Elder Kyle Steele: 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