Speaking Gotlandska, 5 Investigators at Church, I "Ate It" On My Bike and Choosing to Live According to the Gospel Really is the Easier Way! Alma 37:46

Hallå där!! (That sounds way funnier when an old Swede says it... trust me)

This week has just been one hectic run around. We have been super blessed with people to teach and things to do the entire week! We definitely had our busyiest week as far as lessons go and we even had to take 2 days and go to Stockholm for zone training!!! Its funny too because we will have to do that again this week for some "special zone training" I really hope its special because thats 7 hours on that boat and I thought the boat was fun but I think it is starting to get a little old haha. This week we have really tried to keep implementing the member present lessons into all of our work just because it helps our investigators so much when they have a tie to the church instead of just us because
believe me we leave a lot faster than most of our investigators would like.

So we have this investigator who we visit with every week and she speaks Gotlandska which is a crazy dialect of swedish here and we took a member here to the lesson and she leaned over and asked if I could understand everything that she said and I said probably 80 percent. I kind of got a little defensive just because you want to have the confidence of the members and to be truthful I havent even been in the country 6 months but even then sometimes you think like the members dont have any trust in you anymore. That investigator has been to church twice now and I asked brother Stålek if he could understand her completely and he said absolutely not haha so I feel a lot better. Apparently there are people on the sounth end of this island that cant understand people on the north end of the island haha. Im glad because sometimes she tells me something and starts laughing and I just jump in and pretend its a joke and hope she isnt talking about me.

Gotland Ferry to Stockholm About 7 Hours

We don't have any baptismal dates yet but we did have 5 investigators in sacrament meeting which was super exciting! We couldnt get over it and its super cool to see how much the Lord has blessed us this week. In Stockholm we stayed with the zone leaders and had the opportunity to help them in there training by doing a skit of people planning poorly (funnier than it sounds I promise). We also were able to go on splitts with them in their area afterwards. I have to say there is so much public transportation I am so not used to the way to get around but the work is still exciting. We were able to teach a man that I actually helped to contact about a month ago so its cool to see that cycle and just to know that things that happen on splitts actually do matter.

One part of the week that wasn't super fun was on a way to a lesson on the other side of Visby before church we went around a corner and we were going fast and my bike just slipped out from under me and I hit the ground hard. I think that was my first bike olycka in a long time. I proceeded to slide for about 10 feet conveniently across the road and then we went to our lesson... It was a lot of fun but its ok because the lady got taught and I didn't break anything I just figured it might be fun for some of you to picture my bike just slipping out and I just ate it (if you don't think that is funny go and watch Americas funniest home videos).

I also was reading this week in the Book of Mormon in Alma 37:46 and it says "O my son do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way..." The thing that I have really come to understand is sometimes we make ourselves feel like life is super hard or that it is too hard to keep going on or that we can't live the gospel because its too stressful or even that I should just go home off my mission because it is too stressful. It hit me so hard that the people we work with have problems in their life that I couldn't even imagine dealing with. When we live according to the gospel we really do choose the easier way. The way that was already walked, already paid for, already suffered for. We can just do what we know to be best and leave the rest to our Savior and I know that is true. I have been so blessed with the gospel in my life and all the family and friends that have supported me along the way.

Ni är bäste tack för allt ni gör for mig!! Lycka till den här veckan!

Äldste Israelsen