BlackburnBlazingSweden: "Fear no man".

So this week has been very productive here in Uppsala!

Uppsala crew making our
appearance in Stockholm

I have begun to realize why Sweden is the second most Athiest country in the world. Lots of discussions this last week about that and I feel so bad because I know that they are missing God’s love in their life. The hard thing about missionary work is that if someone is not ready, you gotta move on and wait longer….no matter how much they want to talk or discuss. Time is not to be wasted out here and that take a judgment call between companions. So there has been a lot of that but there has aslo been a lot of blessings this last week :)

Something fun that happened this week was when I was on a bus with the two other Elders in our appartment and my companion, and I saw a man that was Asian (I just love contacting Asian people). I sat down next to him and started talking to him in Swedish. I could quickly tell that he could not understand Swedish so I tried English.. same thing ~ Couldn't speak any English. Then I thought... "Google Translate!" I pulled out the iphone of ours and put in the translation from English to Chinese. I then began the conversation through the the microphone of the phone and he heard and saw the translation of what I said and he was super excited! haha We were talking back and forth and people near me on the bus were cracking up. They thought it was so funny! I began to talk to him about what we do out here and taught him a little lesson! He then gave us his number. Super cool. I love contacting Asian people because my Step Dad, Joe is from Hong Hong and he taught me a few words in Cantonese before I left. So these people thought it was pretty hilarious that a white boy was trying to speak Chinese. I now always think about a quote. “I fear no man.” That is how I’m trying to be out here on my mission. Being afraid to talk to people is the biggest problem one can have. I’m trying to get over that and I see the blessings come from that.

It's getting darker and colder every day!

I think the most spiritual experience I had this week was this last Wednesday. We were really wanting to go hard that day and get lessons with people. We said a very specific prayer to Heavenly Father asking him if we can find the prepared people that day that were willing to here us. Right after that, we went contacting on a street. I kid you not, literally every single contact we had turned into a lesson and we only had time for 5 contacts because they all went on for a while and we then had to head over to a planned lesson that we had. That day we had a total of 8 lessons. That’s A LOT for one day. Especially in Sweden. The Lords hand was definatly in that and we had the biggest prayer of thanks after!

Love you all and have a good week :) "I fear no man!"

Äldste Blackburn