2 Nephi 32:9

(Aldste Cummings)

Hej hej!

I forgot to update everyone last week about transfers! I'm staying here in Skövde with Elder Cluff for the next five weeks. It's likely that I'll leave here next transfer, however. I'll have been in this area for just short of six months! One fourth of my mission in the amazing Skövde branch. The little branch that could. It's been a great stund. I really love the area and the members here, it'll be hard to say goodbye.

But anyway, this week has been pretty great. We've been working hard and getting back into the swing of things after the holiday season when no one really could meet us. We experienced a miracle this week! We were contacting in stan (downtown) the morning after New Years day and no one was out and everyone who was out didn't want to talk to us. We were complaining a little bit about how ineffective it was to be proselyting right then. Then the Lord chastised us for our murmuring. We were waiting for the bus back to the apartment when a woman walked up to us randomly and asked if we knew a man and his wife in our branch. We answered affirmatively, and she told us that she's their daughter and had left the church ten years ago and wants to join the church again. And this after her father just last week had told us how worried he was about her.

To us, that experience was a reminder that the Lord is always looking out for us, and when we work hard, the Lord will make our work effective. That thought made me think of the scripture in the subject bar. That scripture speaks specifically about prayer, but the part of it that stood out to me this time around was the assurance that the Lord will "consecrate thy performance unto you." When we show Him that He can trust us through our faith and diligent work, then He will consecrate our performance and will bless us with success.

Have a good week all!

Love,

Äldste Cummings

John 10:16

(Aldste Cummings)

Tjabba grabbar!

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Christmas was pretty awesome. We got to spend Christmas Eve with our branch mission leader and his family which was a miracle because he was going to be working that day until a few days before he was given the day off so he invited us over. Otherwise we wouldn't have had anywhere to go and we would've celebrated by ourselves in the apartment which would have been way less fun. That was certainly an answer to our prayers.

So in Sweden, they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve with the big meal and the presents under the tree and stuff and then they have Christmas Day to kind of chill out and eat more food and visit with family, and then they have what's called "annandag jul" which literally means "another day of Christmas" on the 26th. Swedes really love their holidays, let me tell you.

This week we were challenged by our mission president to read the whole Book of Mormon in the week between Christmas Eve and New Years Day. He gave us a couple of extra hours of study time a day to accomplish it so we spent a good portion of our week reading and I finished on Saturday morning. It was such an incredible experience. By reading the whole book so quickly, it was so much easier to notice larger, more overarching patterns in the book than when I had read a little bit every day. It was so cool to see how the testimony of Christ developed line by line as successive prophets received new revelation and built on top of what their predecessors had written. It's incredible to see the difference between the first mention of the Messiah in 1 Nephi 10 and Amulek's discourse on the atonement in Alma 34.

The whole experience has convinced me more than ever that the Book of Mormon really is the word of God. That when Christ spoke of "other sheep [he has] which are not of this fold," as he does in John 10:16, he meant very literally that there existed other people in the world who had been receiving divine revelation concerning his birth, life, and death, and whose records are contained in the Book of Mormon. I know it's true, and would highly recommend any of you who have not read it to do so, and those who have, to do so again.

Happy New Year!

Love,

Äldste Cummings

Luke 2:10

(Aldste Cummings)

Merry Christmas (almost)!

This week was pretty busy as usual. We traveled to Göteborg on Monday to go to zone conference on Tuesday. We got to stay with the elders in Västra Frölunda which meant that Elder Wolff and I got to have our own little Morristown Ward reunion which is always a pleasure. Then, on Wednesday, we stayed in Göteborg with the Zone leaders to do splits in Utby which was super fun and we got back to Skövde on Wednesday night. So we had a ton of stuff to do this week and we weren't even in our own area until Thursday basically so that just made it a little busier trying to fit everything in.

We have an investigator named Camilla and she is amazing. I've never met someone who is so prepared to receive the Gospel. She's a Swedish woman in her thirties who lives alone in northern Skövde. We met her for the first time when we knocked on her door three weeks ago and she is already well on her way to making the covenant of baptism. Her enthusiasm is so inspiring, she told us that she was going to get baptized even if it meant she had to stay up all night reading the Book of Mormon every day. I'm so grateful that the Lord led us to her so we can lead her to Him!

I probably won't send another email between now and Christmas so I thought it appropriate to share a little message about Christmas. I am so thankful for Jesus Christ and everything He has done for us. Everything He ever did was done out of complete selflessness and love. News of Him truly is "glad tidings of great joy." Because of Him and His sacrifice, we can come back to our Heavenly Father and be redeemed from our sins. He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and we owe Him everything. Enjoy the Christmas season as we celebrate the birth of our Savior!

Love,

Äldste Cummings

p.s. Here's a picture we took at zone conference. It was combined with the Malmö zone so I got to see a ton of people in my group in the MTC that I haven't seen since I actually got to Sweden. Super fun!

Boca do Inferno, Chuva, e Não vou sair (ponte final)

(Sister Ellsworth)\

Então hoje vou ensinar vocês como  é para ser mesmo português. Vocês vão aprender quâo incrível é para ser parte deste pais.

Estou a brincar... Vou falar o inglês...

So this week was so much fun I can't even begin to describe all the crazy things we did. We climbed mountains in the rain and found these two adorable Angolan girls. The Elders had a crazy hectic baptism and we had the biggest ward activity in Portugal! Today one of our members took us on a long car ride all over Sintra and Cascais. We got rained on all week but 5 umbrellas later I'm beginning to dry out!

On Tuesday we got a phone call from a member I had never heard or seen in church but he called with two references of two young women that had come from Angola that day that wanted to talk to the Sisters. We were like YEAH! And we ran over there and met them and we found two best friends. The older is Lavinha and she's 14 and her younger sister is Sira and she's 9. Basically their mother died a few months ago and they got shipped to live with their uncle (the member). They walk with us in the road constantly asking questions and joking around, happy to have two new big sisters.

We also had an awesome miracle this week! One of our friends Jorge straight up stopped smoking! After smoking 40-50 cigarettes every day for 40 years, he read the Book of Mormon and gave us his cigarettes saying that he was done not having control in his life. #WINFORJESUS

This is the dedication site when President Thomas S Monson dedicated Portugal for Missionary work back in the 70's. It's on top of this huge mountain and then in the middle of a little forest but from this rock you can oversee Lisbon and the ocean. It's beautiful! These are Sira and Lavinha!

BOCA DO INFERNO!!! This is probably the coolest thing I've seen  yet in Portugal. Its this rock bowl that has a tiny opening to the ocean and when the waves come water just explodes through this hole. Today it was stormy and the water was even more agitated.

We hiked up to a little lighthouse.

2 Nephi 33:10

(Aldste Cummings)

Hej hej!

Another exciting week in Skövde! We were incredibly busy this week. We had a couple of English and religion classes that we taught at a local gymnasium (basically high school) and it was super fun but it also took a good bit out of our schedule and we had to work things in an around the classes. There was one day where we left the apartment in the morning and didn't come back for over 12 hours! Very tiring, but totally worth it.

On Friday, we had a dinner appointment with a member who lives about half an hour away. Because we don't have a car, we have to rely on the bus system to get there and back. The appointment went a little longer than expected and we missed our bus back but we just assumed a bus was going to come an hour later around 8 and we could just knock some doors until then. WRONG. Turns out the bus didn't come until 9:30 and we aren't allowed to knock on people's doors after 8 so we had to spend an hour and a half walking around Timmersdala in the dead of night while our phone was about to die waiting for the bus. We didn't get home until 10:25. That was crazy. Gotta be careful with those buses.

I thought of this scripture this week when we were meeting with a new investigator, Camilla, and we were talking about the Book of Mormon. She had been reading a little bit in it and expressed the sentiment that she knows its true and good because the doctrines it teaches are very clearly the doctrines of Christ and not of man. She said that she felt the same way reading it as she does reading the Bible. Just as Nephi teaches in 2 Nephi 33:10, a true believer and disciple of Christ will know specifically that the Book of Mormon is true because they will recognize that it is the word of Christ. They will recognize the doctrine as the pure gospel of Jesus Christ.

I know the Book of Mormon is true and I know that by studying it, we can come closer to God and strengthen our relationship with our Savior.

Love,

Äldste Cummings

On one of our busier days, we just drank chocolate milk for dinner. Kinda bummy, but it tasted good.

A picture of Skövde from the top of a nearby hill (sorry for the tree in the way, there was a wedding going on in the ideal picture taking spot).

Mosiah 4:19

(Elder Cummings)

Hej på er!

This week has been really great! We've been working so hard and not wasting any time. And this next week won't be any less busy. We are going to be teaching a couple classes at a local high school on top of all the people we need to visit and talk to. These weeks are just flying by. I can't believe it's already time to write this email again.

We keep forgetting to take pictures so I'm sending two that I took last week when we had our humble Thanksgiving dinner.

I'm running a little short on time so I won't be able to write a whole lot. The verse that I've been thinking about this week came to mind when we were teaching a lesson to a nice Swedish lady. She expressed a lot of concern that the world is becoming increasingly materialistic, classist, and selfish. It made me think of King Benjamin's sermon in Mosiah 4 where he teaches us that we are all beggars before God. We rely on Him for everything. How can we expect Him to forgive us of our own trespasses when we refuse to forgive others theirs? How can we expect Him to bless us with His goodness when we refuse to give of our own to others? When we truly realize that we all are indebted to the Lord for everything we have enjoyed in this life, then we will try our best to give of ourselves and bless the lives of others around us. True understanding of our relationship to God will lead to true understanding of our duty to our neighbor.

As we approach Christmas, I hope that you all find a way to serve someone in need and show love to everyone regardless of who they are just like the Lord loves us.

Love,

Äldste Cummings

Mem Martins!! Whoo!

(Sister Ellsworth)

This week was fantastic! Despite the really cold rain I am absolutely loving this new area. It's a very busy area with a ton of people! We have appointments and new lessons coming out our ears! I love my new companion too, Sister Haws. She's so cute and fun! We hit the ground running and had a blast getting lost and meeting a ton of new people together. She's been on her mission for about 8 months and it's been fun to teach her new teaching tricks and funny Portuguese words. We went to Sintra for Pday and wandered around talking to people there. We bought some Christmas presents and met up with some other missionaries.

I think one of my favorite moments this week was when we passed by an old contact named Catia. She let us in and explained that she was learning about 4 or 5 different religions right now, searching for which one was true. She asked us how we know which church is true and we were like "WELL LET US TELL YA!" We began to teach her about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When we invited her to pray to receive a confirmation she looked at us and said, "I never thought to ask God which church was right.... How do you do that?" and  we got all excited and basically blurted out "PRAYYYYY!!!!" So then we committed her to pray and read and go to church and to be baptized and it was awesome.

Here are some pictures of our adventures in Sintra!

 [pics to come]

​Have a great week!

Sister Ellsworth