Check out my pepper cakes house!

This week was amazing! So many fun things, and a good amount of teaching, it's been great!

For one, Elder Rasmussen and I made pepparkakshus (litterally pepper cakes house, but actually gingerbread house) with a member family! Not going to brag or anything, but it was super good. Like, super good.

Also, this week we had Christmas zone conference, and it was amazing! President Youngberg is a very inspired and dedicated man, he put on a great conference for us! We also got to watch It's A Wonderful Life, then Sister Youngberg read us the book about the Carpenter named Jonny Cloony or something like that, it was super! I almost felt at home with some of my best friends.

Speaking of best friends, for the first time since the MTC (around 15 months ago) I saw one of my MTC comps, Elder Barker! Not only that, but Elder Harden was also there, the tripan was back! AND... Elder Harden has some second cousins in the Handen ward (actually the members I made the pepper cakes house at) and President Youngberg gave us three permission to do a cross-zone splits and run over and visit them before zone conference! Super crazy, all three of us running around Handen and speaking Swedish with cousins, it was unbelievable.

For those of you who haven't read the First Presidency message for December yet, do it now! It's super good, I'd encourage you all to ask yourselves how you're waiting for the coming of Christ.

Love,

Elder Wilson

To all who read this,

Much apologies, but this week is going to be a shorter one! Just know that I'm doing great! It's snowing a bit over here, but not really sticking, I want it to stick more.

This week we did have work overs with the Elders on Gotland, so that was a party! They came here for two days (so I could have a day with each one) and we partied hard. By that, I mean we contacted a ton of people on the streets, taught some great lessons, ate some tasty food at members houses, and made banana bread for district meeting. It's not often Visby is here for district meeting, so you gotta make something special, ya know?

Thought from the Book of Mormon;

Read 2 Nephi 28:20-32 and think "How has the Devil tried to get me?" This section of scripture describes just some of the ways "the devil cheateth [our] souls, and leadeth [us] away carefully down to hell." 

Have a great Saint Lucia day! (Wikipedia can explain better than I, for I do not really know why Sweden celebrates Saint Lucia)

Elder Wilson

Pictures:

Visby work overs!

Our new hair cuts

Those of you who have missed my tongue

I'll have to keep this one short, but I had a great week! It's been full of finding, and some more finding. But we had an apartment check, and it was super cool to see Elder and Sister Bell from Oregon! Also, my previous companion Elder Jackson came over for stake conference. This stake is massive (geographically) an so six other elders had to take a train in and stay the night with us for that. However, we had to leave to go give out Books of Mormon at the Book of Mormon Musical that night they came over. That was funny, we let these six Elder into our apartment while we left the apartment in clean condition, and when we came back at 12:10 all floor space was occupied by sleeping Elders, and all our food had disappeared. And our TP, but I didn't ask about that.

Anyways, here's something quickly from the Book of Mormon. 2 Nephi 22:3: Therefore, with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. Moral of the story, if you're coming unto Christ and it's not joyful then you're doing it wrong. Christ is always joy, and coming to Christ (repentance) is joyful. Repentance has such a negative connotation, or implicit definition, but it shouldn't. The Swedish word is much better I think, omvändelse. Mom just wrote me a bit about this, and Elder Renlund gave a great talk about it a while ago in General Conference, but omvändelse literally means "to turn around". Check out this sentence:
You should stop sinning and repent.

You're driving the wrong way, turn around.

Du bör sluta synda och omvänd dig.

Du kör fel väg, vänd dig om.

Anyways, I have it evil on time and have to go now.

Well, I guess English translations of Swedish phrases don't always work.

Äldste Wilson

ps, Emma Huntington's son Ballard of a Moonchild on Mormonchannel is super good