Christmas week email and pics! Woohoo...

This blog post will be short and simple because I have awesome stories to share with my family via Skype in two days. I am ecstatic to talk to them. I am even more enthusiastic that I have exciting news to share with them. Halmstad is looking up. :)

 

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas/ God Jul. This month I have been so blessed to be reminded of the true meaning of Christmas. It is a very special experience to be set apart from the world and notice what really matters. This Christmas time has meant so much more to me because I have been able to focus on Christ. I am so grateful that Jesus Christ lived and died for us. I am grateful that because of him, I can always be better.

 

I am grateful for my family now more than I ever have been. They mean so much to me; their sacrifices that they make for me are examples of Christ-like love.

 

Merry Christmas! I hope that you all have an unforgettable time with family and friends, remembering Christ.

 

Love,

Syster Hosenfeld

 

 

 

Christmas party!

 

Us with our flashing angel pins at a Zone Conference. :)  

 

 

Svenska Cathedral 

 

 

Castle in Halmstad

 

Mormon.org on a bus stop. :)

 

 

 

Santa Lucia concert and Morgan

What a fabulous week! As Jul grows closer and closer, I have been able to take part in Swedish festivities that I have adored. This week, I was able to go to the Santa Lucia Concert. Santa Lucia is celebrated in Sweden on December thirteenth and is meant to commemorate the sacrifice of Lucia's life for Christianity. Although it is a religious tradition, most of the country takes part in this celebration because it is a big part of Swedish Jul culture. I went to the gorgeous, historic Swedish Cathedral to watch it, and it was a beautiful service. First, the priest teaches about Saint Lucia, shares a spiritual message, prays, then we all sing together. Then the lights go down and a choir enters the cathedral, singing and all holding a candle, except one who is elected Saint Lucia, who is wearing a crown of candles. They then perform a concert, celebrating Christ and his birth. It was a fantastic experience for me that reminded me how lucky I am to be in Sweden on my mission. The culture and tradition here is one-of-a-kind and I feel extremely blessed.

 

I have seen so many miracles this week! The biggest one that I want to share is about Morgan. One day while on the bus to a member's house for a lesson, I sat by a man in a big black jacket. I have been getting into the habit of talking to everyone I have contact with- whether on the street, on the bus, etc. But I did not want to talk to him- not a bit. He seemed very stern and quiet and I felt that he would ignore me like most do when I talked to him. But I took the step of faith and began talking to him. I first asked him about his plans for Jul and where he worked, in which he replied very short and simple answers. But once I brought up that I was a missionary for the LDS church, everything changed. He suddenly began asking me about my beliefs and about my church. I was amazed! He told me that for the past year, he has been searching for the truth and has been meeting with the Jehovah's Witness missionaries and reading the bible. I got his number and called him later that day to decide a time to meet sometime later that week. He told us that he wanted to meet that very day! We taught him a powerful lesson about the Restoration; the spirit was strong and led the lesson, he had thoughtful questions, and he agreed to meet again. He came to sacrament meeting three days after. After the meeting, he asked if we could teach him a lesson right then, and we agreed. After our lesson with him, he also stayed for Priesthood meeting! His coworker is in our ward, and they decided that they are also going to go for lunch two days this week and discuss more about the Book of Mormon. I am extremely hopeful for Morgan! He is so prepared and I feel very grateful that we have a loving ward who welcomed him in so selfessly when he came to church. We have a lesson with him in a few days and we are going to commit him to baptism in January! This experience has been a huge reminder to me of Heavenly Father's miracles. Missionary work isn't easy, but there are things every day that happen that are proof of God's hand in our life.

 

Ah, life is great. :)

 

I love you all! My prayers are with all of you.

 

Med Kärlek,

Syster McKenzie Katherine Hosenfeld

 

 

 

Aina, the cutest old lady in the whole world. We visit her and she tries to pay us every time.  Aina is a non-member. She isn't an investigator, but we visit her as our service because she has no family to visit her. She is the nicest person in the whole world. She tells me that I look like a movie star... baha.

Sweden is gorgeous.

Marcus and I. He is great. His epilepsy isn't acting up anymore since his last seizure. He isn't meeting with us, but we see him in the bus all the time and always talk to him. He is very kind to us, just not prepared for the gospel right now. He hasn't really said anything about the seizure. He is probably embarrassed about it.

VERY sac-religious nativity. Haha. Come on, Sweden. You are killing me.

Santa Lucia night!

(This is an example of my girl's dedication, as well as her comp's)  She said, "Today I am going to run some errands, but we have lessons all day. What a blessing! I am glad that I can sacrifice my P-day time for lessons. I love that feeling."

Miracles...and chainsaws (Now you HAVE to read on!)

This week has been adventurous! We went to Helsingbörg for a one hour Zone Conference. The weather turned sour and there was another hurricaine storm warning in Sweden. Meaning that we had to do a bus back to Halmstad instead of the train. This made me laugh. I just assumed that Sweden is used to bad weather, but when there is a little bit of wind and rain, the entire public transportation shuts down. Silly Sweden.

 

I was able to take part in Sister Splits this week. Which means that I was able to have a new temporary companion for two days. I learned a lot from Syster Richins- she talks to EVERYONE. She talks to bus drivers, bike riders, grumpy men. Literally everyone. I am going to be doing that, too. The more people you talk to, the more people will hear of the gospel. Syster Richins and I unfortuntely got stuck in town because there were no busses going back to apartment, so we had to get a ride from our Bishop. But on the drive to our apartment, there was a road that was blocked by a huge tree. He said, "I have a chainsaw."  I laughed because I thoought he was joking. No. He was completely serious. He takes the huge chainsaw out of the back of his car and starts cutting a path through the tree for a car to get through. Then my companion and I moved the logs onto the side of the road. After a little bit of work, we were able to drive through our tunnel and go back home to Tylösand. Never in a million years would I have believed that I would have an opportunity to become a lumberjack here in Sweden, but I have. I love my area!

 

A tender mercy that I have had this week happened the same night of the crazy storm. I was walking with Syster Richins when we ran into Marcus, a past investigator of ours. We invited him to talk with us in the library and he accepted. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and quickly after had to leave the library because it was closed. While we were walking around outside, he had a seizure. We called Sweden's emergency number and an ambulance was able to take him to the hospital. There were many things that were miracles that night. First, that we were able to be with Marcus when he had the seizure, when otherwise, he might have been walking alone. Second, two young men saw us about ten minutes later and helped us keep him warm with jackets. (Also, we were able to get their numbers to teach them in the future) Third, that the ambulance found us and he is okay. It was a crazy night, but it showed me that Heavenly Father is very aware of us.

 

I love you all! Thank you for your prayers. :)

 

 

Package (Isn't she beautiful?!) and first snow of the winter!



 

 

Pictures!!! Some of them are a bit older, she said.

Beach in the morning

A little sleepy on the train to Zone Conference.



Do you see me photobombing?

 

Companion and I!

 

Fireside at the Bishop's house

Jolanka, Maria, and I

Syster Christensen's birthday surprise.

Silly me

 

Birthday time.

 

 

Beautiful Sweden!

 

 

Apartment

 

 

Beach

River of Halmstad

 

 

 

 

 

The latest from Halmstad - kudos to Cody Meyer and Ry-ry, also

This Thanksgiving week was perfect! I spent it in a very different way than I usually would back at home; a day packed with missionary work. I wouldn't have had it any other way. I have an infinite amount of things to be grateful for, and I want all of you to know that I am grateful for each of you. I feel like the luckiest person in the whole world to have such a supportive family and enthusiastic friends. Thank you so much.

 

I have had many highs and lows this week. 

 

This is one of the lows from my journal:

 

"Right now, I feel complete sadness in a way that I have never felt before.

 

We taught Jolanka today. We have met with her two times and the lessons were great; the spirit was there, she agreed with many of the things we taught her, and she invited us to come back. I was so excited and hopeful to continue to teach her and eventually baptize her. I love Jolanka. She is always kind to us by offering us food, hugging us, and telling us that she is grateful for us and loves us. I prayed for her every single day and we were going to invite her to be baptized as soon as we gave her the Book of Mormon in Serbian. (The Church Headquarters took a while to send it to us.)

 

When we began, we had a member come with us to teach Jolanka. Her name is Maria. She bore her testimony and told Jolanka her favorite part about the church. Then we began to discuss the Book of Mormon with Jolanka. When we were describing it, we couldn't get our point across. She wasn't understanding what we were saying because she doesn't know a lot of Swedish and we know absolutely nothing about Serbian. For a while, we struggled communicating with her, then Maria helped us translate. Jolanka was getting very frustrated because she had things that she wanted to say to us and questions she had, but she had no way to communicate them with us. She stopped talking and told us that she couldn't do this anymore- she could not meet with us when she couldn't understand our Swedish and she couldn't convey the feelings and thoughts of her heart through Swedish to us. We tried to ask her for her patience so that we could continue to meet and teach her, but she said that it was too hard. I cried as I bore my testimony to her for the last time that I KNOW that the Book of Mormon is true. I continued to cry as she gave me a hug goodbye and kissed me on the cheek. I cried for the rest of the night. Not for me; not because I lost an investigator or have one less person to teach, but because I love her with my whole heart. I feel so sadly that we can no longer meet with her. I feel horribly that our differences of languages kept us from progressing with her. She was on the path to being baptized. She was so close. 

 

I love Jolanka and I have an optimistic hope that some time in her life, she will think of what we taught her and that she will call the missionaries and in time be baptized. That would be the happiest day I could imagine. I hope that I can meet her again and tell her how much she meant to me."

 

But along with the lows come the highs:

 

-We met a young man named David. We talked to him on the bus and he invited us to fika at a Coffee Shop in town. He is very interested in religion. When we met him, he told us that he is interested in meeting again. He is really nice and he loves talking about life after earth.

-We celebrated my companion's 20th birthday this week. Syster Christensen and I went to Sushi and had a great time. I really feel very blessed to have a great companion that pushes me to be a better person. 

-I was able to help a lady with genealogy this week. She appreciated the help and she is going to come back next week with more information.

 

This week was fantastic. I feel grateful to be a missionary! I love you all very much.

 

Med Stor Kärlek:

Syster Hosenfeld

 

When I was helping her with her genealogy, I saw that Cody Meyer and Ryland Hosenfeld have been doing work on familysearch.org. I just want to give them a shout out and say: Keep up the great work! Genealogy work is really important and I have only realized how vitally important it is until I have been out here on my mission. I am sure that more than just Cody and Ry have been doing it, but those are the names that I have seen while showing investigators around the website. :)

November pic

 

Elder Christensen was heading home, and his family took him back to Halmstad, since he had served there previously.