Happy Birthday Sweden

Hey everyone! Happy Swedish National Day! It's not quite 4th of July in the US, Swedes like to show their patriotism in a more mild manner. We asked our neighbor as we left today what her plans were for National Day and she said they're going to raise the Swedish flag on the flag pole. Not quite the fireworks, parade, and BBQ I'm used to. 

There won't be any pictures today since I left our phone on the bus on saturday! Luckily we got in contact with the bus driver and he gave our phone to the lost and found so it's safe. However cause of the weekend and holiday today we won't get it back till tomorrow! 

We had quite the meeting with Betul this week. She really opened up and told us that she didn't know about switching religions. She was worried about upsetting her dad and didn't know if it was right for her. We told her we absolutely understood and encouraged her to pray about it and find out God's will for her. 

Super random experience after Betul, we met her in the library and had our lesson then hung around a bit after she left at a table in the library. About 5 minutes later two Swedish strangers walk up to us, shake our hands and introduce themselves, say they'll be right back after they make the tea, then walk off! Elder Groberg and I were beyond confused and figured they got us mixed up with someone else since a white shirt and tie can pass for a lot of things. They came back later and turns out they have a free Swedish class every tuesday night in the library and assumed we were there to join in! Well we hadn't done language study so we figured why not, and had a good time asking some language questions and getting to know these two super cool Swedes. 

It was a week of lots of little random experiences, here's a couple more:

-some little kindergartener's tried to throw water balloons at us from their school playground.

-after we lost our phone we walked around to borrow someone's phone to try calling ours and everyone said no before we explained what we wanted, one guy I asked "hey could we borrow your phone for a quick second?" and he didn't even register that, he just started going off about how he hates religion then I asked him calmly again the same question and he got all surprised and a bit embarrassed. Don't be quick to assume! 

-we contacted a 92 year old Swedish lady with a roller and explained the Book of Mormon then held it out her and said here, you can have one and read it yourself! Well she took the Book of Mormon, sat down on her roller and started reading! 

We had an great lesson teaching Angelica. We were pretty stuck as far as what she needed to be taught, we as missionaries only see the tip of the iceberg of our investigators so it's hard to say what concerns we need to help them out with a lot of the time. So we planned a lesson with a few questions to get her thinking and planned to follow the Spirit and teach according to her needs. Well the golden question in the lesson was "what would it mean to you if this (everything we've taught you) is true?". She said she didn't know cause she'd never even considered it being true!! Well she went on and opened up about her dad who passed away about 5 years ago and how she has a feeling she can't describe that his Spirit lived on and that she'll see him again. Why didn't this come up when we taught the Plan of Salvation?! She even said she has felt him comforting her during an incident where she woke up to a thief robbing her apartment. The Spirit was strong and God's plan seemed to finally be relevant to her. We promised her that the Plan of Salvation is true and that she can really come to know for herself through reading the Book of Mormon and prayer. Elder Groberg were so grateful we followed the Spirit and were tools in God's hands to help Angelica on the path to receiving her own testimony. 

I'm so grateful to be a part of the Lord's work here in Sweden and I am loving every day! 

Ha en fantastisk vecka! 

Love,

Äldste Hainsworth