BlackburnBlazingSweden: Surveys, Sunshine and the Restoration!

So this last week has been better! No more sickness!! :)

Some fun wholesome P-day activities.

Äldste Jämsä and I set some good goals to get back into the full swing of things again. The sun was so bright and beautiful this last week, we decided to get out of the car and ride our bikes and walk around more. We set a certain amount of time every day to go talk to people on our bikes! I can finally see a little tan coming back to my post Sweden winter white skin, ha ha. So thats a good thing, and we are also getting some good exercise. We have found some good success doing that actually! When we talk to people, we go up and ask them a specific question. This last week we tried something different. We started out by saying we are doing a survey.. I know.. sneeky.. hehe, BUT most people get turned off if you start off with religion, and saying you are a missionary for your opener. So we asked them if we could ask them a question for the survey. They will say yes! (hopefully) We then ask... (in Swedish because we are in Sweden:) ) "If you were to die tomorrow.. what would you do on your last day on earth?” Usually they respond with something like, "spend it with my family!" or "just have as much fun as possible!" We can usually figure out how to apply it to the Gospel and tie our message in for them. There was one man last week that we did this with. We asked him the question.. and he responded with, "I would plant a tree." We were so ready to bring up the Tree of Life but he was in a hurry, haha, so we couldnt go there… That was pretty fun! Taught a lot of good street lessons this week.

Another cool thing this week is that we went to a city called Hemse. It’s about a 45 minute drive from Visby. We were going to swing by some people that lived there. Elder Jämsä then remembered there was a guy that he had given a Book of Mormon to last month before I came to the island but was never taught who lives in this city. We decided to drive to his house and see how he is doing. We got there and then went up to his apartment door. He answered the door and was happy too see us! They tried setting up meetings before but it never worked out with conflicting schedules. He let us in and we got to know him a bit. Super cool Swedish guy, and his name is Per. We then taught him about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was going very well and I felt super strong impression to give him an invitation to be baptized on a certain date if he knows what we are teaching him is true by that time. We explain to him that, he will come to know it is true by reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and searching for himself. Takes action! He said "Ok! I just need to get my calendar!" We taught him how to pray and gave him a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon. He was super positive! We called him a few days later to see how things were going with the Book of Mormon and with his prayers. He said he really felt something spiritual, and it felt really good! We talked to him about that for a while and then invited him to watch General Conference. He couldn’t get to Visby for the weekend so he watched it at home and he said he really liked it, thought it was very interesting and was just really impressed. We will be meeting with him tomorrow to teach him another lesson!

Watching some General Conference in our Sacrament room with two Persian and Arabic speaking new members. They have There own language translation while we are watching it on the big screen.

We were scheduled to have our friend Sadegh baptized this last weekend but there have been some problems that have come up with migration and he might be flying to Germany on Wednesday. We will see, but we are doing all we can do as missionaries!

I really loved General Conference. It is so cool to see how much this Church has been built and grown since the restoration. One thing I have been thinking about is, the restoration HAS happened. It’s here, and what am I doing to help it. I am either helping it... or blocking it.. or holding it back. (Where are we in our lives?)

Love you all and have a good week!

Äldste Blackburn