SISTER POWELL: LOVE
Hello family and friends,
Swedish surprise of the week: Walk into an investigator’s apartment. Right before she turns off the TV this clip from Studio C starts playing. This is a random Arabic news station and this Studio C clip starts playing of a soccer game and goalie just getting beat up. I hope that makes sense. Anyways, the Arabic station kept saying this is how Americans play soccer, this is not good they are so abusive and we just sat there dying of laughter because it’s Studio C! Hahaha
Måndag: Visiting with N. and she just cries to us. It is so hard sometimes. We sit and we listen and we try to understand what it is like to leave your family and leave them in a war-filled country and what it feels like to think about them constantly and worry about them. We try to understand the pain of realizing that you can’t save your family members in these situations and sometimes I just want to say stop. I can’t listen anymore. But N. just cried and cried and we listened. And then we got to testify of someone and something that understands perfectly and that exists to offer peace. These hard things are so good for me.
Tisday: I got a letter from my mom who told me where my cousin Emma is serving right now. Plugged it into Google maps on the phone and turns out we are 20 hours and 53 minutes away from each other by car. How cool is that, that I am united out here in the mission field by so many of my cousins. Thought about my family that day and just felt so grateful for the knowledge of the gospel that my family has.
Onsdag: Talking with the new elder serving here in Katrineholm and he says casually, ‘So I write President Beckstrand in Haikus every week…’ and continues on with his sentence and Syster J. and I just look at each other like is he for real? Hahahahaha. He is so funny and we are all so excited for Christmas together.
Torsdag: On our way to the church to make Swedish pancakes with the elders for our Thanksgiving feast, we see this huge firework show going on at the high school down the road. We watch the show and ask people what is this for….? Turns out it was a Christmas-time kickoff. What? How awesome is Sweden. We are just kicking off the Christmas season with a huge firework show. Yup. I liked that. Fun little Thanksgiving present.
Fredag: Took Christmas photos with the elders. We are most definitely putting together a Christmas card. Missionaries are so darn funny. We will be sending those out this week because guess what? IT IS DECEMBER!
Lördag: Had our language study over glasses of hot chocolate and mint tea. How fun is this life?
Söndag: The branch president asked the missionaries and 2 YSA’s in the branch if we could meet and plan a Christmas sacrament meeting program. Of course, President. We get there and it is an audition for soloist spots….. Hahahahah we sit down and he says, ‘Syster Powell, will you please sing verse one?’ And I am just laughing because I am so not a singer but what can ya do. I sat there thinking about my call letter and thought ‘This is not what I signed up for’. But then I realized that if Katrineholm needs me to be a soloist or a chorister or a Sunday school teacher or frequent sacrament meeting speaker than hey, I’m your girl. I love being a missionary and learning that there are many ways to serve others and many many ways to fulfill my purpose to invite others to come to Christ.
Syster j. and I started this week with a conversation about love. Everything that happens in this church is out of love. Every calling filled, every talk given, every lesson taught, every blessing given and all the countless acts of service that Latter-day Saints do throughout their lives is rooted in love. Our leaders are given no money, no ‘gold stars’, no extra bonuses (think like a getting out of jail card–getting out of any other calling card), no public recognition. So what motivates Latter-day Saints to serve? It is love. We love having conversations with people on the street and they ask us how much are we being paid. What do we get out of this experience? And then we share that we are actually here as a volunteer…. for 18 months…. without family and friends or any comforts of home. It does seem a little strange, doesn’t it? Why are we here? This is truly a labor of love. We love God. Sometimes we love God more than we love the calling we are asked to fill or the individuals we are called to serve. We may not love what God asks us to do, but we love Him. And that motivates us to serve.
We met with a woman this week from Rwanda who survived the Genocide in 1994. She told us about her life. She told us about the Hutius who would come through the villages with machetes and the way she described it, take off heads and limbs like you would harvest a field of wheat. Survivors would hide under piles of dead bodies and when the trucks would come and push all the bodies into a pile, they would let their bodies be limp and be pushed among the dead. Then they would climb out during the night and run and run and run. We sat there speechless. Who deserves that kind of life? She was rescued and literally put on a plane and the group that brought her here did not reveal the final destination until they had landed. They promised peace and protection and safety and she stepped off the plane here in Sweden and has built herself a life. And here’s the kicker. She closed with ‘Seeing that and being there made my desire to love grow. I saw my brothers and my sisters killed and all I wanted to do was love others.’ I was so surprised. I feel like if that were my life I would have lost all faith in humanity after living through that. But she took that and she used it to fuel goodness. She bore us her testimony and repeatedly said ‘God is lovely. He is good and He loves me. He expects me to love others so that is my thing.’ God is lovely. If a woman who hid under dead bodies and escaped to a foreign country and lost her 6 year old boy in one of the most devastating attacks in history can look me in the eyes and testify that God is lovely and He is good, what reason do I have to ever doubt His good character?
She continued to teach me as she said, ‘How can I say that I love God if I do not love those people I meet here on earth? I have never seen God, but I can see you. If I can’t love you and serve you then how can I love and serve God whom I have never seen?’
President Monson said in his April 2014 address ‘Love- the essence of the gospel’, ‘We cannot truly love God if we do not love our fellow travelers on this mortal journey. Likewise, we cannot fully love our fellowmen if we do not love God, the Father of all.’ This woman from Rwanda gets it. She has made the connection. To love God we must love others. To love others we must love God. Oh how thankful I am that I am being brought to this knowledge in a different way than she was.
We met with another woman this week. She also comes from war and a broken marriage and is trying to start over. It is during lessons with these people that I pray the hardest. I just pray and plead for direction and to know what it is that they need. And every single time God answers me and He tells me to listen. He tells me to love. And then He teaches me about His son and He reminds me that I have been called to testify of Him. And then as I testify of this Being and this power that is available and offers peace and offers the power that it takes to start over, it clicks in my head. God loves us. He loves us so much that He gave us His son. And it is through His son that we have the ability to return to God. And in the meantime, we have the ability to have joy and feel peace and live good lives here on earth.
Sometimes I wish all these basic parts of the gospel would have clicked in my head earlier. Why didn’t I understand this sooner?
This week we were invited to use the new LDS film, ‘He is the Gift’ when we contact and when we teach and to invite everyone we meet with to watch it. It is such a great little film and I invite you all to watch it today!! As I watched it over and over and over again this week with those we met on the streets and on the bus and in their apartments it just hit me. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ John 3:16. God loves us. This week a missionary asked me if I could sum up what I have learned so far on my mission into a short statement. So many things came to my head but I said quite simply that I finally know that God loves His children. I don’t know why that took me such a long time to understand and see and feel and testify of but this mission has taught me repeatedly that God loves His children. And the atonement is the biggest example of that love. I see God’s hand every single day on my mission and I can simply testify that He loves us. Love is the essence of this Gospel and of God’s plan for His children. He loves you so much that He wants you home again. He gave you a way, through His only begotten Son, to return to Him. What are you doing to ensure that future?
I think I have my mission scripture and motto. Psalms 145:9, ‘The Lord is good to all: and His tender mercies are over all His works.’ And as one woman so beautifully testified of this week, God is lovely. His tender mercies can be seen in all and through all. He is perfectly aware of all these women and me and the you. He is aware of each of us and all He is asking us to do is love. Serve out of love. Develop that charity that we have been invited to do so many times. He has asked me to come to Sweden and labor out of love and invite all those I come in contact with to come to Christ and to teach them about this Gospel of Jesus Christ and the way we can return to God’s presence. And man, the Lord is good to me. And I see His tender mercies everyday.
I love you all! Remember to LOVE. Remember to discover Christ this season. Embrace the gift. And most importantly—SHARE IT.
Thanks for the love and prayers and just everything. KÄMPA PÅ.
Syster Powell
