What is True Conversion?

My district, minus the missionary couple who serve with us. When I looked at this photo I realized I really needed a brightly colored scarf! What was I thinking?

Semlor ~ a very delicious treat! Yum.

My thoughts are with the family this weekend for Great Grandma´s funeral. I had a feeling that when I left I would be saying goodbye. Well, goodbye for this life at least. I am very happy that she is now back with Great Grandpa. That definitely was a joyous reunion! Thank you for sending pictures of me with her. I send my love. Great Grandma Powelson was a wonderful example to me. She lived a wonderful life and always had a smile. She will be missed and I am looking forward to the day when I will get the chance to thank her for everything she did for me. She was a powerful example of a righteous and faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Enjoy the funeral and send me a program. I love you all!

Something that I have been thinking a lot about lately is - what does it really mean to be converted? I have been thinking about this because while being on my mission I have had the chance to work with many less active members. I have grown to love them so much. Because I love them so much I want to know how I can best help them come back and remember their testimony. Today I was reading in 'True to the Faith' and I read under "conversion" to see if I could see why so many people leave the church or seem to forget their testimony. It gave four characteristics of a truly converted person: 1. They desire to do good. 2. Do not rebel against the Lord. 3. Share the gospel. 4. Are filled with LOVE.

This has made me start thinking of myself and the pathway that I have been on to true conversion. In my missionary purpose it states that our purpose is to bring others unto Christ through repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Every day I think about how can I bring someone closer to our Savior today and how can I be a tool in the hands of our Heavenly Father? Something that I think people forget is to endure to the end with Faith.

Our mission is really focusing on building our faith in order to see miracles happen. I know that if we face each new day with a faithful prayer to our Heavenly Father that He will help us and answer our prayers.

We had another really busy week and I can't believe that I am sitting at the computer again writing you. It is amazing to me how fast the days go by. I really truly am involved with this great work and all I do every day is think about how I can help others.

I am now starting to understand why it would-will be hard to come back to real life. It is amazing to me how much work there is to do. And how many people there are that don´t know the truth.

We have some amazing members here and I am excited to get to know them better. We had branch council on Saturday and I now feel like I have a vision somewhat of what this branch needs from me. They really want us missionaries to focus on less actives and bringing them back. They want to help us with our work and go out on teaches with us to visit our investigators and the less actives. I am feeling much better about the work here because I know that I have the support of the branch. It was an amazing experience to be there and to be able to be involved with the discussions going on. I am witnessing the gift of tongues every day. I know that I could not do this work without my Heavenly Fathers help.

At the end of every day I am exhausted and fall right asleep. I think it´s because my brain hurts from thinking so much in another language. Haha. My love for the Swedish language is coming. I still get frustrated sometimes because I feel like I can´t express myself. But that´s okay, I can work on that.

Missionary miracle: So, about a week ago we received two referrals from mormon.org. Super rad! We called them and only one of the phone numbers worked. I ended up talking to a really nice lady for about ten minutes about the church and she is very interested in learning more and receiving a Book of Mormon. The only problem is that she lives about 3-4 hours away! We are trying to figure out when the best time is for us to travel there. The other referral we got was here in Karlskrona. So, we set out to visit her. Once we finally found the house we knocked on the door and a teenage girl answered and said that she had never heard of us and had no idea that we would be coming. It looked like it was some kind of joke. But I knew that there had to be a reason we were sent to that neighborhood. So, we made a goal to contact every person we saw. We stopped a young girl who thought that I was speaking English at first and said "sorry, I don't understand" and then I said "but I was trying to speak Swedish". She got all embarrassed and said "oh sorry, that´s so cool that you are learning swedish.. why?" Bam! We explained that we were missionaries and asked her if she believed in God. She said YES! She then went on to tell us a story about how God helped her when she was feeling really sad. She bore her testimony of God to us. The discussion picked up from there and we talked for about 20 minutes about God, life, and The Book of Mormon. She even offered to help us with our Swedish and we said we could help her with her English. She really liked that. We gave her a Book of Mormon and asked her to read the intro and then when we meet next week we could talk about it. Fridays are the days that work best for her. She was 16 years old and went on to say that her boyfriend and sister might even be interested in learning more as well! Heavenly Father led us straight to her.

Well, life as a Swedish missionary is grand. This weekend we are having a sisters conference and I am super excited! We will be traveling to Stockholm for it.

I love you all. Be good and be a missionary! Or at least invite them over for dinner.

Love,Talisa!

First time translating in church

View out our apartment window.

Thank you so much for sending the butterscotch chips...we immediately made cookies!

Train ride.

Wow. That has been the word of the week. My first full week in Karlskrona has been stressful and amazing. But, I think that is just life in general.

This week we have had semlor (yummy dessert), zone conference, slipped on the ice, amazing teaches with members, miracles in finding people to teach, middags, and translating for the first time in church.

On Tuesday we were on our way to a visit a member and we saw the bus coming so we starting running to catch it. Unfortunately, I did not see the ice and slipped very hard and the next thing I knew my companion was sitting on the ground next to me. She had followed my example and slipped as well. Haha. I really hurt my ankle and have been limping ever since. I ice it every night. No worries. Luckily my companion didn´t hurt herself like I did. We learn from our mistakes.. right? I have now learned to never run for a bus in the winter.

Semlor is an amazing cream puff dessert that starts coming out in Sweden in January and February. I guess they actually have a semlor day on February 12th. We have already had it three times with members. Yum. I am looking forward to semlor day and, don´t worry, I have a recipe to make it when I come home.

We live three hours away from Malmö and that is where our Zone conference was this past week. So, lucky us, we got to wake up at 5am and travel there. We walked in the chapel doors just in time for Zone conference to begin which was 10am. It was an amazing conference. It focused on our mission´s goals and how to have patience with yourself. I have realized that many missionaries don´t think that they are doing a good enough job. It was nice to hear from our Mission President and his wife that we are doing a good job. Our mission had a total of 158 baptisms last year and for this upcoming year we have a goal to get 260 baptisms! When the Area President came and visited our mission he told us that the only thing that we were missing as a mission was faith. So, we re-read Alma 32 together and heard many different success stories. I love hearing success stories because that always boosts up your faith.

Whenever I sit in front of the computer to email home I always seem to forget something.

I will now tell you about an amazing missionary moment that Syster Francis and I experienced last week. We were on our way to visit one of our investigators and we weren´t really sure where she lived, just the general area. While walking around we stopped a girl and asked her if she knew where it was and how to get there. She was very nice and walked us to a spot where she could point it out to us. Then my lovely companion said "well, if you have time maybe you could come with us and we could tell you more about why we are here in Sweden". She was curious as to why we were there. We told her we were missionaries and then she told us that she believes in "science" and not religion. We then started talking about God and how He is our loving Heavenly Father. We then found out that she has lived here for the past ten years with her mom. Once we got to the address she asked us who we were visiting and we told her and she said "I know them! Can I come with you?" My brain was exploding at this point. We said yes and she followed us up. When the family opened the door and saw her with us they could not stop smiling. I guess they have pretty much lost contact with each other and this was the first time they had seen each other in a year! Bonding took place. We then taught a lesson on how families can be together forever and who God is and what our relationship with Him can be. When we left the family invited us back over to have dinner next week and the girl asked us for our number. She thought what we had to say was interesting! Miracles happen.

Another thing that happened this week was translating for the first time. I have not spoken so much Swedish in my whole life. It is really hard to be the Senior missionary who really understands what is happeníng. But, we are both learning together and it´s lovely. I am almost out of time... I will finish later..

Love, Talisa!

More photos...

Snow....finally!!!

Delicious!

Syster Vistaunet and Syster Francis.

Just moving in to our new place!!

So, I guess we can only book the computers for an hour and then if we need more time another hour. But we have to re-sign in. So, now I am back.

Anyway, I was writing about our investigator from Iran. He comes every week to church and wants to be baptized but can´t because it is not safe for him to do so. Well, on Sunday I got the privilege to translate for him. I was very nervous because I am not good at translating. All I can get is the main idea. Sunday school was really hard to translate because the lesson was on Lehi´s dream (The tree of Life) and translating and explaining at the same time was tricky. We finally got up and left so we could just teach him in English. That was much better. We are now planning on using that Sunday school time to teach him. Next week we will be teaching the YW! I love my life.

While we were at church people kept coming up to us and inviting us over and giving us things to do. We are working really hard so we can earn the trust of the members and, by doing that, we can then strengthen them.

Yesterday after church we were invited over to a members house for dinner- The Bloombergs. I love them! We had a great time getting to know them. Sister Bloomberg kept telling us to relax and she would do all the cooking. It was funny because I could not just sit there. I had to be doing something to help. So, I got up and just started helping her.

We have something set up and planned for every night this week. We are busy missionaries here.

Anyway, back to translating, I experienced the gift of tongues yesterday and I can testfiy that it is real! I amazed myself at how much I could actually understand. And I believe that I was able to translate just what our invesitgator needed. We are speaking Swedish all the time and it is really helping me become more and more comfortable with speaking it.

Thank you for all of your prayers. I can feel the power of prayer working in my life. Thank you.

Love, Talisa!

One more story...

Last Thursday was my first day in Karlskrona with Syster Francis. We had some appointments the Elders had set up for us, which we were very grateful for. We headed out to find one of our investigators and when we got to the door she was not home. Her mother told us that we could come back tomorrow. We had about an hour until our Branch President was going to pick us up for dinner. We decided to go contacting around our investigators house.

While we were out talking with people we stopped an older man and asked him if he knew that God had a plan for him and if he has ever recieved answers to prayers. He then said "No. But, I would love to talk more about the good words from God". He asked us to follow him to his house and talk more about God´s plan. While we were walking we found out that he had actually investigated the church four years earlier and he had a Book of Mormon! Since we are sisters we couldn´t go inside his apartment, but we did walk him home and set up another appointment for next week. When we dropped him off we noticed packing boxes everywhere. He actually had just moved in. So, this upcoming week we are going to head over to his house with a member and help get him unpacked.

I was amazed at how the Lord sent us straight to his son who was in need of a friend. We feel like being able to serve him will open doors for us to talk more about God's plan for him personally. I know that the elect are out there! We just have to build up our courage and set aside our pride and get to work.

-Talisa

Pictures from our first adventures in Karlskrona

The photo below, with two tower things, is the Fredrik Church (1744) in Market Square. Market Square is the second largest square in Europe, only after Red Square in Russia. It's Swedish name is Fredrikskyrkan.

The picture above, with the dome, is also a church in the square. It is Heligatrefaldighetskyran - also known at Church of the Holy Trinity or German Church (1709). They were both designed by the same architect who built the royal palace in Stockholm.

Here are a couple of pictures from our first adventures in Karlskrona. Yippee! I promise I will take more awesome pictures. It looks like the work is ready to take off here.

I have been studying courage lately in the scriptures and reading a lot in Jesus the Christ. I have come to the conculsion that in order to have courage we first have to have faith. Faith leads to action. And in order to be active you have to courage.

I would love it if someone would keep me updated with pictures of Corryn's belly. I am sad that I am missing that whole process. It will be fun to come home to a new nephew. I will be an Aunt. Wow. So, keep me updated. I hope school goes well for everyone this semester. I love you.

Love,

Talisa

Pictures...

Me and Syster Francis and all of the sisters heading to our new areas!

Me and the other trainers.

The week of Travelling

Leaving Halmstad. The Lindahl's are great!

Syster Kiser on her way home.

One of our investigators in Halmstad.

Well, I have made it to the senior companion side of the mission now. It is quite the trip being the older one and in charge. So much happened this past week I just hope that I remember to write about it all.

It all started on Tuesday when Syster Kiser and I traveled to Uppsala, which is about an hour away from Stockholm, to spend the night with the sisters there. We also went there for Syster Kiser to visit some investigators that taught and were baptized. That was a really neat experience to meet the people that I have heard both Syster Kiser and Syster Dabb talk about. They taught two men who were baptized and they are both still very active and working their way to the Temple now. It really is amazing to see how the gospel can change a persons life.

The next morning we woke up early and headed to Stockholm for the trainers meeting and to drop Syster Kiser off. It is such a surreal feeling, being the one who is now training. It really seems like yesterday that I was their, scared to death with my trainer. I am amazed at how fast time goes by. Then we got our trainees! I am training Syster Francis. She is from Washington State. She is super awesome and has an amazing get to work attitude! We are going to experience miracles together. We have made some really good goals for this upcoming week. I am trying to give her a lot of chances to take the lead. It is a very fun new experience.

It took about 8 hours to travel to Karlskrona. And boy was it an adventure! We traveled with some Elders to Hässelholm and then we spilt off and we were supposed to take another train to Karlskrona... but, it was canceled. Joy. So, we had to take two different busses to Karlskrona which made us about an 1 1/2 hours late! I felt really bad for the member who was going to pick us up. But we were traveling with no phone and I didn't have the members phone number anyway. So we did a lot of praying that he would stay and wait for us to arrive. Luckily we pulled into the train station and a really nice man came up to us and said "I have been waiting for you". I was grateful for nice members at this point and glad that I had a tag to idenifty ourselves. It was about 11pm and we got in and all settled around 11:20ish. What a night.

Karlskrona is an amazing city! We pretty much live on the ocean! Which means it is freezing! The wind here is unbelievable. We have had some fun adventures trying to figure out where we are going and how to get to different places. On Thursday night we had a middag(dinner) with the branch president and his family and then he drove us around Karlskrona so we could get a feel of the town. I was grateful for him. He is an amazing man and you can tell that he has a huge heart for this church. His wife is very nice. They have three kids who are really cute. I can tell that we are going to be friends. Then we did weekly planning and unpacked and such. On Saturday we headed to Ronneby, which is about 20 minutes away, to have a meeting with our ward mission leader. He fed us dinner too. He lives with his son who is about 13 and they have three very big dogs!

Church was wonderful and I have never seen a Relief Society President so excited to have sisters here! The branch is very excited to have us here, my only hope is that we don't dissapoint. We will be meeting with the Relief Society President tomorrow and she is going to take us around to visit some less active sisters so that we can see where they live and meet them, with her, for the first time. I can tell that we are going to be very busy here once we get the hang of things and gain a vision for what this area needs. The branch has about 20-30 people who come to church every week.

Thank you for the package with butterscoth chips in it. I have never been so happy. And we recieved those fruit snacks just in time. Because guess what!? Our fridge is broken. Haha. Our freezer works but not the fridge. We have been hanging our milk out the window. We have been trying to get a hold of our landlord but he is not answering his phone and he is never home. We will have to see what we can do about that problem.

Thanks for all the letters also! I really have been blessed with the best friends in the whole world. So, thank you everyone who has written me lately. I feel very loved and supported, which is very needed when you are a missionary. Dad was right, I did mean the other kind of fruit roll ups but I really enjoyed the other ones that you sent! So, thank you.

Coming here to Karlskrona, where I am the one who is supposed to know what's going on and my language is the best of the two of us, is quite the experience. I truly have felt the gift of tongues working and it is amazing to me how much comfort I feel from my Heavenly Father with speaking the langauge. My cute companion just wants to speak Swedish all the time so that really helps me and pushes me to speak it as well. I am the one who now gets to call all the people and set up appointments. I have to really focus hard when I am on the phone because sometimes the people speak way too fast. I know it will get easier the more practice I get. Our ward mission leader speaks Swedish so fast. Luckily his son is really good at English and the dad will turn to him and say Översätt! Which means translate. Haha.

Okay, so the time has come to end this long email. I am going to try to figure out how to send pictures here as well.. But I am running out of time. So, we will see. 2 hr limit now in the library.

Love, Talisa!
Aka: Syster Vistaunet

Transfer day in Stockholm

Syster Vistaunet and Syster Francis.

This is a wonderful email we just received:

We met your daughter for the first time Wednesday, January 11, 2012 in
Stockholm. She came to Stockholm with her old companion that was going home
and she came to pickup her new companion. She is now a
trainer. She is doing very well and we were very excited to see her.

She and her companion are pointing to the city where they will be
serving..Karlskrona, about as far south in Sweden as you can go. We
know that she will do a great job there.


Sending our love,

Elder and Sister Johanson

The Johanson's (friends of Talisa's grandparents) and Syster Vistaunet.

Moving AGAIN!!! Karlskrona here I come!

A goodbye party for us!

One of my Primary girls and I being silly. I gave her the nerds chapstick and she loved it.

WOWOWOW!!!

I have really learned my lesson that transfers never, ever go the way you think they will. On Saturday morning we got transfer calls and the President told me that I would be leaving Halmstad and training a new missionary. I freaked out! I am going even further South. That means that the Swedish language is going to be even harder to understand! I am a little nervous. But I do know that I have God and Jesus Christ on my side, so I will be okay. Please pray extra hard for me and my greenie this week. It really will be a week full of surprises.

I am going to Karlskrona which was just an Elders area and is now turning over to a Sisters area. My greenie and I will be the first Sisters there! I am told that there is a branch with about 20-25 active members. So, a little bit more than Halmstad.

It´s funny how God works because I have been praying for change.. and boy did I get it! I should know better ~ every time I do that I get handed a LOT of change. Haha. Because of all the craziness emails will be a little shorter today. Sorry. We are leaving early tomorrow morning to head to Stockholm. We have to take my bags down to Helingsborg tonight because the mission leaders don't want me to have to bring them to Stockholm and then all the way back down South. Makes sense, but it has caused some stress. Some members will be driving us down there in about an hour. They are very nice and I will miss them so much.Then on Wednesday night the Branch President in Karlskrona will be picking us up at the train station at 7:30 and take us to our new apartment. I love the church! Members are so helpful to missionaries.

So, since it´s been a crazy week we have just been going around to all the members and less-actives that we have been working with and trying to spend as much time with them as possible. When we told the ward that they would be getting Elders they were all bummed. They love having sisters and they were all very sad. But the Elders who are coming here will do a great job! Elder Rowley is coming!! And then Elder Sandberg who I dont know as well. I have complete trust in Elder Rowley I know he will take care of my Halmstad. I have been really busy cleaning and writing tons of notes in order to make sure this area is ready for the Elders.

My time here in Halmstad has been quite the ride. I have had some of the best times of my mission and some of the worst. In my journal I am making a list of everything that I did here and tried to accomplished. My number one goal while I was here was to strengthen this ward through service and I believe that Sister Kiser and I did that. Last district meeting Elder Todesco gave a great lesson on using the members in the work and while we were reading I got a strong impression that the next step here in Halmstad is finding. We have helped the ward get through some tough months and now they are ready to help the Elders with some major finding work. Plus, we have some solid people who are thinking about meeting with us. An amazing couple that we met while we were at the doctors office. A Swedish lady with an American husband and they have two children! I called her today to tell her that we would both be leaving and asked if the Elders could call her and she said YES and said they would love to show them around Halmstad too. Miracles are happening. The work here in Halmstad is going to take off, I have a really good feeling.

Well, next weeks email will be much more exciting because then I will have many new experiences to write about. Wow. New area, my Swedish vocabulary being the best, and training! Have I told you how much I LOVE being a missionary? Well, I do. I am told that they have a lot of good things for us to do in Karlskrona- lots of weekly things are scheduled. Those are my favorite. I am excited to have a greenie and to get to go into a new area. Both of us will be figuring things out for the first time. Haha.

Oh yea, be on the look out for 2 packages. I sent them today. Somehow I acquired a lot more stuff this transfer. Dang Christmas. Haha. I sent home some more gifts because I couldn't fit them anywhere. Haha. And I made sure to tape the sides. Let me know when you get them. I love you all so much! And thanks to all my friends for the festivus notes and emails!

Remember to read the scriptures, pray, and smile everyday! That is my mission goal...no actually it's my life goal. I love this ward and I will miss them.. but I am so ready for a change. Love you all so much!

Love, Talisa!

Aka: Syster Vistaunet

Gott Nytt År! = Happy New Year!

New Years dinner.

The best eggnog I have ever had. Don't worry, I got the recipe. I will make it when I get home!

What Talisa saw on Skype in Sweden on Christmas day!

Wow. I can't believe that it´s now 2012. Time really goes by so fast. That is why we must always remember to live every day to the fullest.

I have made some New Years goals and most of them have to deal with missionary work. They are:

-To finish the Book of Mormon in Swedish

-To finish the Old Testament

-Live in the Now

-Support my companions to the best of my abilities

-Have more faith in the Lord

-Choose to be happy every day

-Make lasting relationships with all the people that I meet

-Do three things every day: read my scriptures, pray, and smile! (This has been my mission motto)

Well, the holidays in Sweden have been a joy. I am looking forward to next week because then I will become a trainer! Finally I will be in charge...Haha. It looks like we will leave Tuesday night and sleep over in Stockholm and then Wednesday I have a trainers meeting and I will receive my greenie. I am so excited, I can hardly wait!

I have made some good plans for Halmstad and I am excited to actually be able to put them into action. There are many areas in Halmstad that I have never been to. We are going to be tracting and contacting fools! I can't wait to go and explore.

New Years Eve we went to a member family who live about 30 mins outside of Halmstad in Öskarström. Cute little town- we have about 6 members who live out there. We had a lovely dinner with them and then spent the rest of the night playing games and eating. Haha. I felt like I was at home. We played Swedish Trivia Pursuit, which was fun until I realized that most of the questions I didn't know or understand. Oh well. Then we came home at 9:30- curfew and went to bed. At midnight we heard fireworks very loud and clear. I LOVE SWEDEN! Everyone buys fireworks and then they all light them at midnight. So, we were running around in our apartment looking out all of the windows- every where we looked there were fireworks. It was so neat and I loved it. They also had paper lantern type things like in Tangled and the whole sky was filled with them. The fireworks lasted about 30minutes. I love being able to live in another country and see all the different traditions through out the year.

The next day at church we didn´t have very many people come. In Sunday school it was Senja-the teacher, me and an older member. Very small. I am so excited to study the Book of Mormon this year in Sunday school. Senja is a really great teacher and I hope that I will be able to attend her classes. The only problem is that she teaches when I teach Primary. Maybe every once in a while I will be able to attend. I do love teaching Primary. They are my favorite little girls. I think it will be very fun for the greenie to teach Primary with me.

The past couple of weeks have been really hard weeks for missionary work. Everyone seems to be gone or does not want to talk about God. Surprise. Or my companion is too sick to go out. So, I have been reading in Jesus the Christ a lot lately and I am learning so much. I love that book. We do have some potential investigators and I am really excited about meeting with them. The Swedish lady, who we met at the doctors, and her American husband and then some of Solisa´s friends from school. We will be having lunch with them tomorrow!

Since this is Syster Kiser's last week in Sweden we have a dinner scheduled every night! Yay! We are actually going to be really busy this week with visiting members, less-actives, and some investigators. A goal that we want to help the ward with this new year is doing home and visiting teaching. I came up with the idea of focusing on Christlike attributes- Preach my Gospel chapter 6. We are going to challenge each member to pick a different Christlike attribute every month to focus on and see how they can become more like our Savior. If you can get a hold of a Preach my Gospel I challenge you all to read and study it. It really is an amazing book. Then you can see what I am trying to do every day. Chapter 6 is the best chapter.

Dad and Mom- I am so glad that you got the Christmas package.. I was getting worried. But, I will be sending another package soon. I would love it if you could send back the thumb drive that I sent you so I can put more Swedish music on it. I have made friends with many of the Elders and Elder Codling promised me that I could get all of his Swedish music when I get home. Lots of the Elders here buy hard drives and fill them up with music. Good idea. Elder Codling goes home next week. He's from Cedar Hills, Ut.

I bought myself a really neat Swedish cookbook. I love it. Today I bought the coolest hat because my head gets cold. I also got some cds and I will be sending some of them home soon. The package that I am sending really is a package for Mom and Dad. Lots of things for you. Because I love you!! Oh, and yes, I got all the packages ~ thank you! I have not gotten the Festivus letters yet. I am looking forward to it. I did get a lovely Christmas card today from both of you. I love you!

Much Love,

Your Swedish daughter- Talisa!

Sorry not so many pictures this week.