3 Nephi 27:27

(Aldste Cummings)

Halloj

This week was quite fun. We had a lot of good experiences.

We do volunteer work at the Red Cross's thrift store twice a week and this week one of the women we work with invited us over sometime when we're knocking doors in her area! Not bad for not being allowed to proselyte or even wear our nametags while we're there.

Also we met the newest member of the Boden Red Cross Gang: a 23 year-old Swedish kid who loves memes and video games. He wasn't very talkative at first but on day two, we--being the persistently chatty missionaries we are--got him to open up a good bit and now we're good friends. We asked him how he ended up at the Red Cross and he said "Community service." To which Elder Mathias responded "That's funny cause in the US, you get assigned to do community service when you, you know--" then a grin spread across the young man's face "Yeah it's the same here." Haha it was so funny. He's so cool.

On Saturday, one of the sisters' friends was baptized and was then confirmed yesterday. It was so beautiful to see. He was going to get baptized last year but had a stroke and was more or less paralyzed but he has fought valiantly to train his body to be able to function properly again until he could again begin to investigate and come to church and prepare for baptism again. This weekend he was the happiest I've ever seen him. It's incredible what joy Christ brings into life.

The other day, we were walking across a field on a very narrow trail of packed snow that had been made by people walking single-file through the snow. After a little bit I look up to see two young men coming toward us on the same trail a good ways off. My Alpha Male instinct kicked in and I immediately started sizing them up and determining whether or not we could successfully assert our dominance by walking intimidatingly toward them until they step into the untouched snow off to the side. After about half a minute of debate, I thought to myself "What would Jesus do? What should I, as His representative, do?"

So, I swallowed my pride and drank the bitter cup as I stepped off the path into the snow that reached well above my knee--Elder Mathias followed suit--and allowed them to walk by on the beaten path. In my head, I was still grudgingly thinking "They probably think they're so cool now because they won our heated power struggle" but then I was sternly reprimanded as one of the young men smiled kindly and said as he walked by: "Thank you, that was manly."

Boom.

Oh how the turntables. The young man managed to both build and destroy my pride in the same moment. Ironically, in his sincere humility, he still managed to come out the intense mental melee as the bigger man.

It caught me by surprise, and I've been thinking a lot about it ever since. As you all know, men are so naturally prone to display their masculinity in prideful arrogance and competition. Who can punch harder? Who can pick up heavier things? Who can jump off of taller stuff? Who can spit the fattest loogie? Who can pee farther? Who can eat the most pancakes in 45 minutes in the middle of Gothenburg (you know who you are 👀)? And yet Christ, the perfect man and our exemplar, always acted with humility and meekness toward all. Thinking about this made me realize the truth of the statement in Preach My Gospel that reads: "Humility is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of spiritual strength." It is a far greater man who can show humility in restraint rather than insecurity in juvenile contest.

May we all, including me, find ways this week to learn from our Lord and Savior and develop His divine attributes.

Love,

Äldste Cummings

1. We calculated that it was more than three times faster for us to supplement the font with buckets with water from another faucet than it was to just let the font fill itself up. Still took three and a half hours though.

"yeah, the Elders might take my silence the wrong way."

(Sister Slade)

The title is a quote directly from me. At our zone conference lunch I was sitting with Sister Strong and a few other senior sisters and they were talking about how it's a good thing that the Elders and Sisters naturally segregate. Someone jokingly said, "Yeah, Sister Slade is pretty flirty." and I replied with, "Yeah, the Elders might take my silence the wrong way." It was really funny because up to that point I hadn't said that much. In fact, Sister Strong said that that was the funniest thing she's ever heard.

               This week has been wild! We were finally able to meet with our mission president one on one and it was very insightful. Basically, he told us that we have nothing to lose. This area hasn't had a baptism in 16 months and so we concluded that what we're doing is not working. He gave us a couple of crazy ideas to try like finding a reason to go to the Walmart Distribution Center, or creating a fundraiser and involving local businesses in it. He basically gave us permission to do whatever we want to try in this area because like he said, there's nothing to lose.

               This completely changed our mindset, so that night we decided to completely rearrange the apartment and then we got to work. We had so many miracles happen that it was impossible to ignore the hand of the Lord in the work. For example, yesterday we were out walking and saw someone moving in and asked if we could help. It turned out that the couple who was moving in were the only nonmembers in their whole family. They even had a niece on a mission. Their daughter who was helping them move said that their parents are very prepared for the gospel and they saw it as a miracle that we had met their parents on their first day in the area.

               Or when we were talking to a member we found out that she could get us into the Distribution Center with a little work. We found another member who can help us with an English class we're planning on teaching to the little India we have in our area. We had so many people placed in our path and for the first time we were able to reach the mission goal of having quality conversations with 11 people a day. The timing of everything that happened could not have been a coincidence. I don't believe in a God of coincidences. Everything was planned to happen by the Lord. It was an amazing week!

               We also had zone conference this week and I had to teach one of the workshops on conversion. It was terrifying and fortunately, the mission didn't blow up because of what I taught. In the other workshop, we wrote down the things that were holding us back from being fully committed on a paper boat and then we went into the church parking lot and burnt the boats. It was a lot of fun, but it was also super powerful to be able to have an action involved in giving our fears up.

I love you!

-- Sister Slade

pictures:

1. Sister Boyack while we were serving meals on wheels.
2. While cleaning, we found a bunch of  black mold along the window sill
3. The paper boats

4. While rearranging, we accidentally broke our bookshelf so we taped it to our lamp to keep it standing

5. We fixed our book shelf

6. Random picture of sister Boyack and I

7. All of our boats

8. Zone conference lunch

9. My zone

John 9: 1-3

(Aldste Cummings)

To whom it may concern,

Welcome to the second installment of The Lord Wrecks Missionaries So Miracles Can Happen™ but we'll get to that later. It's a bit of a long one today, but hold on.

               This week was really fun. On Wednesday we took the ol' college aeroplane down to Stockholm because Elder De Feo of the Seventy from the Europe Area Presidency (translation: rather high-profile leader in the Church) visited our mission. It was really cool to meet him and learn from his wisdom acquired by many years of serving the Lord. Something that struck me is how he encouraged us to live "more sacred lives" to meet the responsibilities that God has called us to fill.        

               He also talked about how in order to help people progress in the Gospel, we must as missionaries show great love, but also have high expectations for them. The following day, Elder Mathias and I were feeling rather loving and especially high-expecting so we invited someone we had been teaching for a while to be baptized in a couple months and she said yes! Honestly, that was a miracle and a testimony to the truth of what Elder De Feo had taught the day before.

               We visited this lady and her family and talked to them about the church and everything. It was more of a social visit honestly, but they had a lot of questions and it was super fun. Among the funniest things she said were the following:

               *Reads name of church of my nametag* "Now I get the whole 'no alcohol' thing. The name is too long to say when you're drunk!"

               "When I invited you in I thought you'd be like the Jehovah's Witnesses. I was wrong!"

               Now we get to The Lord Wrecks Missionaries So Miracles Can Happen™. So Saturday was crazy and literally nothing we had planned happened. It felt like we were just running in circles because things kept getting in our way or plans just fell through. But we saw these two cool miracles that only happened as a result of everything else failing:

               1. About a week ago, we met a man outside a friend's apartment building waiting for his other friend to pick him up. We talked to him a little and he gladly took a Book of Mormon. As luck would have it, his friend pulled up in the middle of the conversation (tangential rant: For real though, I think every time I've talked to a person waiting for a friend, the friend always shows up in the middle of the conversation and totally kills our vibe). The man told us his address as he was getting into the car but we couldn't hear well enough to make it out.

               Fast forward to Saturday when we had done a couple swing-bys in the morning--none of which answered--and were driving around on a completely different part of town trying to find a place to park to swing by another person. As we did so, I looked at one of the street names and thought "Huh. That kinda sounds like what that man said to us last week. Huh." Just as I thought that, we look to see the exact same man getting out of his apartment building to once again get into his friend's car. God had a way of getting us that address anyway

               2. Later that same day, we swung by man we had met who wanted a Book of Mormon and had given us his address for us to come by. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that the door was locked with a code and we couldn't get in and didn't have his number. We said a prayer that someone would come out, tested a few codes while we waited and left after a couple minutes. We started knocking doors and talking to people on the street in the area until it was time for us to go home. As we were walking back to the car, we see the man walking down the street about a block from his apartment. We hurriedly crossed the street (we're gonna skip over the part here when I step on the ice and my legs are taken out from under me) and were able to talk to him, give him his copy of the Book of Mormon, and witness to him that God answered our prayer and that He wanted him to have that book.

               Sometimes, like the man born blind in John 9, we become the victims of what we think are trials or opposition, when it turns out that the Lord just needed us to be doing something that we couldn't have planned for on our own.

               Love,

Äldste Cummings

1.. A member had this shirt on but had no idea what it was.

2. You might think this beautiful tapestry, woven in 1826, portrays a contingent of Revolutionary War era soldiers parading through a small Swedish village--but you'd be wrong. Upon closer inspection, one finds that this is in fact the Three Wise Men coming to worship the baby Jesus approximately year 0 AD at Bethlehem in Judea.

3. Elder Dumas holding us up 😤 som vanligt alltså

4. Grabbarna reunited.

First Pday in the CCM!

(Hermana Ellsworth)

Hello Family and Friends!

This is my first email and I don[t really know what to say other than I LOVE THIS CHURCH! I have seen so many amazing blessings! The language is hard but not as hard as it could be. My companions name is Hermana Bates and she is the cutest. Most of the people in my district are going to the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico and we have so much fun together. There are 6 hermanas and 6 elders in the district and each of them have such an amazing spirit that they bring when they share their insights, trials, and everything. There is no time to really write. I did go to the temple today for my Pday and it seems like the church is still true no matter where you go! who knew! The most spiritual moments in the CCM has been when we are able to share our love for Jesus Christ and the Book of Mormon with each other as a district. Also we got to hear from Elder Holland at a devotional that was broadcasted from Provo. Favorite quote from him is when he talked about his calling and how much it intimidated him at first. President Monson told Elder Holland to be himself, but to be his best self in his calling. That is what I am striving to be. Learning a new language is difficult but it hasnt been as hard as I expected. I love everything about the CCM except the Red Chicken. (El pollo rojo) DO NOT EAT THE RED CHICKEN!

I would be shook

(Sister Slade)

It was a very exciting week. For a couple of days there was a possibility that Sistwr Boyack and I were going to be emergency transferred (ET'd). There is a set of sisters in our stake both of which had terrible training and are supposed to retrain each other. When it looked like it was going to be a disaster, they were going to split up both of our companionships and sister Boyack and I would retrain one of them. Fortunately, things stabilized and there is no ET! But through out the ordeal, I would ask sister boyack, "What if we're ET'd?" And she would reply, "I would be shook. Shook!"

We found a new person to teach! That means that in the last month we've found 4 new people. That's more people in 1 months than I've found in the entire rest of my mission! His name is Gerry, not to be confused with the Jerry that we're teaching. We were talking to him and he asked how we become part of the family of christ and we were super excited because we have a lesson that explains exactly that.

You know that project president gave sister Boyack and I? Well he gave me another one. He is having me be the editor for our mission magazine that comes out every transfer. It's something I'll be doing for the rest of my mission starting next transfer when the person doing it now goes home.

In other news, both sister Boyack and I got sick again with a cold. The mission nurse told us we weren't aloud to be outside for more than 10-15 minutes at a time and since the only thing we can do in our area is tract, we worked a lot on the first project President Strong gave us.

That's about it for this week!

I love you!

Sister Slade

Pictures!

1. Sister Boyack and I

2. We were helping some members paint3. A member switched the nametags on our coats when they were hung up at church
4. We used an entire bottle of dayquil within a 30 hour period

5. I made bread yesterday

6. This makes me laugh so hard

Isaiah 55: 8-9

(Aldste Cummings)

Hajsan

We've had quite the party this week. It's been really fun.

First things first, I finished knitting my socks. I know, I know. It's been months since I've even talked about knitting but I finally got on myself and finished knitting the other sock. They're different sizes and are too thick to fit tightly on my legs because I didn't really follow the instructions that well but seeing as they were the first things I've ever knit, they turned out well. I'm proud and I hope that you are too.

On Thursday we went out to help our Branch President with on his 🌟 cow farm🌟 with nearly 250 cows. That's a lot of cows. I've never been so close to so many cows before in my life. It was so cool. It made me want to have a farm when I grow up. It was also really cold. The upside was that all the cow pies were frozen so you couldn't step in them but you had to be careful or you'd trip on them.

This week we got to see some really cool miracles. On Friday, e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e canceled on us. Literally nothing we planned ended up happening and we were feeling pretty crummy about it all. But then we were out knocking doors and started talking to this older couple while they were outside their house they were rebuilding after it burned down and they let us in to show us around and they were so nice and cute. They ended up inviting us back to teach them more about the Gospel. Just talking to them warmed my heart on that cold day. Maybe it's just because I think elderly ladies are adorable--both of my grandmothers included ❤--but I started to tear up. It made my day.

We also had a cool experience when we went to teach a family that hadn't been so active in the church. We decided to teach them about the temple and we were trying to find pictures of the temple on our phones about 5 minutes before we needed to leave when I looked over Elder Mathias' shoulder and saw a framed picture of the Stockholm Temple that we had in our apartment. I said "Bring that," and he responded "Why don't we just give it to them?" so we decided to give it to them. What a "coincidence" that the mother of the family had just recently taken a mirror off the wall in their living room and was wanting to replace it with a picture and was overjoyed when the picture of the temple looked so good on the wall. Then they came to church on Sunday with all the kids for the first time in a while and it just so happened to line up exactly with the visit of a recently released temple president to his daughter up here. He gave a talk about the temple and the family was really moved and motivated.

On Saturday, more people canceled on us and e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e we planned to swing by wasn't home. So we were out knocking doors and this guy opened and let us in as soon as we said "Jesus Kristus." We ended up having a good lesson with him about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon and will be back soon to teach him more. He said that he had just moments before we knocked sold a snowmobile to a German guy for a really good price. He said that that's why he was in such a good mood and wouldn't have let us in otherwise.

Lesson of the Week: God's plan is always better than ours. He knows who needs help and when and He doesn't seem to care that much about making it a little more difficult for a couple of cold kiddos in Boden to eventually lead them to the people they really need to talk to. It's been incredible to see and be a part of and I'm so glad that the Lord is helps us to where we need to be and not where we want to be.

Have a great week!

IM ALIVE!

(Hermana Ellsworth)

I got to mexico all safe and sound! I am only allowed to write a short letter but I am all good and alive! There were about 50 missionaries on my flight and I met 3 sisters and an elder going to puerto rico. my companion is hermana bates. she is also going to puerto rico. I ran into jennifers brother, the pilot, in the airport. he has pictures. I didnt have my camera when we on the flight but i have friends who are going to email me them. my pday is friday. love you so much!!!!! have a great day!

love hermana Ellsworth