Elder Kyle Steele: I am the Stig

1. Our boy Stig

Well my friends, the days are finally getting brighter and we are now officially half way through winter. Life is going super well and it's just been another great week here in Gävle. This Friday, I'll be hitting my 6 month mark on the mission and so stay tuned next week for some pictures of a burned tie (it's tradition to burn a tie at 6 months, and then a white shirt at 1 year). It feels like I just left yesterday, but we are well into 2018 and life is not slowing down!

This past week, we had a little bit of time to contact people downtown and we ended up meeting a guy named Stig. I immediately thought of my bro Apex Steele, the world's biggest Top Gear fan, and so we laughed for a while at his name after I had asked if he had ever seen Top Gear. He had a lot of questions about life and so we told him that we could meet sometime and help him find those answers, even though he said himself that he's a 'hard sell'. Well, after we met Stig, we've seen him on the bus 2 times now, and have had great conversations both times. We found out that he is the owner of a card/game shop and he invited us to check it out sometime, so today we made a trek on over to his Card shop and he ended up giving us each a free pack of Magic: The Gathering cards. I have absolute no desire to play the game, but it just showed me how amazing the people here in Sweden are, I just had to get to know them first!

The past week has been one of the toughest I've had so far. On monday night, after no one showed up to Family Home Evening, we decided to give our investigator Marko a call to try and swing by. Well, Marko didn't answer his phone, so we called Saara immediately after. She picked up the phone and we asked if we could come by for a quick visit. Well, Saara then just started going off on us saying no we can't come over, they don't want us to come back, and the law of tithing is the worst, the church is greedy, and so forth. My heart just broke. Marko was someone who truly understood the gospel of Jesus Christ and had decided himself to follow everything we taught him, but then other voices started pulling him this and that way, convincing him otherwise, that he doesn't need to follow all of God's commandments and that money is most important. We haven't had any other contact with them this week and so it just made me super sad. There are really no other words to describe how I feel than frustrated. It's not a frustration that I wanted my first baptism and it didn't happen, but it's a frustration that a child of God, who knows this message is true, is choosing otherwise.

Thankfully, God is looking out for me and for my spiritual strength. After I found out that Marko and Saara didn't want to be visited anymore, I sent a quick text to my friend, Mihail Simovski, asking him to pray for our investigator, and that all can be okay in the future, and he said of course. The very next day, as I'm sitting at my desk, writing in my journal, I get a random phone call from Mihail, and so I answer the phone. I'm just like Mihail, what's up, you need something? And he just said that he had received a prompting he needed to call me, he had no idea what he was going to say, but he knew he needed to call me. So we talked for a good 15 minutes, about life, about my struggles, and he just listened and gave me a little pump-up speech so I could get back to work and not be so down. That phone call truly was inspiration, and I'm so thankful that Mihail was able to follow the guidance of the Holy Ghost and reach out to me when I needed it most.

Then, later on in the week, I decided I needed to pray to God to get more faith. I felt as if my faith was lacking quite a bit and I really needed a boost from God. Well, the very next day, I'm on the phone with Selma, another one of our investigators. Selma has it pretty tough right now, doesn't have her own apartment, and so she can't have responsibility over her 8 year old daughter. She just wants to be able to have her own place, where she can be with her daughter and not be so stressed about everything else. I really have been praying my heart out for Selma, that everything in her life can be back in order, and I know that my boy Äldste Berlin has been as well.

Well, on the phone call, she said that she had received her own apartment and that she would be moving in on the 1st of February. Not only had my prayers for her been answered, but also my prayer for faith was answered as well, as I truly witnessed a miracle. What was even more amazing that day, was when we visited our investigator Veronika, and asked her if she has prayed about the Book of Mormon, and she said that she has and she knows it's true. Miracle after miracle, and my faith is now stronger than ever.

While life can be unbelievably difficult on the mission, it also has it's moments of joys, moments of miracles, and moments that you just never want to forget. Until next week kompisar. Ha det så bra!

Pictures:

1. Our boy Stig

2. Pizza with our grandpa Eric (on splits as well with Elder Waters!)

3. Another picture from splits, as Elder Waters and I walked into the train station, these two girls started kissing and whistling at us, we said nej tack we're with the church and we have a special message to share, they weren't interested but we got a selfie with one of them haha

4. The squad (Karin, Ruben, Ella, Äldste Lewis, and some other dude visiting Familjen Sjökvist)

5. My son, Benjamin

6. Santa Clause came to visit one last time....

-- Äldste Steele