Du har kommit till....

Email written: 10/23/17

2) me and the pump

Hejsan! Another week has gone by here in Gävle, and as of this past Thursday, I have been on the mission for exactly 3 months! When you compare it to my trainer, Elder Harper, who hits his year mark next week, it doesn't really seem like much. I still have a long way to go, but I've come a long way already and I am going to keep on progressing!

This week was a little bit of a tough one. The subject line references something I heard way too often this week. It's what usually happens when someone doesn't answer the phone (You have come to.... på engelska). Most of our investigators didn't answer their phones this week and we had absolutely no contact with them. So we really have no idea if they are making any personal progress and if they will still continue to prepare for baptism in the coming weeks. It was really hard to go through this week with not much after the week that we had last week. 

Nevertheless, the week ended on a high note! On Saturday, we went to a member's house for lunch and to share a little message (budskap) with them. Well, when we got there, they thought it would be fun if we carved a pumpkin in preparation for Halloween. Yes, Halloween is a thing here in Sweden! The family has an exchange student from Germany staying with them, so we all carved together and had a really great time. The pumpkin turned out super well! But what was more important, was the impact that the pumpkin carving had on the exchange student, Louise. After finishing the pumpkin, as Louise did most of the carving since she's an artist, she talked about when she was younger how she could never carve a pumpkin perfectly and her mom would always get mad at her for it. Well, this time she made it perfect and expressed how she wished she could tell her mom about it, but then we found out that her mom died a few years ago due to cancer. I was able to share with her that she would be able to see her Mom again because death is not the end. It was a super cool moment, and it really made an impact on Louise's life.

The other awesome thing that happened, was Blessing came to church again. Blessing is really making awesome progress and loves how he feels when he comes to church. We are going to meet him tomorrow to begin teaching the commandments to make the next steps for baptism! I took Blessing over to meet the branch president and our branch president just said to him, so you want to be baptized? and then Blessing lit up and said yes! So things are going super well with Blessing and we are super excited to continue working with him. 

We have so many things already planned for this upcoming week, so we are going to be staying extra busy and working hard. Also, the first snow is just around the corner, and I'm quite terrified. Anyone have any good tips on how to stay warm in the winter? Advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Also, one final thought....an issue that is brought up in almost every contacting stund is that people can't seem to believe in God with things like war that go on in the world. I'm hoping to start building a good library of scriptures/talks that help answer this question, so if any of you have insights or thoughts on this topic, please send me an email and let me know! Tack!

Ha det fint mina käre vänner! 

--Äldste Steele

1) Just got done going ham (skinka) in Innebandy..
basically floor hockey

Pictures

1) Just got done going ham (skinka) in Innebandy...basically floor hockey

2) me and the pump

3) the pumpkin

3) the pumpkin