I Jesu Kristi Kyrka av sista dagars heliga

Today was my (Jen) first sunday attending church in Sweden. I really am lucky because my church is only a 15 minute walk straight down the street that is right in front of our apartment. It couldn't be any easier to get there. The meetings are switched in Europe, so I had Relief Society (women's meeting) first, then Sunday School, and finally Sacrament (whole congregational meeting). Relief Society was in Swedish, so a lady translated for me. She is from South Caroline, but is visiting her family here with her husband. Sunday School was in English, which was fantastic. Sacrament was half and half. One of the talks was in Swedish, but the other was in English. I had a translator for the Swedish talk. The speakers in Sacrament were from the Public Affairs mission and the husband told an interesting story about the progress of the Rome temple:

Last General Conference, we were all told that some new temples were going to be built. One of which is in Philadelphia (Yay!) and the other in Rome. Just recently, the speaker of this story traveled to the Rome temple grounds spot. He reported that the church owns the land, but did not have any building permits yet. The Church was told that in order to get the building permits, they would have to get the approval of the Vatican. You must be thinking what I was thinking - why on earth would the Vatican approve the building of a large temple of a differing religion??? Well, a meeting was set up between the Church and the Vatican. The Church sent one of the counselors to the European Area President. The Vatican sent their top Cardinal of their Public Affairs dept. Well, the two got to talking and found out that they both spoke French. Then, they found out that they both went to the same high school. The first 20 minutes of their meeting they reminisced about their alma mater. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Cardinal handed the Church counselor his private card and said "if you need anything, call me directly and we will bypass everyone else." Can you imagine? The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways. Why did the Church decide to send that particular counselor, they did not know who was coming from the Vatican or any personal information about him. But, the Lord did.