Agents or Objects?

Autumn has hit Stockholm

 cool pictures I got in Gamla Stan

Stockholm early in the morning

Me outside the old church building

Stockholm in the Autumn

  Hey everyone,

Elder Mott and I are continuing to tear it up here in Stockholm.  The city seems to be emptying out quite a bit from summer tourism.  Now you really just hear Swedish and English spoken on the street and it's surprising how many Swedes you hear using English.  Its very important to know both.  

   This last week we had Elder Bednar come and visit Sweden.  He came to have a conference with all YSA's but made time to meet with all of the missionaries.  I know that we all greatly appreciated it.  He spoke a lot about being agents.  How god created mankind to be agents not to be objects.  Agents act and objects are acted upon.  Objects will not act or move until some force comes and moves it.  Agents need no such prompting.  He reminded us in teaching situations we need to allow people to think for themselves, to learn themselves.  If we just sit there and spew information out we turn them into objects.    Part of God's plan is that we as agents have our free agency.  We are all free to choose.  We also need to ask ourselves that when we pray, are we objects or agents.  Do we pray and then wait as an object does for some force to push us?  Or do we seek it ourselves as agents.  God is more likely to bless us when we fulfill our potential as an agent.  

    Bednar talked about a lot of other things and had a really good question and answer section.  Almost the entire time we were there he had us speak and he would just expound off of what was said.  It's amazing, someone would ask a question and you would think, oh, this doesn't pertain to me then all of a sudden he would say something you needed to hear.  It's amazing seeing how inspired he is and he got us all excited for general conference coming up.  

 Love,

     Äldste Jonathan Moe