BlackburnBlazingSweden: Service, Contacts, and Faith!

Hey Everybody!

Early morn on top the roof of our apt.

This last week has been really warm! Lets hope this lasts. Well this week was full of awesome contacts and interesting contacts. It seems like every contact we had turned into a lesson which was awesome! Äldste Stoeltzing and I are loving it here together and doing lots of service. This last week I got to put some of my construction experience to work (thanks to my Uncle David) and we tore apart this guys ceiling to put in some can lights. These houses are really old and what was weird was that the ceiling, walls, and floor was insulated by saw dust. So when ever we cut into the ceiling, saw dust would then pour out into a bucket that we would hold up (or so we hoped). We ended up just covered in saw dust and we took a long train home after that with saw dust down our pants. That always feels great :)

Rare pic caught during a solo contact. The sisters in front of me contacting a lady at the same time!

A few cool contacts was one of the pictures. (the one on the bus) It was a solo contact that I had. Then in front of me were the sisters contacting this other lady. My companion snuck a picture. She was super nice and she thought my Swedish accent sounded like I was from Denmark haha. We also ran into alot of athiests this week. There was one really cool guy at a bus stop who asked us if were mormons and we then started talking to him. he respected everything we believed, then we started testifying to him and that brought the spirit right in. He then began to really feel something, and looked like he was starting to cry. He lives near us and that’s a bonus. We will try to meet with him again.

One hard contact we had this week was with a ex veteran who was drunk and it started out as him asking us for a lighter. He then began to say “There is no God, only hell!" and that he served in the Iraq war and saw things and that made him believe that. He then was being really disrespectful to us swearing and saying we dont know who God is and your wasting your time, etc. THEN he started being disrespectful to Gods name and Christs name. Thats where we drew the line and we testified to him that "God didn’t do this to you, and God didn’t do this to the people of Iraq, and that this message that we have is about happiness ~ Ever lasting happiness. Knowing that you have a Father in Heaven that wants everyone of his children to return to him." We couldn’t let him disrespect Gods name like that. Shortly after, a man chimed in and said, “These two fools have a misconception of who God really is" and went on from there. As he went on, we quickly realized the man was a Satanic, and Äldste Stoeltzing and I kept our composer but were SO full of the spirit at this point and were about to go "Alma and Amulek” on both of them. (powerful missionaries in the Book of Mormon, see Alma chapters 8-9, and 12-14) Then our bus came and we gave the Satanic man our card and told him to call us and we´ll see what happens. It made me realize that no matter how much you know, testifying is always the best.

This Gospel is so true, and Jesus Christ is here for you and all of us. You just have to let him in….

Love you all!

Äldste Blackburn

P.S. A dad of a friend of mine has just had two heart attacks and is in a critical situation. If you can pray for him and his family and that would be great. Thanks :)