Hello again,
What a wonderful week! I couldn't believe all that came out of our
week. With having midsommars it really was hard to get in touch with
people and fit things in, but the Lord really did bless us! We were even
able to meet with Lennart on a different day and get a baptismal date!
He is feeling very nervous and not sure about this Saturday but we know
he is ready and he has a testimony of the Book of Mormon. You should
have seen the wards enthustisam and how they jumped when we needed help.
I really do love this ward and have appreciated being able to stay here
a while. Lennart is still going to another church which is hard. They
announced in chuch that he would be baptized on Saturday and he just
started shaking his head. He is super super shy! Haha I was sitting on
the stand an didn't even hear it because of course I was nervous to talk
and S.Sch said when it happened she was afraid he was going to stand up
and run out. So she tried really hard not to let me notice so I didn't
freak haha. It will all be okay though.. if he doesn't get baptized this
saturday it will be another one. My talk yesterday ended up being a
challenge because i didn't have much time to prepare. It went so so well
though. That was truly the Lord and not me. That was probably the best
talk I've ever given. I was even too nervous kind of excited actually. I
realized talks are easier in Swedish because I can't really say as much
as I can in English. So it has to be simple and to the point. Awesome
stuff.
Guess what.. in my district right now we have 4
from Pleasant Grove, ut and only 2 from other places.. dude crazy stuff
right?? Elder Keetch just got here last week and he lives pretty close
to discovery if I understood right. When we showed our family pictures
he recognized Rachel and I recognized his older brother who is a year
older than me. That was pretty crazy. Then the Oscarsons who live like 5
min from us. Sanders is from Ut and its just Sch that is out of the
loop poor thing. I have prayed lots about extending and it hasn't felt
right so I will be coming home Nov.22nd to my knowledge right now.
Whatever Thanksgiving day is.. that is when I come home. Agh way to
close really. Time just flys. S.Sch and I have had too much fun together
it feels. Things are too easy together. We know how to teach together
and work together... So we feel the pres will move us soon enough
because you gotta keep growing right? You have to have challenges to
grow.
Well we are a little behing on our goal of 2000 contacts, but I
think we we'll get it done. We better because I want to have a 4th of
July party! Last year I was on a plane haha. What is that.. fly here on
the 4th and fly home on thanksgiving. Anywho.. we visited tons of
less-actives this week and started meeting with one and this week will
start meeting with another. I hope we can help them to be active!!.. On
monday we were heading home on the train and we didnt have a really well
schedualed evening. It is never fun to go back to your work monday
after Pday when you dont have anything set up. BUT! The Lord was leading
us. We had planned to go by a few people.. and we went by one of them
and she wasnt home.. so we were on our way to the second when we thought
to stop by one of our investigators who hasnt really been progressing..
and is usually never home... Leila. She was home and let us come in.
Turns out she had been really depressed the whole weekend and hadnt gone
to school because she was getting a divorce with her husband. So we had
the chance to teach her the plan of salvation. The lesson went really
well and at the end we invited her to pray. She was uncomfortable and
like usual said .. no you guys do it. But I encouraged her.. and it was
wonderful! She said a really sincere prayer and it brought a beautiful
spirit. :) We left and I thought.. wow this day was awesome.. that was a
great miracle.
So we headed to the last person on our list. Melina: She is a less active who stoped going to church when she was 14. She is living with her boy friend right now and she smokes. Her brother (viktor) just went on his mission. So Melina has some friends who are still active.. one of them named Felix. Well! Felix a while back was talking with Melina and Melina voiced how she really wanted to quit smoking. Felix got real serious and told her.. if you want to quit read the Book of Mormon. So she uploaded it on her iphone and has been trying to read it. So we went by on monday to give her the non smoking program that we use for our investigators. We knocked on the door and no one was home. So we turned around and there she came walking up the stairs. YAY! She had just come home from work. Well! We came in and ended up eating dinner with her. She was super excited about the program and even texted her boy friend to get all the things she would need to start. We ended up asking her why she stopped going to church and then invited her to meet with us to see if the gospel could give her more happiness. She said yes!!! wahoo! I wish you could have all been there with us. Melina really was happy. You could see her almost glowing as we testified of the purpose of the gospel. So we decided to meet wednesday and she called up Felix and asked him to come along too. She called him right there in front of us. We could hear Felix's response when Melina asked him to come meet with the missionaries.. "VA? ja visst vill jag komma!" (what! of course i will come!) :) It was awesome. Cycling home in the rain.. I couldnt help but smile. If we hadn't gone by Leila's and taught her for 45 mins.. we would have gone to Melina's too early and she wouldn't have been home. I feel like Heavenly Father works alot through timing. I dont always feel a powerful prompting.. "Hey go to Leila's! so that you can go to Melina's" often times we are just going about the day and doing what we think we should do.. and Heavenly Father leads the way.
The same thing happened the next day. We were planning on going by a few other less actives and as we got into town we ended up deciding to walk around the town instead of riding our bikes. Then we started walking the wrong way and thought.. might as well keep going we can visit Alex on the way too. So we decided to visit our list of people backwards. As we walked under a bridge towards the first house we were going to visit... low and behold! here comes Linnea.. One of the less actives who we were originally planning on visiting first. Good thing we decided to go backwards or else she wouldnt have been home. We had a great chat with her and she invited us home later on in the week. :) YAy!
Next day.. same thing! :) We were going to meet Melina in the
evening and Felix ended up texting us saying that he would come up to
Alingsås at 1230 for a doctors apt. and after that he could help us with
missionary work. It was a good thing he came in because Melina had
texted us the night before and said she wasn't sure if she really wanted
to meet and go back to church. So Felix came in and after his doctor's
apt went and talked to Melina at work. She decided to still meet :) We
met up with Felix in town and had a late lunch. This was also perfect
timing from Heavenly Fathers part. Turns out Felix's dr apt was for his
mission... and the results came back not so good. He had a really low
blood count and his Hbg levels were super low. The dr was super suprised
when the results came back and did it again.. his results said that he
was super low on blood and it was acute. Felix had a colostomy a year
ago.. and he had it for about a year. But i guess he had been loosing a
lot of blood the past little while. So Felix was super bummed about the
test results.. he really just wants to go on a mission. He has aready
had to wait a long time. It was perfect that he got to be with us the
rest of the day. MIRACLES happened everywhere we went. It was exactly
what Felix needed to see. The Lord was guiding us throughout the day to
make sure that we would see and talk to the people we needed to talk
to. It was a bigger testimony to Felix that the Lord is also leading his
life and that it would all be ok. Melina's teach that night was
wonderful as well and we all walked away feeling the spirit.
ok ok! last miracle!!! Manal! if you remember our amazing investigator from Lebanon. Turns out .. she probably wont be coming back to sweden. But! we got permission to call the branch president in Lebanon. We tried finally got through to him thursday night. He is from america but most of the branch is Lebanese and its about 40 strong members. and!! Turns out Lebanon just got permission from the 12 to have missionaries! they have 4 french speaking missionaries coming in and a canadian couple. wahoO!! so we are hoping that they will be able to take care of our dear Manal.
We also had Midsommars this week.. which is as big as christmas. We
had an extra Pday and had an awesome time. I will try to send pictures
if I can. Thanks for your love and support. And I have sent letters to
these people but I wanted to say it here and kept forgetting so Happy
Birthday to Elder Ritchie, Christian, and Kashea. Hope your birthdays
rocked.. even without me :) Sorry this is so so so long haha
Love Syster Sprague
No comments:
Post a Comment