First Week in the Office

Email written: 10/30/18

Hej på er!!

You know at water parks and sometimes on the lazy river they have a big whirlpool that spins around pretty fast? Well, that's pretty much like what it felt this past week as my first week in the office. There were about a million things to do and my head was always spinning, but it's so great to be here, back in Stockholm with Äldste Derr. 

1) The new group of missionaries

The first part of the week was concerned about the transfers, which included new missionaries coming in and old missionaries going home after their two years. RIP pappa harper. We had the privilege to pick up the brand new missionaries from the airport on tuesday morning and it was so much fun to be around new missionaries. They had such a fire for missionary work and were so excited to meet their trainers and get to work. We were able to take them to a church that was pretty close by when we had a little bit of downtime and that experience in of itself was super cool to be a part of.  When we got there, the church was completely closed and it kind of bummed me out, and everyone was freezing cold anyways and wanted to go inside, so I keep looking around for an entrance. We come up to a glass entrance, and i try pulling on the handle to get in to the building. A woman sitting at a desk looked very angry at me for trying to get in to the church. Also, it probably didn't look too good with 16 or so missionaries just knocking on a door of another church. It was pretty unfair for her....16 soldiers in the Lord's army vs. 1 swedish church priest. But, she got up from her desk and asked us very sharply what we were doing. I replied politely and respectfully and her entire countenance changed and she offered to give us a whole tour of the building! We got a great language and swedish church history lesson all in one! At the end of the tour, Ä. Derr and I had the opportunity to testify powerfully of the message of the restoration and gave her a card. It was great to see the change from someone being very angry at us to very accepting of us and curious to see who we were. 

Amidst all of our other meetings, we had the chance to get out and do some classic missionary work, which is where the true joy lies in a mission. As we were out knocking doors this past week, we had a goal to get let in. After knocking for about an hour, and not facing much success, we had a quick conversation about our goal for that evening. With a new determination to reach our goal after remembering the one we had prayerfully set that morning, we knock on the next door. This snygg swedish man dressed up in a suit comes walking out and starts talking with us. We find out that the reason he is dressed up so nice is just because he had family night...like dang what a cute family they were!! The man welcomed us in and we taught them all about the gospel that has been restored to us! We are going back this next week to teach them more!! 

The reason that I'm emailing today, was because yesterday we had mission leadership council. In our councils, President Youngberg just brings up topics and we get to discuss our views and experiences, so that we all can get a pretty good feel for what is going on in the mission. The spirit was so strong in that room throughout the whole meeting and it was amazing to see how each and every discussion was inspired. The leaders that we have right now in the mission are unreal...hur duktig som helst!! 

Too many times in our lives, we have the tendency to focus on the things that we are not doing or doing poorly, and seldom on the things that we are doing right. I'm nowhere near perfection in my calling as assistant now, but instead of beating myself up over the areas that I lack, i instead can joy in the successes and take 1-2 things at a time to work on, and eventually, i'll reach perfection. Not in this life, but in the next life. 

Hope you all have a great week! I'm flying out to Malmö in a few hours...so gotta blast! Hej då

Pictures: 

1) The new group of missionaries

2) stockholm temple 

3) hejdå pappa

4) halloween activity this past saturday 

5) too cute,,,had to send 

-- Äldste Steele

2) stockholm temple 

3) hejdå pappa

4) halloween activity this past saturday 

5) too cute,,,had to send 

Hejdå Göteborg, Hallå Stockholm

Email written: 10/22/18

4) New comp in Gamla Stan

Hej!

It's been a crazy and stressful past few days. On Thursday night, Elder Harper and I get a text from President Youngberg. The text was just for us to give him a call when we get the chance.

Well, fast forward to that evening when we finally get home. We give President a call and hes like, we'll Äldster, sisters are coming in to Utby.. To which I reply "But president, where am I going??" He just goes, we'll get there, hold on.

He tells us all we need to know to prepare for the sisters doubling in and let's us know that the time we have to do it is very very limited. President goes "The reason you need to get this done so soon is because Äldste Steele will be coming to Stockholm and will be companions with Äldste Derr, which means he will be assistant." 

So, I'm back in Stockholm now. In fact, I just got back from Gamla stan! I'm going to be working pretty closely to President Youngberg as one of his assistants. It's going to be a great learning experience and I'm excited for this opportunity to serve. There's a lot more meetings and what not to prepare for this week, so I don't have a ton of time, but I'll have more time next week to share some more cool stories about the people we are teaching! Until next week, ha det bra!   

Pictures: 

1) Family Pictures

2) We had Stake conference yesterday at a huge conference center 

3) funny sign i found

4) New comp in Gamla Stan

5) I forgot how beautiful Stockholm was 

6) still a child sometimes

-- Äldste Steele

1) Family Pictures

2) We had Stake conference yesterday at a huge conference center 

3) funny sign I found

5) I forgot how beautiful Stockholm was 

6) still a child sometimes

Invite, Repent, and Have Faith

Email written: 10/15/18

Hej allesammans!

This week was another great week here in Göteborg! It was good to finally have time back in our area and do things to help the work move forward. 

We were able to attend a baptism for a person the zone leaders were teaching named Ammar. It was so awesome to see how happy he was to be there and he had peace in the decision he made to be baptized. Ammar honestly is such a great example to me. The baptism was all for him and obviously no one would expect him to set up anything so that he could prepare spiritually, but he asked at every opportunity to help out for the baptism. He moved chairs out of the chapel, fixed the plug in the font, wiped up the floors leading to the baptismal font, and was still asking if there was anything else he could to do help. It was so cool to see! 

There had been another baptism planned that day, but our good friend that the zone leaders were also teaching, ended up not being baptized as he didn't quite feel ready yet. He came anyways to the baptismal service and I was able to sit next to him and offer him words of encouragement and I helped him recognize the spirit there. Also, as I was sitting there, Heavenly Father impressed on my mind to share John 14:27 with him, and so I pulled it up on my phone, showed him the verse, and let him know that it was what God wanted him to read at that moment. His eyes got really wide knowing that it had come direct from God. That was a really spiritually strengthening experience not only for me, but also for our good friend there.

A few weeks ago, we had tracted into a nice family out in Partille that really wanted us to come back. When we went back the first time, we were able to find out more about their situation, and it was the wife was christian, and the husband was muslim, and so things were a little shaky on them allowing us to come in and teach the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, but we found out that the wife's mother, who lives there, is also christian, and so they were both interested in meeting us another time and at some public place instead of at their home. We gladly accepted the request, but since we were in the area one night, we decided to swing by again just to see how they were doing, and when we went by this time, a different lady answered the door and we're just like hej vem är du, but she didn't know any swedish and so we switched to straight english and we found out that this lady was this family's nanny. We chat just for a bit and try to find out when the family was coming home and she let us know, and then I was like wait, this message we teach is for EVERYONE, do you want to learn more about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? And she said yes she would love to and so this past Saturday, we had the privilege to teach our new friend Jessica, who just recently moved here from Brazil.(s/o Elder menjivar and Sister Bartels!!) We even had the help from a member for Portuguese translation and it was cool to teach her! She will make a lot of progress in the gospel as she lives here in Sweden.

We never really know when someone is going to be interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ and so we just need to be fearless and ask absolutely everyone we meet if they want to learn more. That's actually a big thing that we talked about in our zone conference this past Thursday. We need to be inviting a lot more people to learn more about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and stop being so casual about it. We had gotten in the bad habit of just casually saying who we are and just saying yeah we just teach people about the church, but in reality, we teach the restored gospel and help people live after true principles. 

Sorry to make a long email longer, but I felt like I needed to share another thing that we talked about in zone conference. We talked a lot about teaching repentance and what that looks like. We were able to watch a little clip of Elder Andersen, as he spoke of his thoughts when missionaries talk about how many people they have baptized. His thoughts are basically, well that's nice, but how many people did you teach how to repent? Helping people to repent is one of the greatest callings we have as missionaries, as we try to help people understand that their sins can be forgiven. 

I thought back a lot to my time in Övik, and there was this one man that we helped out a ton when I was there....goodness gracious Bertil, I love that man. I've never cared about someone on my mission as much as I did for Bertil. But, in the end, he didn't want to be baptized in the church. There were some of our doctrines that just were too hard for him to understand him. And it just felt like I didn't help him. But, as I thought a lot about what President taught us and I realized that Elder Thompson and i were truly able to teach repentance to our good friend and there were multiple times where Bertil would say a prayer asking for forgiveness, acknowledging how tired he was of making the same mistakes. Let us all be humble, align our wills with God, and make all the wrongs in our life, right like Bertil did.

I love you all and I hope y'all have a great week. Ha det bra! 

Pictures:

1) Lennart, our Swedish teacher

2) HÖST

3) a house we tracted had a lot of pumpkins and squashes

4) this was our dinner the other night

-- Äldste Steele

1) Lennart, our Swedish teacher

2) HÖST

3) a house we tracted had a lot of pumpkins and squashes

4) this was our dinner the other night

Allmän Konferens (inte GENERAL)

Email written: 10/8/18

Halloj!

This week has been absolutely crazy, probably for a few reasons. Some of them included it being my birthday, general conference being this weekend, and several people in our district that are preparing for baptism that needed an interview this weekend. I felt like a chicken running around with its head cut off this week, but overall we had some really awesome experiences!

On Tuesday evening, we hopped on a train and traveled for almost 3 hours to get to the city of Karlstad for splits with the elders there. I got to be with Äldste Mathias, an Äldste that is about to be done getting trained. He's really got the greenie fire and it was so much fun to work with him and find new people teach. That night, we were able to make funfetti cake, as they had a cake mix in one of their cupboards. It was so nice of them to make me a cake on my birthday... Forever thankful for them for making the second birthday on my mission a memorable one.

The next day, we immediately got to work. The day involved a little bit of Facebook work, tracting, contacting, and even teaching. We got to hit all areas of the work in one day and it was great to teach so much to Äldste Mathias, but also learn so much from him. One of the things that we wanted to accomplish that day was to find a service organization their in town so that they could get involved in community service. I'm all about serving the community! (Mosiah 2:17) We first went to try at this one second hand store and we come in and the people immediately are like no you can't work here and represent your church, and were like we just want to serve, but as we come to find out, in the end, only women are allowed to work there because their acronym apparently stood for international women's organization , so they turned us down immediately. Kind of sexist if you ask me, but they were nice so I won't hold it against them haha! They told us to go try at the Red Cross and on our way there, we met this man that turned into a 25 min convo/mini lesson on the street and he even invited us (well Karlstad elders) to an innebandy devotional night the following day so that was cool! As soon as we walked into the Red Cross, we became instant celebrities, as it usually goes when people hear Americans speaking as good of Swedish as we do in this mission. And so, just like that, we got a service opportunity at the red cords and we were able to spend the rest of the evening testifying and teaching people on their doorsteps with lots of people starting to become interested. One guy that we met, after asking I'd we could teach him more about faith in God and his plan, his reply was 'Gärna' (which translate to would love to)!

It really was a solid day with Äldste Mathias and one thing that we talked a lot about was faith and our testimonies. We were sharing our testimonies to each other all day and were on a spiritual high and it helped us so much in the work since we could have the spirt with us. A big theme that I got from conference was follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which includes always remembering the great and eternal sacrifice of our Savior. We can't be afraid to share our love for Christ with our friends , family, and strangers. We need to stand up for His Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and always be sharing our testimony of Him who leads the church. It was so great the hear the words of prophets and apostles this past weekend!

As far as the baptismal interviews, 3 people passed their interviews and will be baptized this upcoming Saturday, 2 here in Utby and 1 in Trollhättan. It's such an exciting time to be a missionary here in the Göteborg zone! This week we have zone conference, so it will continue to be a crazy week, but I wouldn't want to have it any other way! Ha det bra och vi hörs!  

Pictures: 

1) släkt means family 

2) karlstad! 

3/4) More Sweden nature 

5) One of the members served his mission in Taiwan and bought lightsabers there  

6) district council

-- Äldste Steele

1) släkt means family 

2) karlstad! 

3/4) More Sweden nature 

3/4) More Sweden nature 

5) One of the members served his mission in Taiwan and bought lightsabers there 

6) district council 

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Email written: 10/1/18

Äldste Steele's birthday package arrived in time!

Hallå Oktober, Hejdå September! How do these months go by so fast??Things continue to be alldeles utmärkt here in Utby with Äldste Harper. We have had plenty of time to teach, find and serve. As we planned for this week, we realized that we won't have as much time this next week to do all the things we did this past week. Not only do we have splits in Karlstad from Tuesday to Thursday ( a city that is about 2.5 hours away by train), but there's also have a few baptismal interviews that Äldste Harper needs to do for several people getting baptized, and all the sessions of general conference this upcoming weekend, so it'll be an interesting week ahead of us, but I know that it will still be a good one since we stil have the desires to serve and help the people we teach progress. The Lord will help us find a way to keep in good contact with our friends and also will bless us with the time we need to make our visits and try meeting new people. 

This past week, we were able to teach the same woman that came to church this past week. We were able to teach the plan of salvation and every time I teach it, the more and more I know it to be absolute truth restored to us in our time. Because we aren't allowed to just teach people of the opposite sex alone, she invited one of her good guy friends to be along the lesson, so we were able to teach him as well!! Apparently the word for 'chaperone' in Swedish is the same word for 'apron' and so we were pretty confused when she kept calling her friend her 'apron'.....gotta love languages haha. 

We also have been meeting more with one of our good friends, Agha, who is trying to give up smoking so that he can be happier in his life. It's so great to teach people that are humble enough to make changes in their life that bring them closer to Christ. We are working on building his confidence in himself and so we helped him set up his own short term plan for the next month in preparing to stop smoking. We hope that he can continue to progress!

We also continue to see last door miracles. I really didn't think that I would have those experiences on my mission, but they happen time and time again, where we are out knocking doors all evening, and no one is interested until the last door, and someone gladly welcomes us back over to teach them. We were out in Partille on Saturday evening and were out knocking doors and one of the first doors we knocked into were these two older Swedish guys that still lived at home with their mom and they were just jacked out of their mind. One of the brothers told us that he could bench 185 kg so yeah, these guys were huge, but they actually let us in and they told us to give them our 'pitch', so we had a nice little mini lesson which turned into a 45 minute conversation about truth and belief and it was a great conversation and it didn't really go anywhere and one of the brothers is just like, 'I still feel like you guys are trying to sell me something' and so I then told him that we were set apart full time representatives of Jesus Christ and so that's why it feels so different when we were with them. In the end they weren't interested, but they understood what we do and what we stand for, and at least gave us each bananas for the road. 

We then carefully chose our 'last door' of the evening and the spirit was telling me knock on the door, but my mind was like ehhh i don't know, because it was pretty dark and no lights were on in the house and it was kind of sketchy walking behind the house, but we went anyways and knocked on the door. Then, a woman comes to the door, and we begin talking pretty quietly. She was about to put her kids to bed and so it was just nearing an ineffective time to knock on doors, but as we told her who we were and who we represent, she was so happy to have met us and can't wait for us to come back and teach her our message. She then told us that she had recently bought an angel necklace that reminds her of Christ and so that was a nice little bonus in there! 

Things are going well here, and I'm loving my time in Utby! Hope you all have a great week. Ha det fint! Tack, hej! 

Pictures: 

1) WOW

2) Nice view on a walk to Partille

3) building in göteborg stan

-- Äldste Steele

1) WOW

2) Nice view on a walk to Partille

3) building in göteborg stan