Week 22, Baptism, Tracting is Fun, Fårö and House Cleaning!

Fårö which means Sheep Island

HEJ!!!

We have another investigator that is being baptized this Saturday on the 15th!! An investigator that has had contact with the church for 5 years decided that it was time and we agree!! It was so cool to have another baptism on that day it will be one to remember for us and for them because we are going in to Stockholm to Västerhaninge where the temple is to have the baptism. We are so excited and prayers that it will all go through smoothly would be appreciated!!

This week we have been trying to teach and make sure that our two investigators are ready for baptism this weekend!! It should be really good and we just hope and pray that everything goes smoothly until then. Both of them have just had this light that has started to just shine through. I am not sure how else to explain it other than a light that we can see that has changed inside of them. It is honestly that light that we all recieve when we are willing to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and apply the principles that we have been given.

This week we called a family in Örebro because we worked a lot with their son to be ready for his baptism. He was baptized a couple last week and so we decided to give him a call and say congratulations. He apparently got up at his baptism at the end and said that he had something to say and told everyone that he really understood why he should get baptized and wanted to get baptized. He is a way good example to me because I used to think that 8 years old wouldnt be old enough for people to make their own decisions but he understood completely why he needed baptism and he understands and has his own testimony of the restored church. They are just the coolest and it was so good to talk to him and his parents again.

With one of our investigators that we are teaching and is getting baptized this week, she is all about the Bible. She has a testimony of the Book of Mormon but asked a lot of deep questions about our plan on this Earth and what happens after this life and wanted to see the Biblical explanation. It is not our favorite thing as missionaries just because we want our investigators to be converted to the Book of Mormon that it is the word of God along with the Bible. But we were able to answer all of her questions with passages in the Bible and it is absolutely amazing how the spirit is able to work through the scriptures. My testimony has grown this week of how much the Book of Mormon and the Bible compliment one another and really give us that one way back to our Heavenly Father. That we have prophets now that have given us counsil and all of it is in accordance with Gods plan for us. It was really cool just to see that really work in the lives of our investigators this week.

One of the last things that was an extremely cool experience, one of those "only on your mission" experiences was when we went tracting. For those of you who do not know how much fun tracting is I am sorry because it is the best thing on the face of this planet. We met a lady though who started by saying she wasnt interested at all in what we had to say. We started talking with her anyway and jsut asked her a little bit about her life. She said that she has depression and has actually been having a really tough time in life. I have come to find that many people have extremely hard situations that they deal with that I cant even imagine. She then said that even if she wanted to invite us in it was too dirty because she doesnt have the motivation to clean. Thats when we said that we would love to come and clean her house... unlike almost all other Swedes she let us in and we got to clean her house (wash her dishes and vacuum and pick up) we didnt stay forever but we turned on some music from the churches website and started cleaning and talking. In the end she felt something more and we were able to teach her a lesson and show her a mormon message. The Spirit works in interesting ways and we are going back this week but it really did hit me that people really don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. That was fantastic.

We had a couple that took us to Fårö today which literally just means sheep island which is just a little island south of the main island and that is where most of the pictures I sent come from. This place is getting dark and cold but it is one of the most beautiful that I have ever seen. and the last one is with the gotlandska flag

Jag älskar er så mycket!!!

Äldste Israelsen

Pictures from Visby! Notice the Goals on the White Board!