Stoeltzing Surfing Stockholm

Week 10 – January 13, 2014 – Advancing the Work in Göteborg

Great week! We started by helping Luis Hurray set up the Göteborg Young Single Adult (YSA) Center.  Luis is a really cool guy. He's the LDS Seminary and Institute director for all of Sweden and we get to work with him every week. They used to have a huge YSA center in Göteborg but it was closed because attendance was low. Institute classes have been held in the Västra Frölunda chapel for the past few months, but we have a new center in an awesome old Victorian building. We helped set up the center and the grand opening will be this Friday. It is located right across the street from Göteborg University and I think it will really help the missionaries find new people to teach in that area. 


Goteborg University

 We had a great experience this week with a referral from this sister missionaries just north of us in Utby. They met a man named Safwan on a train who lived closer to us, so we started teaching him on Wednesday. Safwan is an immigrant from Sryia and has only lived in Sweden for about five months. Over the last year I have closely followed the horrific civil war in Syria, so I had great compassion to teach someone who recently escaped from there. I have seen few people with such a strong faith in Christ as Safwad has. He has a powerful testimony of Christ and he is so excited to learn more about the church. It was so inspiring to meet someone that's seen so much adversity and still has such a great love his fellow man. We will teach him again later this week.

Saturday we went to teach an investigator in her 70's that had been facing some health issues. We explained to her what a blessing was and she let us give her one. She said she had a warm feeling and she felt as if a blanket was placed over her during the blessing. It was a really amazing experience to see the comforting power of a priesthood blessing in action.  

A Priesthood Blessing

Last night we got to see a fireside discussion led by a missionary about to start his mission here in Sweden. He had such a strong testimony and I'm certain he'll be an incredible missionary here in Sweden. It was cool to see the way they conduct youth firesides here. It was led by YSA's and there were no members of the Bishopric or Stake Presidency on the stand. It felt really cool and I think the youth really connected with the message.

Well that’s about it for the week. I love you guys and can't wait to tell you about next week!  

Due to technical difficulties, Elder Stoeltzing's camera has not been uploading pictures in recent weeks.  As a result, stock photos have been inserted into the blog until Jacob's pictures can be submitted.