Monday, December 19, 2016

GOD JUL!


{The wonderful Mama Pence took the missionaries out to lunch last Monday--they loved every minute of it!}
Hello! 

Well, I am officially weirded out by that fact that Christmas is in less than a week.  My second Swedish Christmas!  But guess what?  Probably no snow again for my 20th Christmas in a row.  It's okay, though.  I only thought for sure I would get at least one white Christmas here in Sweden!  But, hey--Christmas is still Christmas whether the sun is shining or not...it just seems like it would be Christmas-ier were it not for the shine! 
Anyways, though...this week I:

--Went to Santa Lucia

--Sucked up a little girls hair in a vacuum cleaner.  (nobody noticed except my companion.  It was totally fine--the little girl like didn't even notice!  She just continued on making animal noises at us during the whole fiasco, and no hair was lost.)
--I sat on a members laptop.  (We were helping this older couple clean, and then I went to sit on this chair to clean out the vacuum cleaner (yeah...me and vacuum cleaners this week...), but here I am with this big headache, and contacts hurting...so my vision was all blurry and maybe I just saw this black thing and assumed it was a cushion.  Yup. 

So, after I cleaned the vacuum out, I stood up and the lady looks down and says, "were you just sitting on that?", and I just looked and realized that I had--and amidst the confusion, disappointment and embarrassment, I could come up with no good excuses.  So I just said, "huh.... I guess so."  Yeah.  Some days are just rough, folks.  That was one of those days. 
As for the work--we were able to set up a bunch of lessons for this week.  Had some really good ones.  Both last week and this week we had some random person just walk into church that we had contacted...and that NEVER happens!  We were so stoked!  So, that was special! 

But one of my favorite lessons this week was this one we had with this Daoist Swede.  Kind of a Hippie/Buddhist person.  We were having a cool lesson with him and just when we were almost done, one of the Elder's investigators (just after he had his lesson with the Elders) comes in and just asks if he can sit in on our lesson. 
He then starts telling our investigator his life story--of how he ended up in prison for 6 years, but how he found Christ while he was in prison.  How He helped him turn his life around.   And basically he just kept telling our guy that he needed to get baptized.  Our guy kept saying how he wants a sign from God, and the Elder's investigator just said, "Don't be selfish and wait for a sign from God.  You have got to show Him first that you have the faith." 

Haha--this guy was amazing!  We were just like, wow.  We don't even really have to do too much here!  It was pretty great:)
And let's see...something I have learned this week...If the Lord wants something done, He will make it happen.  I think often especially in missionary work we think, "why don't we have more success?!  We want it and we know that it's good!"  And the next thought that come is usually,  "well, what am I doing wrong?!"   It's that way of thinking that's wrong.  If the Lord wants something done, He will do it.  But sometimes it's the going without success that He wants us to learn from. 

No matter what it is, the hard things we go through are the things that build us.  Just like sanding a rough surface down--the rough against the rough is what eventually will smooth something out.  So, whatever it is--know that the Lord is shaping you.  Putting you through the things that will refine and define you. 
Just like in Elder Patrick Kearon's talk, "Refuge from the Storm", regarding our need to help refugees, he says:  "This moment does not define the refugees, but our response will help define us."  The Lord does not define us by our trials, but rather what we choose to do with them, and who we let ourselves become because of them. 
Well.  That's about it for me this week, but I hope you all just have the loveliest week and Happy Christmas!!!!  God Jul!  And go look up some cute Swedish Christmas songs!  It will make your day! 

Älskar er! 

Syster Campbell
 

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