Sunday, August 18, 2013

Tuesday, August 13th

So This week was incredible I had so many miricles happen to me! I am so blessed to be in this area. Our investigators are doing well. We have almost 6 progressing investigators. But the one that I worry about the most is Helen. She is from England is married to a member. But she has recently been getting prepared for baptism. She has all the faith and knowledge she needs to be baptised but needs to stop smoking! The missionaries have been working on her with this problem for like the last 5 or 6 weeks. She just can't get over it yet. But I challenged her and her husband to have nightly scriptures and prayers TOGETHER at a specific time every night. (this wasn't originally happening.) After they committed to doing it every night at 7, they both felt that this would help keep the spirit in the home and eventually help her stop smoking.
But the miracle that I really wanted to share with you all is about a new investigator we met this last week. He lives in our appt. upstairs. But it wasnt us that made the original contact. It started as we were planning on Tuesday night, and we were goofing off and I said that we needed to say a pray to keep us focused and bring the spirit back. After we did that, we had a wonderful planning session and although we usually never sing afterwards we had this wierd desire to sing. and Elder Tewksbury and I always sing in Portuguese but we both wanted to sing in English and so we sang HYMN 220 and we actually didnt sound to bad. haha But then after we were just messing around in the front room of our appt. We got a note slipped under the door I will attach a picture of it.
We freaked out! This man was so ready for us to teach him and he just "happened" to hear us singing and want to know who we were. He knew we could help him and the spirit told him that! We imediately said a prayer and thanked Heavenly Father for this man. But it was too late to go up and talk to him. But 2 minutes later he comes to our door and knocks. we knew it was him and he introduced himself and told us the same things that the note said and just said he has been looking for a greater light in his life and said he had seen us around and that we had waved to him before. I told him how thankful we were to have him come to us and told him who we were and our purpose. Then Elder Terry told him he had a book that would help him with his struggles. (the Book of Mormon) He testified of it and gave him one. He said with such sincerity, "what do I owe you for this?" and I simply said, "Another time for us to tell you more about it." He said he would love that and we set up a day to talk with him more. And Elder Tewksbury asked if we could say a prayer before he left and he said a beautiful prayer and you could hear Troy just sobbing and afterwards as he was crying, he shook our hands and thanked us for talking and praying with him. WOW! we were so amazed at how perfect that went. He is so prepared!
We met with him this last week and it went great and have had the oppertunity for him to pray with us every morning before he leaves for work. He has such strong faith in God and Jesus Christ and wants to repent of and be better! We get to teach him again tonight so I will tell you more about him next time. But I just wanted to tell you how cool that was!
Well I have to go, but I will send a letter home this week to tell about my BoM experience. Thanks for the reminder! Love you all, and remember we are all missionaries, I just wear a name tag! ;)
-Elder Swalberg
 
 
 
Here are some additional photos that he sent - with his comments:
 
First one is me all packed up at the MTC the night before I left.
 
 
Next one is of me and my 2 new companions: From left to right Elder Tewksbury,Elder Terry, and me!
 
And this is my close MTC comp Elder Gardner at the transfer meeting before we went our seperate ways. (He is somewhere in Maine right now.)
 
 
 
My first meal in the field. Pretty good for not having barely any food in the appt. and not able to go shopping! haha

This is me in front of Dr. Smith's house. The Dr. Smith that operated on Joesph Smith's leg as a child. There is no sign about it, and is not owned by the church but one of the members gave us a ride to district meeting once and knew about it and showed it to us on our way back. It was pretty sweet!
 
 
Next one is of me infront of the JSM. We got to tour it and it was so beautiful! (btw mom, they told us the same story about how crazy it was to get the monument up there too! What an incredible miracle!)
 
 
And last one, me next to JS statue.

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