Cake with my face on it.

 Easter Witches! These are all over Sweden for Easter.

So, the highlight of my week was a surprise birthday party for me! Some members in the branch have a tradition that they do with every missionary who has a birthday here.  They order a cake with their picture on it and then invite them over for a party. I thought that we were going to have it this upcoming week.  Then last week this sweet sister called up and said that she wanted us to teach one of her friends-sweet a referral! That is what I was thinking but, then bam! In walked some members to help celebrate. A true surprise birthday party was in store for us! It was so much fun and will be something that I will always remember. Hopefully Syster Jacobs and I will be together for her birthday in June too! 

 

Friday the 13th was an amazing day full of wonderful miracles. We visited so many of our wonderful friends and taught lots of great lessons. We even ran into some members while we were out and about on the busses. Syster Jacobs is a great missionary and I reallly am learning a lot from her every day. She has such a big heart and all she wants to do is serve Heavenly Father. We had a girls night and had six girls show up. Life is good here and we all had such a great time together just being girls. We gave a great lesson on inner beauty and remembering to tell yourself every day that you are a daughter of God. Then our friends Jay and Ullis called us and told us that they were in Gävle and would be coming to pick us up to "kidnap" us and take us to dinner. It was great. They picked us up around 8pm from the church after our girls party and then took us to Max hamburgers. We had a lovely night together. I know that I will remain friends with them forever.

 

Sunday was such an amazing day! We had a total of 6 investigators in church!! Syster Jacobs and I just kept watching all the members faces in the branch when investigator after investigator walked in. It was a great day. We are showing the branch that we are working really hard and finding people to teach and we have some great appointments and plans with some of the members this week. We hope to start getting some referrals. The people here really want to help. Our job as missionaries is to help them share the gospel with their friends and family. We have about five really positive investigators that we are working with right now. The work is really moving forward here in Gävle and Syster Jacobs and I are busier than ever! I love keeping busy and relying so much on the Spirit. We both have had some amazing experiences this past week with the Holy Ghost and following those promptings. If I can give everyone one word of advice it would be for every person who reads this to really figure out how the Holy Ghost speaks to you and always ACT upon those promptings.

 

During sunday school we taught two women in English and I kept getting the feeling that we needed to talk about  the ten commandments. Then one of them asked, "So, I have noticed that no one here takes the name of God in vain...why?"  Thank you Holy Ghost. We explained that was because we want to show respect to God and then she answered herself and said "why would you put the blame on Him when it´s your own fault?" She is truly amazing and such a sweetheart. She has never had nachos before and amazingly enough none of the other YW have either.. so we are going to have a nacho making party soon. Funny.

 

The more the days go by the more Syster Jacobs and I find out about each other and how similar we really are. Haha. She loves Labyrinth! And we tend to quote it quite often. Haha. Two of these pictures are us with some Easter witches. Sweden is a little strange in that sense. At Easter time all the little kids dress up as witches or old ladies and go around trick or treating, pretty much. So, lovely Veikko drove us around last pday and we took some pictures by some of those witches.

 

Well, I love you all! I loved all the pictures of Corryn´s baby shower and her BIG belly. Cute. Keep pushing through the end of school and rock n´roll when May gets here! Today I actually purchased another Swedish cd. Håkan Hellström again. Really good. And Syster Jacobs got some really good jazz Swedish music. Oh, music. 

Life is good and the church is true.

 

Love, Talisa!

Aka: Syster Vistaunet