Jacob 4:7

(Aldste Cummings)

Hello from Karlskrona!

On Tuesday I left my beloved Skövde for good. It was a sad day, I'll miss that place and the members there very dearly. I stayed the night with the elders in Jönköping then continues on my way to Karlskrona the following morning, arriving around 11:00AM.

The city is so beautiful! It's a little warmer down here so it feels like spring is on her way already but the people who live here say we still have to wait a month or so before it really gets here. The town square here is apparently the largest square in all of Scandinavia and boy is it large. I'll attach a picture below. If it's this beautiful now, I can't wait to see what it's like in the summer!

Elder Harris is amazing and we're having a ton of fun and a ton of success. It's incredible to see how many people's hearts have softened to hear the word of the Lord. We're teaching a good amount of people who aren't necessarily religious right now but are genuinely searching to find the truth. Luckily for them, we've got it!

Moving to a new area has given me the opportunity to compare myself and my current missionary skills to those I had when I first got to Skövde. It's amazing and faith-building to see the difference in the person and missionary that I've become. I've been impressed with myself (hopefully not TOO impressed--pride cometh before the fall) but more importantly I've been thankful for the difficulties that I had and the ability the Lord has given me to see His hand in my life.

I love Jacob 4:7 because it teaches us that God gives us trials and weaknesses, not only so that we can learn and grow and eventually be able to overcome them, but so that we can realize that our progression and achievement have come from a source independent of ourselves. The Lord will bless us when we turn to Him. In our humility, He will strengthen us. And then in our strength, we humble ourselves before Him as we see what we have been able to accomplish through His grace.

I am so thankful for Jesus Christ and everything he has done for me. He has blessed me and strengthened. As expressed in the lyrics of a familiar song, "[He] lift[s] me up, so I can stand on mountains."

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Cummings​​

2 Nephi 1:23

(Aldste Cummings)

Hello all!

This week was crazy. We were traveling a TON to go on splits, go to district meeting, and Elder Cluff had to go to Stockholm for some meetings while I stayed behind with the Jönköping elders. All in all, we weren't able to spend a lot of time in Skövde this week which was kind of sad because it was my last week in the area.

Transfer calls came last night, and I'll be moving tomorrow to Karlskrona to replace Elder Wayment, my good friend from the MTC. It's a beautiful city right on the southern coast of Sweden. My companion will be Elder Harris who trained another one of my good friends from the MTC, Elder Francis. I'm super excited. Especially because I'll probably be down there for the upcoming summer and I hear the city will be down-right gorgeous.

A funny/incredible thing that happened this week was that while we were in Jönköping, the elders there gave us their blender for free because Elder Cluff and I have been really wanting a blender for a while now. So after church the next day we decided to use our new blender to make a delicious berries and cream smoothie for lunch. We added in all the ingredients and started the blender up but after a couple seconds the blades stopped running and the blender started smoking. We took off the jar thing to see that the rotator that the jar sat on which would spin the blades was made of a soft rubber which wore away until the teeth that latched on to the blades were completely gone and it could no longer make the blades spin.

So now we were sitting at our kitchen staring at the jar full of unblended berries and cream with our mouths watering. After a couple minutes of lamentation, we began trying to find things we could put over the rotator to make it thick enough to attach to the blades. Balloons and rubber bands both burned off when we turned the blender on. But then we had an incredible idea. We took the aluminum cap off of a bottle of glögg (a Swedish Christmas drink) and used pliers to mold it to cover the rotator as well as fit the blade component. After about ten minutes of trial and error, we made fit! Now the blender works as good as new and the smoothies tasted all the better for it. Moral of the story: Where there is a will, there's a way.

Anyway, I chose the scripture I did this week not particularly because of anything that happened this week, but rather just that I think it is a powerful reminder of the negative effects of sin and the realness of the urgency to turn to the Lord. Spoken to his more rebellious sons very soon before he passed away, Lehi admonishes them to do five things: "Awake" from their intentional passiveness, "put on the armor of righteousness," "Shake off" the chains of sin that bind them, "come forth out of obscurity," and "arise from the dust." Each of these teach us something different about what sin is and what it does to us. Lehi teaches us 1) that passively living or intentionally ignoring the word of God is sinful and that we must awake to God 2) that sin leaves us defenseless and we arm ourselves with righteousness 3) that sin binds us and restricts us from our full potential 4) that sin darkens our view and disallows us from seeing clearly and 5) that by forsaking sin, we arise to a higher plane of existence. Profound and multifaceted council from a loving parent.

Have a great week!

Love,

Äldste Cummings

1. The bottle cap in the blender

2. Last selfie with Elder Cluff :(

3. The smoothies

John 15: 9-13

(Aldste Cummings)

Hello all!

This week was really busy! Because of companion exchanges and then zone conference, we traveled a lot and were out of Skövde for a couple days so we didn't have as much time to proselyte as we would have. But that just meant that we made sure to make the most of the time that we did have!

Part of that included going around house to house on Saturday for a total of 6 hours in about 14 inches of snow! That was actually pretty fun. We got a lot of opportunities to shovel for people and talk to them about our message. It was pretty cold but the snow made it more enjoyable. This is the biggest snowstorm this area has seen in a little while. Down here in more southern Sweden, it doesn't get as cold or as much snow as you might expect. Up north is a whole 'nother story though.

So, I've been in Skövde for nearly 6 months now and I have really loved it. What that does mean is that it's very likely that this is my last week in Skövde. I don't actually figure out for sure until next Sunday if I will be staying another 6 weeks or not. At church the other day I was able to talk to a lot of the members who I have learned to love these last couple of months. I was surprised at how strongly I felt for them and the strength of my relationships with them despite my only recent ability to actually communicate with them. I felt that my genuine desire to serve them spoke louder than words could have during those first couple of months when I wasn't capable enough with the language to really speak to them.

It was a testimony to me of the power of even a desire to serve and to love others. I guess that's why the Lord commands us to love everyone. Love builds and can even rebuild strong relationships between people when nothing else really can. Christ's perfect love is always stretched out towards us no matter who or where we are or what we have done. His love will heal broken hearts and lift downcast spirits. I'm so grateful for the opportunities we have in this life to experience even just a fraction of that love in our lives as we actively try to follow the Savior and His example. I know He lives and I know He loves.

Have a great week!

Love,

Äldste Cummings​​

D&C 138:49

(Aldste Cummings)

Hello all!

This week we've been keeping ourselves busy, as always, with working hard. Because the congregation in Skövde is not very large, the few members we do have live rather far away, and we don't have a car to use and have to rely on the public transportation system, we don't have a whole lot of interaction with the members during the week and are mostly left to ourselves. Which means we spend a lot of time doing what lies at the heart of missionary work in Sweden--finding new people to teach.

It's actually quite a fun time when you get over the initial anxiety that comes when you're a new missionary. By this point, I've had a good amount of experience with it--Friday marked my six month mark as a missionary--and it's pretty enjoyable. It's fun to not only practice the language with random people from all over the country and world even, but it's also interesting to listen to people and hear their stories and opinions on faith and other related topics.

Anyway, on a slightly tangential note, we were knocking doors for a couple hours last night and in Sweden they refuse to salt the sidewalks or roads when it snows--apparently it's harmful to the grass or something--so they just throw little pebbles on the snow to give you "grip" when you walk. (I personally think it's kind of silly because when the snow gets packed down the rocks get packed down into it so they end up accomplishing nothing but then when it snows again they add more rocks on top and it's a vicious cycle until the snow melts and there are literally millions of pebbles on the sidewalk that you have to walk on). Anyway, we were knocking doors and all there was to walk on was cold snow and with dress shoes with relatively thin soles. Our toes got pretty darn cold let me tell you that.

On a more serious note, I've been reading the Old Testament recently and I just finished Isaiah which was an incredible read. I loved how thoroughly messianic but even more strikingly Christian Isaiah's prophecies are. He testifies so clearly of the Messiah's role in our salvation by His atoning sacrifice. His prophecies are a testimony to us of the fact that every prophet who ever lived prophesied not only of the Messiah, but Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. I know that Jesus is the Christ and I am eternally thankful for everything he has done--and will do--for me.

Love,

Mosiah 18: 8-10

(Aldste Cummings)

Tjabba grabbar!

This week was awesome.

I spent Tuesday in Jönköping on splits with my good friend Elder Fronk, and then the zone leaders from Gothenburg came to spend the day with us and interview Camilla for her baptism, and then, of course, the crowning event was Camilla's baptism and confirmation over the weekend!

The baptismal service was great. Camilla requested that I make my mom's now internationally renowned pumpkin chocolate chip bread that I had made for her before using a can of prepared pumpkin that my mom had sent me over Christmas. Since I didn't have any left, Elder Cluff and I had to make a quick grocery run on Friday to buy butternut squash (because they don't sell pumpkins during this season but it's okay because in Swedish pumpkin and squash are both just called "pumpa" so I didn't lie when I said I would make pumpabröd and it tasted the same anyway). The bread was a hit and I received a couple requests for the recipe!

Funny story actually, we met Camilla by knocking on her door a two months ago and we asked a single man, Ståle, from the branch to come with us on a teaching appointment. They swapped numbers and things progressed and now they're in love and engaged to be married and intending to have children and be sealed together next year. Ståle actually had the opportunity to baptize Camilla which was very sweet to watch. I guess Elder Cluff and I are matchmakers or something.

The passage I chose today is one of the best descriptions of what the baptismal covenant really includes in all of the holy writ. I have seen through my experience with Camilla that She really has felt a desire in her heart to "mourn with those that mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort." She has a real desire to take Christ's name upon her and try to live and serve as He would. The inevitable result of such a desire is entering the waters of baptism to covenant with the Lord to do exactly that and be born again of the Spirit. I am so thankful for Camilla and her example of faith and diligence.

Have a good week!

Love,

Äldste Cummings 

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