Stand-By

Email written: 3/25/19

Hallå!!

What a great week it has been. We had a total of 3 zone conferences this week and so the time has just flown by. It's been kind of hard to keep all the days straight and I've been so exhausted after every zone conference because we have a training segment and then an additional speaking assignment at the conference. The first two were here in Stockholm and the last one was up in the promised land aka, Norrland. I felt such at home when we were up there in Umeå. 

Speaking of Umeå though, when we arrived to the airport, we went to the kiosk to print out our boarding passes. When we print them out, it says that we are on stand by and that we won't get our seat until we talk with the personnel at the gate. Well, we thought that was a little weird, but just hoped for the best as we went to the gate. Well, as we are sitting there, the flight gets delayed and then they finally get the boarding process started. We go up to the desk, but there are already like 12 people on stand by and we just watched as each person goes in front of us and gets a seat on the plane, but then as they get to us, the woman takes our ticket and starts talking on the walkie talkie and on the phone samtidigt and then after about 5-10 minutes of confusion, all we head is 'Boarding is complete'. And so, right in front of our eyes, we see our seats given up to other people and so they tell us that we won't be taking a flight until 11 pm that night. So, we were stranded in the airport for over 5 hours just waiting for the next plane. It was quite the adventure. And so we ended up eating a baguette and some ice cream and then taught a man for about 3 hours in the airport who also didn't get a seat on the plane. We didn't get to Umeå until almost 1am. We then woke up just a few hours later for the conference and so elder lewis was totally zonking out the entire conference. It was golden!

Later on in the week, on Sunday, we decide to go out to a certain area to knock on some doors before we eat our dinner. Well, as we are walking around after knocking on about 20 doors and getting lots of no's, we decide that the next house we knock on will be the last house of that time frame and so we prayerfully seek after the right house. Well, after going through a few different houses, and ending up on a random street, we saw a huge white house with a mysterious (mysterious just because i didn't know what it was) flag and we knew immediately that we needed to knock on that house. When we came to the door, a woman answered the door and then she said you are welcome. She then asks us, *Do you want to meet the ambassador?' And we're just like, um of course, and we come into this fancy house and this shorter man is sitting there tying his tennis shoes. He was about to leave for church. But, we began talking with him and he sees that we are missionaries and he tells us to come back and teach him next Saturday. And so, just like that, we got a lesson set up with the ambassador of the republic of Tanzania. Pretty cool stuff going on here!

Talk to y'all next week! Hejdå!

Pictures:

1) Umeå!!

2) snow mountain

-- Äldste Steele

1) Umeå!!

2) snow mountain

Isaiah 9:6

Email written: 3/18/19

Well, I'm kind of getting to that point where instead if emailing I just go out into the woods, have a grillfest with the other missionaries and film trick shot videos, so my apologies for those that have really enjoyed reading these :)

As we were out on a member meal this past week, we realised that we did not have another man to come with us on a lesson to an older woman that lived by herself, so we decided to ask the 16 year old young man in the family if he wanted to hang with us the rest of the evening and help out with the lesson. It took a little bit of convincing from both us and his dad, but he decided to come on and it was an absolute blast! This kid was so mature and so enjoyable to be around as we went to visit this lady, Brigitta. When we got there, she had forgotten we were coming to visit and so she wanted to reschedule. Definitely not that first time that has happened to me haha. But we decided to go to our bishops house because he lived like 1 minute away. Well, the time we went wasn't the best, since it turns out they were trying to give the kids baths and pit them to bed and also clean up the kitchen, but they let us in anyways and let us read a scripture. The scripture that we read reminded the bishop of a moment on his mission when he had just gotten to France and was feeling pretty homesick and then he read the verse in Isaiah 9:6 where it gives the name of Christ...Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace...He was so happy for the visit and our young man kompis was able to read the scripture with power and authority!! He decided to make some Snapchat videos and post them on his story so that all his followers could know that he was out 'preaching with the missionaries'. What a fun night it was :D

Well, zone conference this week! Hopefully Elder Lewis and I can pull through with our responsibilities and make it to Umeå safely this Friday. It will be a great week. Hopefully you all have a great one as well!!

-- Äldste Steele

Äldste Ahonen and Äldste Steele

Grillfest?

La Neta

Email written: 3/11/19

Hejsan allihopa!

What a fantastic week! Why was it such a good week you ask? Well it's because I got to eat at my favourite restaurant in Sweden 2 times this week. The restaurant is called La Netas and it's pretty much the only good Mexican food you can find in Sweden and wow it's some good stuff. As we were helping a member move some heavy furniture this past Saturday, one of the members told us that if we could throw a snowball and hit the far away garbage can, he would take us all out to la netas,and so elder Lewis took one for the team and hit it after just a few attempts and so that's where got to go this morning with a member and his son. I was in heaven!

In a big moment of confusion, elder Lewis and I also had to travel two additional times to the doctor's for elder Lewis TB test. It took 4 nurses and a doctor to make the diagnosis and even when they diagnosed elder Lewis, they said, well it SEEMS to he okay, but it is a difficult diagnosis. Always comforting when the doctor tells you that right?

This week was filled with a lot of other good things too, including MLC. As MLC approached, President youngberg came down with a pretty bad sickness, as most people are this time of year, and so he called an audible and had elder Lewis and I lead most of the MLC. It was a little nerve racking but it went pretty good and we got to talk a lot about our expectations and how we all can improve in our mission and so I look forward to zone conference next week where we get to teach some of the topics that were discussed! We all had a sad realisation when we realised that all of the elders in the MLC all go home by the end of August and so the leadership in this mission is about to complete shift to new leaders. 

As we were out tracting this week, we had no idea what to say when we came to a certain door. Elder Lewis ended up talking first and the first thing that came into his head was family history and it turned out this guy loved doing family history and welcomed us in to talk more. When we got to come back, we compared family trees and shared stories from our family and the Spirit came into the room. Because the Spirit was there, the conversation was able to go to a more spiritual note and we began talking about why we look for ancestors and how we can build those relationships we have and make them last for eternity. The conversation sparked such an interest that he now wants a Book of Mormon and to continue to learn more from us. It was a great experience! You never know who is ready to accept the gospel and what will interest them, but once the Spirit touches them, it changes their life. 

Hope y'all have a good week! Take care!

-- Äldste Steele

Bonus pic: The squad on Pday

Happy March!

Email written: 3/4/19

Hey everyone!

It's been a tough, but great week here in Täby because of all the different things we needed to get done on the first week of the transfer.

We got to welcome in the new missionaries to Sweden and they were all so excited to come in and go to work. They were all pretty tired and so I felt bad when we tried to speak Swedish to them and they just started at us like we were crazy, but I understood them. It's a new country, a new language, and the jet lag huts you hard. It's not easy being a new missionary, but I'm thankful they are here ready to learn.

We also had to go to the doctor's office this past week because apparently someone down in Malmö that Äldste Lewis had contact with, had TB and so we had to get that checked out. The doctor that talked with elder Lewis actually had contact before with missionaries and he has a Book of Mormon and he always respected us missionaries and so that was a great opportunity for him to answer questions!

Also, this past week, this 18 year old Swede called up the just doubled in that elders and asked them if this was the number he calls to become a member of the church or Jesus Christ of latter day saints. So, they went to go meet with him and after they met with him and teaching about baptism, they set a date for the 23rd of March! They went from a straight double in with nothing in their area book to a baptismal date in the matter of a few days. It was remarkable and it was such a miracle, mostly because the number this man called is only going to be active in a certain 6 week period. What a miracle!

Hope you all have a great week!!

Pictures:

1) we got free milk on drottninggatan 

2) my street!

3) Kyrka 

-- Äldste Steele

1) we got free milk on drottninggatan 

2) my street!

3) Kyrka