Step Up to the Plate

Well things have been crazy for Aldste Haddon in Sweden. Winter finally decided to show up! It was snowing like crazy this week! One morning they woke up to a foot of snow on the ground and they didn't even know it was supposed to snow at all!

 

The elders decided to liken missionary work to baseball because they are both sports lovers and what else should a missionary do?

 

Here's how it goes:

 

Strike out, or Out: Someone just shutting you down completely. “Busy!”,“Not interested.”, “I'm Muslim.” Anything to that effect.

Single: Someone being polite and nice, but not quiet interested.

Double: Having a gospel discussion with someone.

Triple: Getting someones number so we could meet again.

Home-run: A new investigator.

Grand-slam: Baptizing a whole family.

 

 

So, they have been working with an elderly man who is in his nineties and is quickly deteriorating. Aldste Haddon said from last Sunday to this Sunday it appeared that he had lost 10 pounds. He said that he's a little confused but they love him and have concern for him. So they walked to his house to visit him in a blizzard. They realized the importance and fragility of life and feel grateful to be able to serve and love this man toward the end of his life.

 

He finishes his email with his testimony:

 

"After that we defiantly realized that we don't have all that much time here, in Uppsala or on this Earth so we have to everything we can to be those people the Lord wants us to be. We had a good hour walk home after that visit, and it was probably the biggest blizzard I have ever been in. But we still talked to everyone we saw. We got some pretty crazy looks, that was for sure. But whither they listened or not, we still did it because that is what we are called to do. Stand up for Christ, in whatever nation, weather, or circumstance it is what we are called too. But at the end we ended up batting about .500 so it was actually pretty successful."

 

 

These pictures are of a service project they did this week. They helped a man build shelves and put thousands of pounds of paper on them, not totally sure why...



Let it Snow....Let it Snow....Let it Snow!!

This week Aldste Haddon's email was great, I don't think that I could say it any differently so I have decided to live on the edge and post it here for you. As always, thank you for caring about and praying for Our Missionary! We appreciate all you do for our family!

 

"The quote of the week is by President Newell, “The mission is an extremely hard thing, life is incredibly hard for everyone as well. The Garden of Gethsemane wasn't easy either. ”

 

It was the first week of snow... So now its dark for 18 hours of the day, colder then a Eskimo's freezer , humid, windy and I am absolutely loving it. (As long as I have thermals and wool socks on.) This week we taught a lot of less-active people. The ward has about 220 members and about 40 active. So we have been the clean up crew for the most of them. Trying to get these people to remember the happiness they have felt from the church before and getting them to come back.

There has been a lot of problems in this ward from the beginning. As of lately there has been a lady who has been excommunicated going around and teaching less-actives how to write themselves out of the church. Which has been a really big problems because we have about 20 people who didn't really want to. Now we are working with them bringing them back to the church and helping them to be members once again.

 

[We started to work with one man] He is probably one of the nicest people I have ever met! It was a miracle that we found him again, because he wasn't on the ward lists anymore. So we just went through old reports and saw that he was taught at one point. So we called him up and he was telling us how much he has missed the church and having the missionaries over. So we came over and he has been really sick, so we gave him a blessing and starting to teach him again.

 

He told him of this nice old lady who came over from the church and told him that if he follows these steps he can have less contact from the church. So he did just because she kind of convinced him to. But now he has finally realized what happened and want to come back once he starts feeling better.

Our work here like I said isn't really all the same as other areas I have served in. We are building this ward so that its can eventually be one of best wards in Sweden. We are working really hard with getting less-actives back and strengthening the members here.

 

Doing as the Lord himself did, “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing”

 

I am so happy for the work that we are doing here and everyday I try to be just a little bit better, work a little bit harder, push a little bit more and at the end of the day I just hit my bed and know I have given it my all. And then the alarm wakes me up, and I do it again.

Love you all,

Elder Haddon"

 

A Zone Leader and General Conference

Aldste Haddon has been called to serve about 45 minutes north of Stockholm as a Zone Leader with a great missionary who goes home in the middle of November but who is eager to finish out his mission on a strong note.

They got to watch General Conference this week as well, although it was at a weird time of night, it was an excellent experience. You can access general conference here.

They are currently serving in a ward that is very spread out, in fact, the bishopric is  not even within their area (although they are within the stake boundaries) The ward is having a hard time grasping basic gospel concepts and it is creating confusion and contention within the ward. Aldste Haddon is eager to get to work and help teach and encourage both the members and the non members in the area but he knows that he will have a lot of work to do and that it will not be an easy road.

On Friday, he and his companion went on splits with some other missionaries in the area. Those missionaries had been working with an amazing man with two young children. The mother of the children had not been in their life for a very long time. The family had decided to get baptized and had begun to gain testimonies of the gospel. Then, the mother of the children came back making claims that the man had been 'pinching' the children (which is a horrific offense in Sweden) causing him to no longer have access to them.

The day Aldste Haddon met with this man, it was his son's birthday and he had not been able to talk to him. As any parent would be, the man was feeling very low and heartbroken. The elders decided to teach him about the power of the atonement, and that Christ not only atoned for our sins, but he carried our grief and burdens as well. 

They invited the man to kneel in prayer with them. They sat there for 20 minutes in silence and there are not words to express the strong feelings of the spirit that was present in the room with them. The man knew that Heavenly Father was aware of him at that time, and that things would work out.

Aldste Haddon shared:

"I love what I'm doing here, and i know that it really is what The Lord wants us all to do. I hope you all can have the spirit in your life. And if not, do as prophet Joseph Smith directed, ”One of the most important things in our lives is to Find and Keep the Spirit.” I know that this Church is true and I know that God loves everyone of us personally. He is aware of us, and he loves us more then we can ever understand. I leave that with you all this week in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."