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