Wednesday, November 30, 2011
9 months left in Sweden.
My zone.
I thought of Aunt Tamra when I saw these orchids!
Well, this Friday I will have hit my half way mark! It is very surreal. I think I will be burning some tights. I hear that´s what sisters do. Time goes so fast when your having fun.
In about a month I will become senior companion! Wow. I hope that also means that in about a month I will be able to understand more and be able to respond more in swedish.
This past week was easily one of the best weeks of my mission. We had p-day on Tuesday instead of Monday and headed down to Lund for Thanksgiving dinner with our zone. All of the Elders played football while Syster Kiser and I went out shopping. I LOVE Lund. I got a really sweet orange and yellow paper star. The way people decorate here for Christmas is with candle lights and paper stars hanging in their windows. When we are out at night it is really neat to see all the paper stars and candles in everyone's windows. Swedes also celebrate 1,2,3, and 4 advent. Which I think just means lighting a candle every Sunday in December leading up to Christmas. Yesterday we went over to a members house and lit a candle for 1st advent.
Anyway back to thanksgiving...we played games with all the Elders after shopping and then we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. The Lundwalls made it for us. I really love and admire the older couples who serve missions. They help the work move along so much! Grandma and Grandpa´s friend...Elder Jansson called me last week to say hello. He and his wife are serving on the opposite side of Sweden. Maybe someday I will get to see them. After Thanksgiving our whole zone traveled together up to Göteborg for zone conference! That was a very fun train ride, about 2 1/2 hrs. I got to know all the Elders better.
We pulled into Göteborg around 8pm and Talitha and Maria were waiting outside the train station! That was really a lovely surprise to see them. I love the YSA´s and miss them all so much. They rode the tram with us all the way back to the Sisters apartment and we caught up. They are planning a huge trip to America next September when I get home! I am super excited to be able to show them all of my favorite places in Utah and they will be spending Halloween with us and then we will road trip it to California to visit Syster Juker.
We then had a sleep over in Göteborg with seven of us sisters. Systers Dabb, Winterton, Juker, Jenson, Sprague, Kiser, and me. It was a party. Didn´t get much sleep. Haha.
The next morning we had zone conference with Elder Gerlad Causee of the First Quorum of the Seventy. It was an amazing day filled with the Holy Ghost. It re-energized me for the work in Halmstad. He reminded us that as missionaries we should be teaching a total of twenty lessons a week. That is very hard to do here. But then he said that we could count lessons with active members. Which hopefully will make that number more reachable. In fact tonight we are going to have FHE with Solisa and the Källbergs. He said for every contact we do we should, teach, question, testify, and commit. He reminded us to never be ashamed of the gospel. After all, we have the answers to the questions to life. After the wonderful conference we headed back home. We first stopped by the Center real fast to say hello to some YSA´s. I saw Sofia, Mette, Danielle, Josefin, Talitha, and Maria. And I also saw Sophia from the ward who loves to sing and actually sent me a really great gospel cd a couple of weeks ago. Life is good.
Sweden is a very interesting place and the longer I am here the more I am starting to understand it. Most of the country really doesn´t believe in God and they hate religion- which makes my job very hard. But, something that Elder Causse stressed was to focus on finding the elect. When you are talking with someone you can usually tell if they will be interested in what you are saying within seconds of starting the conversation. I am hoping that with this Christmas season people will be more open and willing to talk about our Savior, Jesus Christ. The past couple of weeks in church and all around everyone has been stressing the importance of remembering Jesus Christ. So, please everyone remember Jesus Christ this Christmas season. Do some service and spread the Christmas spirit.
Congrats Corryn!! A baby boy! I am super excited to have a nephew waiting for me when I get home. Now that´s a crazy thought... when I get off the plane there will be a baby nephew! Awesome. Good luck with the pregnancy. When I read how happy Dad and Rob were about getting another boy in the family I started laughing so loud. This new baby will grow up loving Batman.
Thank you so much for the Thanksgiving package! I got it last week and I was very happy. I also got letters from Meredith, The Rowelys, Dave and Julie Vistaunet, and Manders last week. So, thank you all so much!! In the next package... if you send one for Christmas, please put some pop tarts in it- the brown sugar kind. I really miss pop tarts. And if you could somehow get Alex Proberts and Natalie Christensen´s addresses I would really love it. I think they are both in the MTC still... maybe.
Love, Talisa!
Pictures: When in Lund Sys. Kiser and I went shopping and I found some really sweet stores! Sheena is a punk rocker! Then the rest of the pictures are from our lovely thanksgiving in Lund last Tuesday.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Count your many blessings - Nov. 21, 2011
Happy Thanksgiving!!!!
Tomorrow we will be celebrating Thanksgiving with all the Elders in our zone in Lund. I am very excited! Then we will all travel up to Göteborg for zone conference... which means sleep over!! There will be a seven sisters sleep over in the Göteborg apartment, which is very small. I get to see Syster Juker, Jenson, and Dabb again! And two newer sisters that I don't really know.
Then zone conference will be on Wednesday and it will be with someone from the 70. Cool.
Only one picture from this past week. Because nothing too exciting happened. This is us with an amazing member who moved to Sweden from Brazil in June. She made us lunch and we stayed and helped her translate her church talk into Swedish. She gave an AMAZING talk in church on Sunday. We are working a lot with her and she is helping us so much with our work. Every Tuesday we go to the University campus here and eat lunch with her and then talk about the gospel with her friends.When the members get involved with missionary work it really starts to take off. I love her.
So, a couple of weeks ago we had district meeting in Helingsborg and we ate lunch at a little pizza shop. After we were done eating I thought I would talk with the pizza guy and say thank you and then give him a pass along card. So, I did just that and then he said that he had a Book of Mormon already and that he would love to meet some time and talk more about it, so I gave his information to the Helingsborg Elders. But, the Helingsborg Elders didn't have pass along cards on them so I gave him one of ours. I didn´t think much of it. A couple of weeks pass and then one night we get a call from someone who was interested in meeting with us. This kind of thing never happens so we were very excited. Then the phone call turned into a flirting phone call. All in Swedish might I add. Oh, boy. Even after I hung up and told him that we couldn´t meet, he sent a text that said "It was nice to hear your voice". Blah. Syster Kiser finally texted him back and said "look if you want to meet with missionaries there are some Elders in Helingsborg, we can't meet with you. Sorry." Then last week we got another text that said, "Hey sweet, I am in Halmstad." Oh, boy. We didn´t respond. I guess I need to be more careful when handing out pass along cards. Haha.
Yesterday in church we taught Relief Society and then I taught Primary. It went pretty well. We had six women in the meeting and we talked about the final judgement.
I am very thankful for the strong Relief Society members that we have here. Since we have a recent convert, everyone is very aware of that and we all cater to her. She has many questions and was baptized the week before I got here. She is a very busy women, so it´s hard to meet with her. But she does come to church every week!
I think that the ward is starting to come together a little more. The Bishop and Senja work so hard and you can tell that they give their all to this ward. I love them.
Senja told me yesterday that Zooey Deschanel has a new tv series out and that it is really good. Have you heard of it? I got really excited when she told me about it. And she also said that the Lower Lights came out with their second album this past week! Yippee.
I loved teaching Primary. Yesterday we had just one girl and because of that we became very good friends. I taught about Paul and his many missionary stories and how we can prepare to be missionaries and be good examples now. I love teaching because when you teach you learn so much for yourself. I am understanding more of the Bible and starting to really enjoy reading it. We are also going to start up a bible study group every Wednesday with some older ladies in the ward. That will be fun.
We have a total of four investigators right now. And this upcoming week we are actually going to meet with all of them! 2 guys around my age, a 18 year old girl, and an older women. The guys are the most postive.. but maybe it's because we are girls. I have found that Systers mostly teach men and Elders mostly teach women. Funny. But, I guess whatever works best.
Well, the work is hard, but worth it. We have some good plans this week to go tracting and find some new people to teach. I have also been calling many people from the ward list and from the phone seeing if they would be interested in meeting again. I have had some strange conversations. It is also very exciting, you never know which language you will be speaking and who will answer the phone.
Would someone please update me on what is going on with all my friends? I would really enjoy getting Nate´s wedding invite and Alex Morrises´. When is Alex getting married?
I hope everyone is doing well! I love you all and wish you all a very happy and joyful Thanksgiving holiday.
Happy Birthday to all the November birthdays. Happy Birthday to Seth, Tristan, Audrey, and Bruce!!
I send my love!
Love, Talisa!
Aka: Syster Vistaunet
Monday, November 14, 2011
Hey everyone!
Go to the temple often! Life is good and just so much better when we attend the temple often and do missionary work there. Every time you go you are being a missionary! So, thank you for helping with the work. After all, there is a lot of work to be done.
Right now I am listening to some Christmas music that is on the computer here at the church and it is wonderful! My love for the Swedish language is HUGE! A couple of weeks ago I started reading the Book of Mormon in Swedish and I have seen a huge difference in my language skills. It really amazes me how much I can understand now. The hardest part for me is speaking it. The pronunciation. Yuck. But, I am going to get it.
Funky lampshade.
Eating at KFC.
Very cool store!
Awesome wallets out of vintage fabric. Which one should I buy?
This past week I broke down and bought these shoes that I really liked. They are amazing and I can totally wear them as a missionary. I did and they are very comfortable. I miss everyone so much! Tell everyone hello for me.
Denmark
Denmark Temple
Wow! Time really is flying by. All of these pictures are of the breathtaking Copenhagen temple. I think it may be one of my favorite temples. It took about 2 hours to travel there with our ward. We took the ferry across the ocean to Denmark, which only took 20 minutes. We had three older ladies, the Bishop and his wife, the 16 year old foreign exchange student from Wyoming, two men, and then the Acedvo family who came on the trip. Their oldest daughter just turned 12 and this trip was organized because she wanted to go to the temple for the first time with her ward. It was really peaceful and wonderful to watch her do baptisms. And doing a session in Swedish was really neat. I, of course, had English headphones but I could hear the Swedish at the same time and that was neat.
The temple was an amazing experience and place. I will be so happy when I get home and I will be able to go more often. We were done with the session and everything around noon so Syster Kiser and I went to explore the surrounding area!
My favorite city in Europe was Amsterdam but I think now it is Copenhagen. It is such an amazing city! I loved every second of being there. They seem to have a sweet art and music scene. You could tell that they have a really good underground music scene and tons of little really cool vintage shops. I could live there. I saw posters all over town for bands that I love touring there. Elbow was the one that I was most excited about seeing. And I saw that Florence and the Machiene have a new album out.. how is it? And Eva Eastwood, who is a total rockabilly girl is coming to Halmstad for a Christmas show. I do miss music, but I know that it will still be there when I get back. But, it sure it fun to see all the posters around.
Anyway.. we had about 3 hours to see Copenhagen. So, we first walked to the Jesus Christ statue (Christus) - the original one. It was really neat to go there and see that right after being in the temple. You could feel a difference and at that moment I knew that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true church on the earth today. Sure, other churches have parts of the truth, but only the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has the whole truth. I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have.
Then we walked around town and saw so many wonderful things. We ate lunch at KFC- so American. Haha. Then we went to a touristy place and across from that was the Hard Rock Cafe, so of course I went inside and got some charms!
Then off we went on a really long walk to see the famous Little Mermaid statue. It was a long walk but a very pretty walk. The statue was neat and is there because of Hans C. Anderson, the famous fairy tale writer. On our walk Syster Kiser told me the real stories behind many of the fairy tales. I prefer the Disney versions.
Then we had to book it back to the temple which was a little hard because it was very far away and we had little time to get there. We ran and walked very fast back to the temple. The journey never seemed to end. Blah. We got to the temple 30 minutes late but luckily everyone was still waiting for us. We felt really bad, but we couldn't call because our phones didn't work there. Stressful end of the trip.
I LOVED Denmark and all the walking was worth it, although my feet really really hurt.
Missionary Moment: Earlier this week we went to the campus here in Halmstad to meet a member for lunch. She is a less active member who just moved here from Brazil. She is from Cape Verde and married a Swede who is not a member. She is the BEST member missionary I have ever met. She invited us to have lunch with her at school every Tuesday to meet her classmates and friends and share the gospel with them! All of her classmates are international and we spoke Swedish with all of them because we are all learning it. That was fun and I have decided that it is much easier to understand foreigners speaking Swedish than natives. This was the best form of finding work that I have ever done. And now we have it set up where we are going to go there every Tuesday and have lunch. Awesome. She is going to really help this ward.
This ward has a hard time with doing visiting and home teaching so we decided that we would help them get it started up again. Syster Kiser and I visit taught five women this past week. We had some amazing experiences. We visited the Relief Society President and taught her the message. When we visited all these women we asked them if they knew who their visiting teachers were and who they taught. We found out that only two of them knew who they taught. It´s hard for them to get out and visit teach. So, we made a calendar and put it up in the church so members can sign up with us to be their companions for visiting teaching. By being active missionaries and showing the ward how much we care should make a difference.
OH man! I forgot! Yesterday Syster Kiser and I gave talks in church! I was so nervous that no one would be able to understand me. I felt the Lord´s help when I was speaking and I think it went okay. I spoke for about 12 minutes! The Bishop gave us the scripture Isaiah 40: 28-31 as our source of topic. I focused my talk on a talk from this past general conference. From Jose Alonco of the 70 called "Doing the right thing at the right time without delay". It is a wonderful talk. This ward has a huge problem with waiting for someone else to do something first. Everyone wants to be served but no one wants to do the service. Funny. So my talk was focused on being the one who helps and being an active member. Grandma Powelson sent me a email a couple of weeks ago saying this and it has helped me so much. She said when life gets hard think.. "What would Jesus do?" and even more importantly think "What would Jesus have me do?" I shared that with the ward. And then Syster Kiser´s talk was based on remembering Jesus Christ and what he did for us. Our talks seemed to go very well together. And we took the whole time! The Bishop was very happy about that.
Next week we are going to be teaching Primary and Relief Society. I have never been so active in church and I know that the gift of tongues is real.
Wow. When you are a missionary so much happens during the week that it's hard to write about all of it. Life is good and the gospel is true!
Love, Talisa!
Aka: Syster Vistaunet
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Splits with the Elders
Hello!
Sorry not so many pictures this week. It has been a very eventful week. The first picture is what I actually wore on Halloween day. This past Saturday night the Swedes celebrated All Saints Day and for that they put candles in the cemeteries. Almost every grave had a light on it. It was an amazing sight. The pictures really don't do it justice. I felt very at peace.
So, zone leader road was amazing!! I have really missed the chance to have more of a leadership role and being at zone leader road made me feel very involved. The Sweden Stockholm mission has the best leaders right now. President and Syster Newell are amazing people and they really know how to get work done. They have a huge love for the Lord and his work. The conference was mostly based on finding work and how to get the missionaries excited about finding work. Because, let's face it, finding work is the least fun work as a missionary. But it is a very necessary work. The thing that I got most out of the conference was how important it is to be sharing ideas with other missionaries and we should always be sharing success stories. We have to always be uplifting those around us. You never know who is in need of some happiness.
After the conference was over Syster Kiser and I got to stay the night at the mission home with Syster Newell. But, we first got to go on splits with some Elders for about 3 hours. I went out with Elder Bush and Elder Bloomfield- the AP's. It was one of my favorite nights I have had on my mission! We first went out tracting in a fancy neighborhood in Stockholm. I had never been out with just Elders and I had never tracted houses before, so everything was a new experience for me and I enjoyed every second of it. Whoever had the "Power Stick", meaning the Book of Mormon, would be the one who started talking. It worked really well and I loved being with these Elders. I strongly believe that they are two of the best elders in the whole mission. Elder Bush was actually my past zone leader in Göteborg. I really learned a lot from those Elders. Then we headed to the subway station to do some contacting there. I met some really cool people while on the tram. I was amazed at how much Swedish I could actually speak. Elder Bloomfield is an amazing contactor! He becomes the person's friend right off the bat and then bringing up the gospel is easy because they usually ask him where he is from. And bam! I have found out that I learn best from watching others and I learned a lot that night.
The next morning we headed to the airport and flew to Göteborg and from there we took a train home. It felt so weird to go on a plane. Once we landed in Göteborg we had about an hour to go to the Center and see the Sisters!! I was so happy to see Syster Juker and Syster Jenson again! I really miss them and they miss me. It was a fun reunion. The best part was that they had a teach set up with one of our investigators and I got to be there! He is preparing for baptism and we also had one of my favorite members there too. It was an amazing experience and I was grateful for that opportunity.
Then for district meeting on Thursday, President Newell and Elder Bracken came. We traveled down to Helingsborg and ate lunch with them. It was really cool to be able to spend time with the President. He is an amazing man and always has a great story to tell. I have been told by other missionaries that he really likes, trusts, and respects me. It is always nice to hear that. The focus of the meeting was on patience. Elder Wood did a great job of getting the point across that our prayers are always answered, just not always answered in the way we would like or the timing we would like.
The mission has a goal right now of baptizing 60 people by Christmas. That means each area in the mission will need to baptize one person. That is very do-able. We have been working with a lot of less actives here and when we go and visit I make a point of always asking for referrals. Because of that we have gotten some referrals! We received a referral by a less active member who said her friend has been reading the Book of Mormon every day for the past couple of months and has been listening to conference talks on Sunday because she can't make it to church because she lives so far away. But, she supposedly got a new house or job or something that will make it easier for her to come to church! We have a meeting set up with her this Friday with the less active member. We plan to commit her to baptism. Miracles are taking place and every day I am seeing more and more of the Lords hands in my life. This past Sunday we held a mission wide fast for these 60 people and we have already seen miracles happen. One of our investigators, who has some crazy questions, actually went to church in Mamlö this past weekend because he was down there. AMAZING.
Life is what you make it, so let's make it good! I am very grateful for the Elders and all the support I feel from them.
I am also very thankful for all of my dear friends who have written me. Thank you! It was really fun to see all the Halloween pictures from home. I love seeing all of my friends babies. Cute!
Love, Talisa!
Aka: Syster Vistaunet
P.s. Denmark temple here I come! On Saturday we are leaving here bright and early to go with the ward and spend the day in Denmark and go to the temple. I am very excited to go to Denmark, but I am more excited to get to go to the temple. Please go to the temple as much as you can. It is a beautiful place where you can really feel the love of our Savior through the Holy Ghost.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
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