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!