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

It is not too cold here yet. Which is nice. But, I am sure it is coming. It has not snowed yet either. Maybe Utah is worse than Sweden this year. Haha.