Medan :)

Halo semuanya! Bagaimana kabarnya?

These past couple of weeks have been great. I am now serving in a place called Medan with Elder Ritchie. There are a lot of Christians here which is sweet. The food is amazing, we spend a lot of time on bikes, In malls, and in the kampung.

My last couple of days in Jakarta Elder Lyon and I were able to visit a lot of people and members. We also had a mission conference and unfortunately, Elder Neil L. Anderson was not able to preside during the mission conference. It was still amazing and great seeing everyone in the mission again. After the mission conference, we headed to Medan.  It was hard saying goodbye to all the great people in Jakarta, but I'm excited for the opportunity that I have to serve in Medan.

We have been teaching some people these last couple of weeks that have been progressing which has been awesome! 

They have a strong desire to change and find answers to their questions. They have been coming to church, reading the book of mormon, praying, and applying the things that they are learning in their lives. 

We also have a lot of opportunities in Medan to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those around us and some of the people that we have recently met seem to be interested! 

Every Wednesday and Friday we have an English discussion group. We also have a gospel discussion directly after the English group. We have a Frisbee night every week which is also a lot of fun. 

Yesterday during sacrament meeting I  gave my first talk in Indonesian :) It was about eternal family importance! 

Love you all and have a great week!

Kasih, 

Elder Östhed 

1 biggest Buddhist temple in Southeast Asia

2 sour sally's

 

3 crocodile 

4 president Mandrofa 

5 frisbee night

Mission Conference Jakarta January 16, 2020

Futsal Medan Branch!

Last week in Jakarta!

Halo semuanya! 

This week was the last week of the transfer and Elder Lyon and I had a lot of great experiences throughout this week. We also had transfer calls! Elder Lyon will be staying in Jakarta and I will be moving to Medan! I will be companions with Elder Ritchie again, my mtc companion, he is an awesome missionary! I am excited to serve with him in Medan. Jakarta has been so sweet and I have loved serving here. I am grateful for the ward, the people, and all the awesome experiences and things that I have learned while I have been here.

Things are going well in Jakarta and we have seen God's hand guiding us in our lives and in the lives of others. We got to teach a lot of new people for the first time this week. On Sunday, we also had 7 of our friends come to church! It was awesome seeing them there. 

About 2 months ago, I met this person named Yuvita on the bus. We had a good conversation and I explained our purpose of being here. She had never heard about our church before and I was able to introduce many of the things that make our church different from a lot of other churches. I also saw her again, when we were heading to the Christmas party last month! This week, Elder Lyon entered a Christian group chat on Facebook and had contacted some people in there. Some people responded and one of them was Yuvita! On Wednesday, she messaged us on Facebook saying that she wants to read the book of mormon and that she would like to meet. At first, I didn't realize that it was the same person that I had met about 2 months ago on the bus and when I realized it was her I was shocked! It was so cool seeing that she was interested to learn more and through efforts in Facebook we were able make contact with her again. We plan on meeting with her tonight!  

On Friday, we facilitated the English group and met with one of our friends and had a good discussion about the restoration, the role of the book of mormon, and other topics. She is reading in Mosiah in the book of mormon and has a strong desire to learn about new things. She has studied several religions throughout her life. She has studied catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, and is now studying more about our beliefs. She has a lot of good questions and is acting on the things that we are inviting her to do. She also told us that when she decided to learn more about our church, she saw us 2 days later walking to the busway and she felt like she should talk to us and she did. Since her decision to learn more about our church, she said that she has also seen many other missionaries in different places around Indonesia! 

This upcoming Friday, we also have another mission conference in Jakarta and Elder Neil L. Anderson will be presiding! 

Love you all and have a great week :)

Kasih, 

Elder Östhed 

selamat tahun baru

Halo semuanya!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and a happy new year with family and friends :) These last couple of weeks have been full of great things. We went on splits, visited many members, and met with a lot of new people.

We met with a lot of people on busways that we ended up meeting with again. It's been great being able to meet with them and share this amazing Gospel of Jesus Christ. Some have a desire to learn more and are reading from the book of mormon frequently. They are sharing their experiences and have been asking several questions. It's been really cool helping them find answers to things and seeing their progression and their lives change for the better. 

We also met some people on the side of the road that was interested in the book of mormon. They couldn't speak Indonesian but they knew a little bit of English. They were from Africa and they wanted some in English. We were unable to get some book of mormons in English but we still met with one of them named nonny. He showed up and he was full of excitement. We told him that we didn't have one in english but he still wanted the book of mormon in Indonesian. He took it and then said he would give it to his wife. He paused for a second and he later said "You know what I want? I want that..." He pointed to my name tag and we said: "you seriously want one of these?" He said "Yes of course. I just want to be like you guys." We told him that we would grab him one. Thanks to my mom :) we were able to get him one. My mom had sent us several awesome packages and in one of them, there were a couple name tags that said "future missionary" on it. We gave one to him and he was super excited about the whole thing which was awesome. We had a good discussion and we are actually meeting with him again today! We look forward to following up with him. 

We have also had a lot of opportunities to serve those around us. There has been a lot of rain in Jakarta recently and there were many floods so Elder Lyon and I spent a lot of time helping out with that.

Love you all and have a great week :)

Kasih, 

Elder Östhed