some of these new people, two of our investigators are coming back from a month and a half long vacation in the US, so things are about to get even busier.... Is that even possible? I guess we'll see... Erik and Gabriel both came to church on Sunday, and then we were able to take Gabriel to a members house after church for dinner. The members live at the top of one of the tallest buildings right in the middle of Stockholm, so we were able to have a really nice rooftop dinner with them which was pretty awesome. Gabriel seemed to fit right in, and afterwords he told me that everything he heard throughout the day, both at church and at dinner, seemed to be directed right toward him. He says he's still just dumbfounded by the fact that he had absolutely no belief in God about three weeks ago and is now certain of his reality. He is just one evidence that God will reveal himself to us as we sincerely seek Him.

Äldste Sirrine  

Missionaries from my MTC group, plus Elder Bills