Week 84

Ashley's Baptism Calendar


Last Call!!!

Happy Mother's Day!!😁 it's been a wonderful week and I got to skype my lovely family which was SO great! As usual. It still hasn't hit me that I am done with my last call home. Time really flies.

We had some sweet miracles this week, one of them was we met with the Flores family again who are a part-member family we are helping to return back to activity in the Spanish ward. We set a date for baptism for their 10-year-old daughter Ashley, and she was super excited the last time we invited her, so we decided to go all out and make a huge baptismal calendar to help her prepare! It's was pretty dang epic. They also came to church on Sunday so we are really pumped for them.

We had a combined ward Mother's Day "asado" (grill-out) with some rico Hispanic meats. This week we did a huge zone service project for Red Cross. Also went through the temple on Saturday with a member in Lakeville whom Elder Calderwood taught, going through for the first time. Oh! And I almost forgot, but we found out that elder Calderwood is being transferred for his last 6 weeks here. And I will be staying here in St Paul with a new companion Elder Cross! 

I read a scripture this week that was really powerful. "For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; ...Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men."

Jesus Christ truly took upon himself all of our sins, pains, and sorrows. There is so much depth to the atonement knowing that he is literally prepared to walk alongside us in our mortal journey, because he has already walked the footsteps we will take.

Have a fantastic week! Thanks for all of your prayers. Love you guys!

-Elder Bolinder

Volunteering For Red Cross

St. Paul Temple

Week 83

A Surprise Wedding!

Cinco de Mayo in the Ghetto

Hello again!!

The week started off with a bang because on Tuesday we had MLC (Mission Leadership Conference) with President Barney and it was fire! Our mission president has revamped the emphasis on the importance of baptizing converts, so we are super pumped to start consecrating ourselves more and seeing more miracles! Our zone has focused on applying our prophet's counsel to increase our capacity to receive personal revelation from God, so it fit perfectly to have a mission wide goal to be more exactly obedient and have increased purity. There is such a drastic difference when we filter out the unholy thoughts and influences in our lives and we are more in tune to receiving comfort and guidance through the Holy Spirit. Something that I have been working on recently is having more time for pondering and self-reflection. It's so hard to find time for that in this crazy world, but I can testify that it adds so much peace in our sometimes-chaotic day!

Saturday was a little hard to find people home, because all the Hispanics were out partying on Cinco de Mayo! There was a huge festival here in St Paul, and for the whole transfer we've been running around and trying to pull some strings to get a booth there. It didn't end up happening because of insurance complications. Man, we are super bummed we didn't get it! But the funny thing is, we went contacting and there were like barely any Hispanics there. Just a sea of African Americans. We saw this huge gang fight go down, so that's right about when we dipped😂 but it was great because we got two new people to teach from it and some rico tacos de al pastor. 

We went on exchanges with the Hmong elders this week. Elder Calderwood and I have been learning some phrases. And my Hmong name given to me by one of their investigators is Tub Txib Yeeb Koob, which means "God's glory." I also got fed some Asian Pho (noodles) and Thai peppers. All I got to say is Thai peppers are like eating popcorn compared to habaneros. ...😂

The work has been going well. We are super pumped to have the Flores family start coming to church and their daughter is stoked to be baptized. Johnathon is super busy with work, so we have struggled to meet with him. We've still been on the finding grind, and we've started to teach a couple other part-member families again!

Funny story from this week… After church, we were talking to our newly called elders Quorum president in the hall. A little background - we have been speculating that our ward mission leader Hno Pérez and the Sunday school teacher (she's from Brazil and we can barely understand her Portuguese accent, it's pretty funny😂) were keeping it on the down low that they were dating! So we are standing there and all of a sudden our ward mission leader walks up to us and says, "hey elders.. I need you guys to be my testigos" (Witnesses). We both were like, wait WHAT!? Before we know it, we were in the bishop’s office witnessing their marriage! We said, "So it turns out you ARE together!" Haha. The ward still doesn't even know, but it was just hilarious to have a 10-minute secret wedding out of the blue! 😂

Well, my time here in St. Paul has really flown by so far. The weather is warming up and I'm super stoked for my last summer in Minnesota. I really feel like in the last few months I have grown so much stronger and closer to my Savior Jesus Christ. He truly is the one who give us strength to do all things. I've also grown to absolutely love the sacrament during church to remember Him and renew my covenants with God and feel my heart being purified. I know without a doubt that this is His true and living church. I hope all of you will know of my love for you guys and also God's love for you! Have a wonderful week😁

Hasta la próxima,

-Elder Bolinder

Mission Leadership Conference

P-day Tennis!

Week 82

Habaneros!

Life is always CRAZY here in St Paul!!

We were crazy busy this week because we moved 3 apartments! We are now living in the center of our area instead of the edge, so that makes life SO much easier. We spent basically all day moving furniture and packing up our entire apartment so they can close it. Then, the next day we helped move in the Hmong sister missionaries to their new apartment they got, and on Friday we did some service for a family in the ward helping them move to a new house. So, if we keep going at this pace we will be jacked by the time we go home😂.

We obviously didn't get as much time this week for working, but within the all the craziness of moving 3 days in a row, the Lord blessed us with some pretty sweet miracles!

1) After our move on Wednesday we had a lesson with the member family we started teaching who want to come back to church and start attending the Spanish ward. We taught them about eternal families, and we sang the children's hymn "I am a child of God". The spirit was really strong, and it helped to bring back some memories of their conversion to the gospel of Christ. Leading up to the end, we planned to talk about the importance of families being sealed for eternity in temples, and before we said anything Jose says - "Yeah we had a goal to get sealed in the temple a while ago but things just got in the way. We want to have that goal again". We were like, well we can help you!!😁 haha. Super exciting!

2) After that lesson we had a crazy night. We had a lesson with an investigator named Brenda who was a former investigator who we ran into again at the food shelf we serve at. Long story short, we lost her number and didn't have any way to contact her to reschedule our lesson earlier that day. We both felt inspired to stop by later that night to hopefully get in contact with her again. Not only was she home, but her husband was also home this time and we had a really awesome lesson about the Book of Mormon with them both! Yes!! So right after we walk out the door of that lesson, we were just filled with joy from the spirit and the opportunity we had to teach both of them. We go to the door to walk outside when we saw flashing lights going off. All of a sudden some paramedics walk in and there's a guy sitting on the steps super red and out of it. It happened to be this guy we've seen two times before and contacted last week. They start shooing us away saying they need privacy, but the guy couldn't speak English so we offered to translate for them. It was crazy how the Lord led us to be there with impeccable timing to help this guy get to the hospital. And obviously God has placed this man in our path 3 times now for a reason, we just need to find out why!

3) We had a tender mercy while moving out of our apartment. We prayed that we still could be effective despite having to spend all our time moving and what not. We were walking out to throw away trash and this lady named Tracie comes up to us and we start talking to her. She was really stressed and worried because her husband hadn't come back home since the night before and she didn't know where he was. We offered a prayer with her, asking Heavenly Father to help Him to be found with no harm. Literally 3 seconds after I said amen, her friend pulls up in her car with none other than her husband in the passenger seat!! It was probably the most immediate response to a prayer I've ever seen!! The Lord truly does love us and is aware of us in all of our moments of desperation. It's so comforting knowing that the Lord will answer all of our prayers, big or small, as long as we have faith!

We have also been able to give a priesthood blessing just about every day for the past two weeks. Two hermanas in our district are being transferred, one is going home and the other is going to Rochester. We were able to give them priesthood blessings of comfort, and we've had so many faithful members ask us for healing and comfort blessings! I've gained such a testimony and gratitude for this authority we have restored on the earth to literally be instruments in the Lords hands. After our district meeting, as a goodbye, we had the classic Spanish missionary challenge... Habaneros!! I downed four, and I basically died😂 straight got two hours of sleep that night lol. My companion on the other hand went for the mission record and took the cake with 10!! Don't know how he survived lol.

Just a quick thought from general conference: 

"Personal Sacrifice is an invaluable force that drives our decisions and our determinations. Personal sacrifice drives our actions, our commitments, and our covenants and gives sacred things meaning." What can you sacrifice in your life to better honor the sacrifice of the Son of God?

I love all of you and thank you for all of your love and support!

-Elder Bolinder