Travel Plans! Family, Teaching and an Heirloom Tie?

HEJ what is going on?!

So this week has been pretty insane first of all we got our travel plans on Friday!!!!! Hopefully everything is good with everyone's visas (cross your fingers). So we get up at 4:30 and go to SLC. We have a flight at 9:50 to Minneapolis. We land about 1:30 and have another flight at 3 to Amsterdam so that's way cool I'll be in the land of Megan for about an hour. We fly from there to Stockholm and arrive around 8:50 in the morning. I have to say that is going to be one long day because we can't sleep while we are there I'm sure there will be plenty of people to stammer to and not understand.... I'M WAY STOKED.

I got all of the letters from the family reunion and I just want to say thank you to everyone!!! Those were awesome and they totally made my week I wish I could have been there at the reunion but I guess I have a pretty good excuse this time :) It sounds like everyone had a blast and the "You know you're an Israelsen when..." lines were pretty dang true I love it. I'm super grateful to have the fantastic examples in my family, and it's amazing how many people showed their faith in doing things that are far harder than I have ever had to do. Our choir sang true to the faith during the devotional on Tuesday. It was one of the coolest things because I realized how many people had to exercise amazing faith for me to be where I am right now. There has been a big push for family history in missionary work recently and it's because our family and what they have done is so influential in our life. It just made me realize that this is the time to show our faith and let our family and our future family see our example in whatever we choose to do. On that note if anyone can send me stories about ancestors they think are really cool that would be awesome we just got a big lecture on using our family history during our missions so that would be way awesome.

Where's your companion Elder?

So a pretty cool thing happened this week as we were teaching that really strengthened my testimony especially on the Holy Ghost. Elder Archibald and I were teaching our teacher (who was an investigator he taught on his mission). We didn't really know where to go we thought that each lesson we planned was going to be awesome and exactly what he needed but we felt like he wasn't really getting it i guess. So we prayed about it and he loves the Book of Mormon so we went in there prepared to teach him about some of our favorite scriptures and how they connect to Christ. He threw us a curve ball and said that he just broke up with his girlfriend and he never really grew up with any sort of real happiness and we had talked about the atonement briefly and he asked how Christ could help him. While my companion bore his testimony I felt like I really needed to talk about Alma the Younger's story and I went through like 6 verses and taught him about his story and related stuff back to him and I don't even remember half of what I said. I realized this week that it really isn't me whose teaching. It's the Holy Ghost. There is no way that I can teach these people convincingly with the amount of Swedish I know or even if I was teaching in English. No one in their right mind is going to want to join this church without the witness of the Holy Ghost. I also know that Heavenly Father really is looking out for all of us even when we are teaching fake investigators and we can be given the things we should say in the moment we need them.

Heirloom Tie?

I got the package from Kenna and Jacob and Riley thank you!!! The ugly ties have been a good time and my favorite is the hot pink one. (I convinced a sister that it's a family heirloom from my great grandpa who went to Thailand) I kinda feel bad but she thinks it's the coolest thing ever so I don't want to hurt her feelings now... haha. I also said the F-word in Swedish during a lesson this week I conjugated "recieved" wrong and that's apparently what came out of my mouth... I guess it's better that it happened here than when I get out in the field right? Anyway, I love and miss all of you! I can email again on Saturday so if you have any questions or good jokes or whatever I would love to hear them! Oh and P-day will be on Monday's from now on.

den här kyrkan är sann!!!
Jag älskar dig
Äldste Israelsen