He is the Gift!

This is where we shop for food every week.

Hej Hej, This week was very good and also very trying. The weather was pretty mild, so no complaints there. Hope y'all avoid that nasty cold fever. Get away! Thanks for all the updates and love, you guys rock.

Found the phone - whew!

Mån: We made our way to Stockholm to eat lunch with other missionaries and walk around. I bought a shirt for baby Lia so that we can all rep a Sweden shirt:) I left our phone on the train and it took some time tracking it down. Oops. Luckily we found it -it was just 1.5 hours of finding time ha. My bad.

Tis: I sent a package off to the family. We met with M and showed her "He is the Gift" and the spirit was super strong there. I love it! She keeps saying she will come to church but hasn't yet. Coming to church would be the final key for her -then it will all be clear. Please pray that she will come. We did swingbys and we talked with people along the way and ended up teaching 3 people on the street by starting it off with "He is the Gift". It was sooooo sick!! I love it.

Ons: We taught 5 lessons in the day and they were all super solid. We received a surprise dinner invite which is always the best! We gave L a blessing because he was sick and wasn't doing well. Gosh darn it. Just when he's about to go to the temple, he gets sick!!! We met up with H and his sister but unfortunately their mom won't let his sister to be baptized but hopefully we can clarify some things and get that going. They are still coming to church and doing great!

Pretty countryside. 

Here is even another crazy thing. As we were walking around we came out of this apartment and a young adult old woman contacted us. Her name is K and she was actually one of our old investigators who had a baptismal date last year but cancelled. There's been on and off contact with the missionaries for the past year. She came up to us and said that she was ready again! WOW!!! Talk about Miracle! That was so cool to be in the right place at the right time.

Tors: We met with K more formally and for a longer time. She speaks English but is from somewhere in eastern Europe. She was so ready and willing to be baptized. It was amazing to hear her story. Sadly, we haven't really heard from her since. It is frustrating because we felt the spirit so strong with her and know she is ready. People have their agency, but we will keep trying with her.

Free hot chocolate in the train station (with a message of course.)

Fre: District meeting focused on contacting and discovering "the gift." It is working very well when we are talking to people on the street about Christmas -they are more open and we have a great conversation. We then ask if we can share a 2 minute video about Christmas-they say yes-the spirit is there and then we testify. It's awesome!! Our district gave out free hot chocolate at the train station while showing "He is the Gift" and talking to people. It was a great turnout -not as big or great as it would be in the states, but still good.

Sadly, the rest of the day was quite brutal. We got blåsted 3 times, hard by some of our most progressing investigators. That was a blow. Plus just a bunch of minor things built up to knock us down. I have been in my tiny tiny tiny area for 5 months now and I know everything about everything here. I know what I am going to do everyday and it is messing with me. I eventually called President and shared my feelings with him. He told me there is still someone out there I need to find. So that helped change my perspective and I had an incredible spiritual experience that night as I prayed.

Reece's Cookies- Yum

Lör: I baked some Reese's cookies and they turned out FANTASTIC!!! Seriously. I was super happy -and so were the rest of the missionaries who live with me. My companion participated in our ward Christmas concert. He did really good.

Dinner with the O's: A typical Swedish Christmas meal

Sön: Fast sunday is always great! Boy, it was a crazy busy day though. We had coordination meeting; ward council; we participated in a role play in a meeting for all of the stake presidents in sweden, the mission president, and the area 70 -talk about no pressure ha! It went good though; as well as teaching and translating during church, teaching a few lessons on the street. WHEW!! What a day! We also had dinner with the Ö's and it was basically the Swedish Christmas meal and it was great!:)

Let me tell you that I am no longer losing my mind as I have felt recently being in this area for so long. The experience I had Friday night helped so much. I remember just opening up completely to my Heavenly Father -not leaving anything behind. It all came out and I stopped suddenly and flat out just said "Are you even there? Do you even hear me?" ... I can't even begin to describe to you the feeling that I received after that. It was absolutely incredible. I felt enveloped in His loving arms and knew without a doubt that He was there with me, that He knew what I am going through, and that He would always be there for me. I know that is true. I know He is real. I know He lives. I challenge you to find out for yourself -for I know you will receive an answer of His reality. I Love this work, I love you all, have a great week! 

MVH, 

Äldste Johnson