Elder Kyle Steele: As January Ends...

Email written: 1/28/19

Hej!

What a fantastic week it has been in Sweden. Äldste Lewis and I have been working really well together and have begun to see the blessings of hard work coupled with faith. So many miracles and so many people to be taught! This next week is going to be even crazier because not only do we have a lot more lessons to teach, but we also have 2 mission conferences, one of them being in Göteborg, and a mission leadership council at the end of the week and so things are going to be crazy as we try to juggle the million things that we need to do. Elder Massimo De Feo, one of the general leaders of the church, is coming to visit the mission and so I look forward to learning a lot from him this week at the various conferences and other meetings.

The week started off super well when we met a good friend of ours that we are teaching. He had first been taught by the sisters starting in October, but when the sisters doubled out, we started teach him. His older brother is married to a member and is also someone we are teaching! But, we met with him on Monday and had such a powerful and spiritual lesson. Lots of questions were answered and when it came down to the invitation, Elder Lewis said, "Just know that with this invitation, we only do it out of love and we do this because we want the best for you. Will you be baptized on the 9th of February?" At first he was thrown off because he thought it would be a nice simple invitation to do something, but then as he thought about it a little more and trusted in the promptings of the Holy Ghost, he told us that he would absolutely love to be baptized and that the Holy Ghost told him to say yes. And so, in just a few short weeks, there will be a baptism in Täby!!

On Tuesday, we then flew to Utby to do some splits with the zone leaders. I had the privilege of being with Elder Wayment, one of my good friends from my MTC group. We have both grown so much and it was great to see who Elder Wayment has become over these past 18 months. I actually have been wanting to be companions with Elder Wayment since the MTC and so I finally had the chance this week.

As we were out tracting on Friday evening, Elder Lewis and i were having just a simple conversation about the work and then he asked me, 'when was the last time a missionary actually found a family?', to which I gladly was able to respond to him that there were a few families in övik that we had found, but that it had been a while since those kinds of things had happened. I decided in that moment to hold a prayer in my heart and pray for more faith to find a family, and so then we knock on the next door. The person who answered was a woman that was clearly pretty sick and she didn't feel like talking but she said that we could come back in 30 mins when her husband was home, and so we continued to tract (one of the houses we knocked into turned out to be a member so we got some free smoothies along the way :) and we came back 30 minutes later. When we knocked, they were gathered around the dinner table, but the man answered the door and said come in! And he let us in, gave us watermelon and we got to know each other briefly and asked them if they wanted to learn more and they invited us back the following week and so we get to teach a mom, dad, and their son!! It was such a miracle and it felt so good leaving that house.

Life is great!! In a district council, someone told me that I'm really bold when we are out finding and teaching, probably because I tell people how it really is. The key is, I deepen my understanding of the gospel and then bare powerful testimony so that others can come unto Christ.

Have a good week everyone!

1) SAS

2) Ä. Wayment!

3) views

4) hagaparken

-- Äldste Steele