Monday, May 30, 2016

SO MUCH JOY IN THE WORK!


Life as a trainer is just splendid!  I absolutely LOVE my "daughter", and we are just having the dandiest time together! 

Started out the week with another long trip to Stockholm to pick up my lila grönsak--or my little greenie!  Tuesday night I was supposed to stay with the sisters in Jakobsberg, and I as I'm getting close, I try to call them to let them know that I am getting in about 20 minutes early.  They don't answer, but I just keep going anyway... 
{saying good-bye to Syster Haikkola}
When I get there to the Barkaby Station, I get a phone call--I answer, and its the Systers and they say they say they didn't know I was staying the night, and they felt so bad because they were an hour away at a dinner appointment!  Haha, oh, well--it was great, though!  I explored this little town Barkaby all by myself for a while, and it was really quite enjoyable! 
{Sys. Howell and Campbell with Syster Bateman and Aldste Halterman}
After a little bit my dearest Mission mamma, Syster Bateman calls since it was her last night, and we were just talking and I tell her I was all alone for an hour, and she's just telling me that she doesn't like that, and to be careful--and then all of a sudden the phone just dies! 
It was apparently too cold outside, and it just decided to die right as she was saying to be careful! 

An hour later, the Systers get there, I plug in the phone and have 9 missed calls--6 from Sys. Bateman and 3 from the Elders!  I was glad to report that I had not died, and that it was all good!  But, then the next day came and we got our "babies", and then off to our new areas! 
{The new companions ready to leave Stockholm and head to Kristianstad!}
Things have already been so great!  We got a baptism date with one of our dearest investigators!  Oh, she is just amazing--and we are just hoping and praying that everything will go well with that!  We have also had some really great kontakting stunds, we've met so many cool people lately, and we have set up 4 appointments this week with people that we just met on the street!  That's actually really crazy, so I am really excited! 
And we have given out about 4 Swedish and 4 Arabic Book of Mormons and planning on giving out 2 Albanian Book of Mormons just to people we have met on the street the past few days!  It has been so cool!  So many miracles, and we have been so exhausted every single day! 
Saturday, we did service for one of our favorite ladies in the Branch!  Afterwards, I looked up times for trains to leave, and saw that we needed to go super quick!  We changed and got out the door, and I was just like "you guys better run or we're staying here another hour till the next train!"  

Both the Elders just said, "No, we don't like running! We feel all sweaty and gross when we have to run in a white shirt and tie!"  Me and Sys. Howlett started running and then a minute later the Elders go sprinting by! 
Well, we're running on the street and the Elders decide to take a shortcut through all of these trees and bushes--and then as they're laughing at us because they were going to make it to the station first, one of the Elders just totally falls and slides on the grass...right as they are laughing at us!  I was laughing so hard, and so were some of the people at the train station--which was literally just 10 steps further!  As we run by, in he just stays on the ground--flat on his face with absolutely no motivation to get up.  A couple of minutes later he decides to join us.... 
Then, I look at when the train is supposed to come, and little did I know that the time-16:00-- that I thought the train was supposed to come, was actually just the time we were supposed to leave!  Hahaha!  But sadly, due to a little pride, I didn't say a word.  About 8 minutes later, the Elders just look at me with a slightly disgusted look and just say, "We totally could have walked."  I didn't have the nerve to tell them about the timing, and they didn't notice! So to this day, they just think the train was a little late...But, hey!  I learned a good lesson from it! 
Oh, and then one last funny thing.  I feel so bad, and I was a horrible "mother" for it, but one day I saw Eunice, my greenie (Syster Howlett) getting some apple juice from the fridge.  I had never opened it, nor dared to try it because I didn't know how long it had been in the fridge--because I hadn't bought it.  So, sadly it was probably one of those "ghosts of sisters past" as we call it--as in something that has just stayed in the apartment for who knows how long! 
Well, I see her pouring a glass and just drinking it very slowly--putting it down after every sip and having a kind of sour look on her face.  As she finishes the glass she just says, "Swedish apple juice tastes kind of odd", in a sad little innocent voice--as she was hoping for some amazing Swedish juice.  She then goes back to the fridge and checks the date and says, "I think I know why it was weird........."  Why?  "It's date was for a few months ago..."  Then she smells it, nods her head and pours it down the sink.  To our surprise, the whole bottom was just filled with gelatin curds and we were just amazed at the grossness of what she just drank.  Haha!  Lesson learned!  Always check the expiration date in a missionary's apartment before you are going to put something into your mouth!
{Last week's Pday playing beach volleyball in Malmo--they had so much fun together!}
Well, aside from that lovely note--we are going to have a wonderfully enjoyable day at the beach in Åhus today!  The dreamiest little beach town! 
{Syster Irene and Syster Campbell}
And now for two things I would like you all to do! 

# 1) Read Mosiah 11-13, and picture Abinadi saying all of these things to King Noah and his priests--it's awesome, and you can just hear the attitude in his words.  I love it! 
And # 2) Watch, "Tack Vare Honom", and "Han Lever".  These are the "Because of Him" and "Because He Lives" videos--except in Swedish, and they are beautiful!  

Watch them, love them ,and then you will hear the words that are constantly stuck in my head! 
Well, that is about it for this week--but keep going on, keep doing what your doing, just keep swimming....and start where you are!  "We don't need to be 'more' of anything to start to become the person God intended us to become.  God will take you as you are at this very moment, and begin to work with you.  All you need is a willing heart, a desire to believe and trust in the Lord!" 

Jag älskar alla er med hela mitt hjärta! 

Med Kärlek, 

Syster Campbell
{this package from home arrived in ONE WEEK--a miracle!!!}

Monday, May 23, 2016

TRAINING TO TRAIN

 Hello, my dearest people!

This has been yet another fantastic week!  Can't stop thinking about getting my baby greenie straight from the US in a couple of days, so I'm kind of freaking out!

Well...lots of little things this week;
Måndag: mini golfing, innebandy, ping pong and introduced the other missionaries and an investigator to grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!
Onsdag: My mamma Bateman came into town from the beautiful city of Göteborg!  We had work-overs, so I got to spend the day being companions with Sys. Bateman again!  It was so great!  It was comprised of going to a hilarious old persons' institute...walking through forests for an hour to find our way home, contacting by a cemetery--and then just walking through because cemeteries in Sweden are just so beautiful!  Then, we climbed behind some bushes to take pictures with them, but they smelled really bad and really hurt to go through--so it wasn't the brightest idea!.
Fredag: Woke up in my home in Täby!  Did a workout outside with the Täby Systers--we went into the forests and brought the little DVD player for the workout video and worked out on the moss- covered forest ground!  It was so dreamy! 
Then, we got ready and went to the Train the Trainers Meeting!  It was so great!  I got to see all the Systers in my MTC group again, and it was so good being back in the Beckstrands' house!  It was just 4 hours of awesome training which both scared me and made me so excited to train! 

Also, I found out I can totally make my way across the country alone!  Even through one of the biggest and busiest train stations:  T-Central, in Stockholm!  It was super scary and intimidating at first, and now I'm just like, "When can I do it again!" Haha!  And I get to do it again tomorrow!
Well...I don't have too much aside from that, except for this one talk that I have been studying that I love!  It is called, "Faith Is Not By Chance, But By Choice", by Elder Neil L. Andersen.  He says: 

"How we live our lives increases or diminishes our faith.  Prayer, obedience, honesty, purity of thought and deed, and unselfishness increase faith.  Without these, faith diminishes.  Why did the Savior say to Peter,  "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not"?  Because there is an adversary who delights in destroying our faith.  Be relentless in protecting your faith!"  

And he ends with, "Fear not... The future is as bright as your faith." 
It's comforting to me to know that as long as I have faith, I have no need to fear.  Because faith is the opposite of fear, we need not fear--for we know that the Lord is with us, which therefore defeats the purpose of even fearing at all!  I find so much peace in the fact that we can know for ourselves that He is really there--and all we need to do is pray and seek and we can see and know!

 I have found Him, and I know that everyone can---because I have seen it first-hand out here in Sweden, and I can honestly say I know that He is there for ALL.....

Find Him.   

I love you all with all my heart, and hope your all have the loveliest week!

Med Kärlek,

Syster Campbell














Monday, May 16, 2016

NEW ADVENTURES!


Well it's official--I am getting a baby greenie! 

I don't even know what to think right now, but I am slightly freaking out but I am also so excited!  Oh man.....well, any thoughts I had for this week went straight out of my mind after getting the training call last night--so sorry, but I don't have much to say for today! 

Our week up ahead will be a little crazy--my "MOM", Syster Bateman, is coming down here to Skåne for her last work-overs of her mission!  So crazy!   The day my greenie is "born" her mission grandmother "dies!"  Ties just goes by SO fast here, I do not like it--not at all! But, that's how it goes! 
Well, Sys. Bateman is coming Wednesday, and then I am taking an SJ train to Stockholm by myself Friday!  So strange traveling by yourself as a missionary--and this will be like 5 hours alone!  Weird. 

But then I get to go to the training meeting with President and Syster Beckstrand, so that is super exciting!  And then the next Wednesday I should get my baby!  So PLEASE keep this group in your prayers that their visas will come!!! 
Oh, I just can't wait...although I still need to come up with a name for her!  Little did I know that mission names would actually stick--ever since my first day in Sweden, I have been known my other missionaries as Gretchen...thanks Bateman!  Haha, the name truly has grown on me, though! 

That's mainly what I have got happening for the week, though--but one thing that has helped me so much this week has been a talk from April 2014 General Conference, called "Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease", by Elder David A. Bednar. 
I absolutely LOVE this talk!  I have been thinking about trying to find peace while dealing with burdens lately, and I just found that this talk was perfect. He says: 

"Each of us carries a load. Our individual load is comprised of demands and opportunities, obligations and privileges, afflictions and blessings, and options and constraints. Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is the absence of a load.  But bearing a load is a necessary and essential part of the plan of happiness." 
I loved how he just took apart what a load really is--that it is all the good and all the hard. That a load is not solely made up of the seemingly hard things, but the good things also.  He goes on to say:

"Not only does the Atonement of Jesus Christ overcome the effects of the Fall of Adam and make possible the remission of our individual sins and transgresions, but His Atonement also enables us to do good and become better in ways that stretch far beyond our mortal capacities.  But do we also understand that the Atonement is for the faithful men and women who are obedient, worthy and conscientious and who are striving to become better and serve more faithfully?" 
"This strengthening aspect of the Atonement in our lives helps us see that we do not need to carry our load all alone. It is one thing to know that Jesus Christ came to earth to die for us.  But we also need to appreciate that the Lord desires--through His Atonement and by the power of the Holy Ghost--to enliven us--not only to guide but also to strengthen and heal us."

"The Savior has suffered not just for our sins and iniquities, but also for our physical pains and anguish, our weaknesses and shortcomings, our fears and frustrations, our disappointments and discouragement, our regrets and remorse, our despair and desperation, the injustices and inequities  we experience, and the emotional distresses that beset us. 

"There is no physical pain, no spiritual wound, no anguish of soul or heartache, no inifirmity or weakness you or I ever confront in mortality that the Savior did not experience first.  He can reach out, touch, succor, heal and strengthen us to be more than we could ever be, and help us to do that which we could never do relying only upon our own power." 
I was in tears after reading this, and I just felt that I needed to write out all of the points that he mentioned--from physical pains, anguish, and weaknesses all the way to emotional pains--then next to each one, I filled in something I have been going through that fit with each point. 

Then I looked back at them all and recognized that everything that was on that list is Me.  All of those things--those weaknesses, those frustrations, and disappointments--all of those things are the things that have brought me to this point, and how well I have been able to rely on the Lord has determined how well I have overcome them. 
It was really interesting seeing everything laid out, because right as I did, I was able to see how the Lord has helped me with each and every one of them, and how each of them has helped me grow in some way.  Then, after that, I wrote next to each one again how each thing had blessed my life, or how I can see that the Lord has put that trial in my life for a certain reason. 

After writing in the last one, I looked back on the whole list and I truly could see just how much the Lord does for me.  He is so aware of who I am, and it is so comforting to see that in everything I am going through, He understands PERFECTLY. 
And now, in my job as a missionary, I am asked to invite people to come unto Christ--so that is what I am going to do! 

I invite you all to try this now.  Write out each of the underlined words--then think of something in your life that the word describes--write it down--then write out how the Lord has or is helping you through that thing.  How with the Atonement of the Savior, all of these things can be for our good and for our learning. 

Pray and seek for inspiration on how you can better apply the Atonement into your everyday life, and you will.  After reading this, I have been able to see how my own personal load is actually part of my life to help me. That with the Lord, every hardship can be seen as a blessing. 

I love you all with all of my heart! 

Med Kärlek, 

Syster Campbell

Monday, May 9, 2016

MORS DAG!

Happy Mother's Day...yesterday! 

I got to see my FAMILY!!!  You guys--you just need to know I love you so much and your faces just made my whole day! 
Well, this has been quite the week!  Monday, I hopped around all day using my little European crutches (which KILL your hands and arms!) and had a picnic in the park! 
Wednesday, we finally made it over to Vård Central, the hospital/doctor to get my ankle checked out.  It was really quite a fun experience!  
Except for the whole hour trying to get there, once we got there they checked the ankle and then put me in one of those hospital bed thingys, and then I just got pushed around on that from room to room!  I got x-rays and everything!  So, now I get to cross "Ride on a hospital Bed" off my bucket list! 
But the best part was that I got 3 contacts while in the hospital, as in I told 3 people that we were missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and during the waiting times, I read Mormons Bok and I could tell that a lot of people walking by read the cover...so it still was kind of missionary work! 
Oh, and then we had a Yoga and Smoothies activity for Relief Society...it was actually really fun, and I did what I could with only one useful foot! 
Friday--crazy story of the week!  Okay, so Friday we went with the Elders to go and do service chopping and stacking wood for four hours for one of our ward families on their farm!  So fun, and right up my alley!  It was way out in the country, absolutely GORGEOUS! I was just dying it was so beautiful! 
Anyways, on with the story--we were going to go back on Saturday and do more, but we just couldn't.  And then yesterday in Church, the Elders told us that we weren't having our correlation meeting with the Ward Mission Leader that morning, because his wife--she was there chopping wood with us, too--got her finger got chopped off!!!  OH, it is so horrible! 
It was so sad, and I'm also glad that I wasn't there that day...I have no clue how I even would have reacted seeing that!  So crazy...but then she got to Skype her daughter who's on a mission yesterday, so I'm sure they had quite the story to tell her! 
Well...that was our week!  A little crazy and all over the place, but fun as always!

Aside from that, something that I have found that I love this week has been the talk, "To Young Women" by Jeffrey R. Holland.  My mission momma, Syster Bateman, actually sent this to me and told me to read it and I love it, and I just feel like I should share a little portion of that. 
He says:

 "First of all, I want you to be proud you are a woman.  I want you to feel the reality of what that means, to know who you truly are.  You are literally a spirit daughter of Heavenly Parents with a divine nature and an eternal destiny.  That surpassing truth should be fixed deep in your soul, and be fundamental to every decision you make as you grow into mature womanhood. 
"There could never be a greater authentication of your dignity, your worth, your privileges, and your promise.  Your Father in Heaven knows your name and knows your circumstance.  He hears your prayers.  He knows your hopes and dreams, including your fears and frustrations.  And He knows what you can become through faith in Him. 
"Because of this divine heritage, you--along with all of your spiritual sisters and brothers-- have full equality in His sight and are empowered through obedience to become a rightful heir in His eternal kingdom." 

I just loved that so much, and I hope you all can go on and read the rest of the talk.  It really is the perfect talk for all women today.  But the main message is--Our Father is so very aware of us and knows who we are and He knows exactly what we are going through. 
As we try to follow Him and be obedient, as it says,  "we are empowered through obedience to become a rightful heir in His eternal kingdom." 

On my mission, I have found that obedience truly is the key to happiness. As we do what the Lord would have us do, we will find happiness.  Learn to love the Lord.  As you do, you will see the purpose behind His commandments, and you will happily keep them because you love them.  Love the Lord.  Love His commandments.  They will bring you peace and freedom in life. 
I love you all with all of my heart! 

Love, 

Syster Campbell

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

STANDING STEADFAST IN CHRIST

Another amazing week has just been had, full of spiritual highs and physical lows...it started off with Syster's Conference and ended off with a lovely sprained ankle! 

Life truly takes you places you never thought!  This week really did fit in with the theme of the Conference--"Oh the places you will go!"  It was an amazing Conference, and just what I needed! 
Got to spend Tuesday night in my home, TÄBY!  Stayed there with 5 other sisters, including my MOM--Syster Bateman!  And the Täby sisters also surprised us by having Pontus there when we got to the station!  It truly was just the best! 
But just a little from Conference.  There were a couple of quotes that just really stood out to me:  "If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything." And, "Why fit in when you were born to stand out?"  I love both of those so much!  Establish who you are, who you want to be and who the Lord wants you to be, and go with it!  That person you want to become will make you stretch--but thats the only way to become.  
The Lord sees your potential, and the only things that can get in the way of that are the limitations you set on yourself.  As long as we stand steadfast with the Lord, no matter where life takes us we will be able to see that it has just been the Lord guiding us to where we need to be! 
A couple of other things this week--Saturday was Valborg (the -g sounds like an -e so its val-bor-e)!  It's when the Swedes have huge bonfires bringing in spring...and it's also a mark of when the days are as long as the nights!  So, we celebrated that in K-stad with some futbol and innebandy, and then in Lund with some brenball (Swedish baseball) and FUTBOL!!! 
Sadly, during that last game of futbol the tragedy occured...apparently, one of the Elders couldn't take my awesome soccer skills, so as I had the ball and was running to the goal, he comes up and kicks it super hard--my foot snaps the other way, and I just start walking off thinking that the snapping sound I just heard was probably not the best.  I walked for a little bit and came to the conclusion to sit.  
Apparently, I am pretty good at hiding when I am hurt so nobody could really tell, but then people came up after like 15 minutes and were saying, ummm....you've got to get some ice on that...like now.  So we did!  But sadly, I wasn't the only injured one--that Elder thinks he broke his toe.  But he was just laughing, and went back and played later so he's fine!
Other than that, I hopped into church, and left with crutches that a member went home and got for me!  The members here seriously just are the best.  Syster Haikkola is taking care of me...when she is not too busy laughing at me, but hey--it builds character right?! 
But life is good.  I just have to say, be grateful for American crutches--they are SO much better!  My hands have blisters already, but I am about to get super toned arms and crazy good leg muscles--just on my left leg--but hey, its all good!  I was sad I wouldn't be able to workout, but this turns out to be an awesome workout! 
But aside from all that, one cool experience I have had with the scriptures was actually just this morning.  As I was frantically, one-footedly looking for my passport (for stuff for the doctor), I was looking everywhere, and I just couldn't find it! I  pulled out a folder, and I saw a sticky note on it.  It had a scripture reference I had written down a while ago of all of my favorite scriptures.  But I put it away and thought, "I just need to find my passport and I'll read it after!"  But, before my brain could finish the sentence, I reached back in, grabbed the note and my scriptures, and flipped open to it:
 Alma 34:21--"Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day and evening."

I was down on my knees faster than I could finish the scripture--and 2 seconds after the prayer, I see my passport in my suitcase.  Prayers are answered.
Well, I do believe I must go--but just know that I love you all and remember that soccer is still the best sport even if you get hurt while playing it! 

Med Kärlek, 

Syster Campbell