Find, Teach, and Baptize 2012

These feather trees are placed all over the city around Easter time every year..kinda neat.

We went to Ikea and had a blast. The food is super yummy and really cheap. I have the feeling that I will be eating there quite often once summer time gets here.

This past week has been amazing. Every time I sit down to think about my past week and write my emails I am just filled with so much happiness. Being a missionary really is a HUGE blessing and I am so grateful for the chance I have to be here in Gävle. This city is prepared for the second harvest and Syster Jacobs and I are seeing it unfold right before our eyes.

I have such a testimony of my Mission President. I was reminded a couple of different times within the past couple of weeks that my goal as a missionary is to find, teach, and baptize. With my re-focus and opening my mouth more we have seen the blessings pour out. We had 25 teaches this past week and 20 of them where with investigators!

As a mission we have a standard of excellence that we are focusing on this year and the focus is on these three areas of missionary work:

Find- To talk to ten people daily and have 5 new investigators weekly.

Teach- To have 20 teaches weekly and to have 3 investigators in church every week.

Baptize- To have a new baptismal date every week and to have a baptism weekly withing our zone.

When I first heard these goals I didn´t have much faith because my numbers were only that high some weeks. I didn´t really see it reachable. I now know that these goals are very reachable and I am very grateful for the chance I have to be a missionary here in Sweden where we find, teach, and baptize! We have a goal for our mission to see 260+ baptisms for this year. I know that is possible.

Syster Jacobs and I made some goals for our time together and we want to see 7 bapitsms together.Which is very possible because we have three people that we are working with right now towards baptism. April 21st is the day that we are aiming towards. We have some great people we are teaching now. It is amazing to see how Heavenly Father really leads us to his children who are prepared. It is great to have members willing to help us do missionary work too.

We had four investigators at church on Sunday and it was quite the show. We were running back and forth like chicken´s with their heads cut off. Haha. I was very grateful for the wonderful members that we have here in Gävle and the support we felt from them. Kurt Sjöqvist actually taught the investigator class. We taught a class in English in another room. It was the most amazing Sunday I have had on my mission! Syster Jacobs and I are really seeing Heavenly Fathers hands in our work and we know that we could not do this work without His help. It brings me so much joy to see my brothers and sisters accept and learn more about the gospel.

After church we went over to a wonderful member's house and had a wonderful birthday lunch and made her feel like a princess. I love birthdays and making people feel loved.

Okay, so every single day we have amazing, very memorable experiences and it´s very hard to write about all of them. I will share one of them. Last Wednesday we had a youth activity. Missionaries in Gavle have done activites every Wednesday night for the past year or so. It´s a great chance for us as missionaries to really get to know the youth and then it is a great chance for them to invite their friends to meet the missionaries. This past week we had two investigators come to the activity and we gave them a church tour with the help of two young members.The spirit was present and you could tell that these two young people were really understanding everything we were saying. Then we had a lovely night playing a bunch of get to know you games. We are making so many friends here in Gävle-since both my companion and I are very social- that´s what happens. Haha.

I am excited for General Conference. We have been invited to drive down to Uppsala with our ward mission leader for Saturday and then on Sunday we have been invited over to a families house here in Gävle for dinner and then to watch the Sunday morning session. We have been going around and visiting lots of members and challenging them to come up with questions that they want answered through general conference. I know that if you do that then you will have your questions answered. Remember that God´s living Prophet is speaking to us this weekend. I am grateful for that.

Our district leader has challenged our district to focus on three things:

1. Talk with everyone!

2. To teach in Unity.

3. To boldly invite.

Heavenly Father is blessing our missionary efforts here in Gävle. Syster Jacobs and I are on fire and we are just going to keep working as hard as we can.

I love being busy and doing Heavenly Father´s work. I love you all! And wish everyone a happy general conference watching.

Love, Talisa!
AkA:Syster Vistaunet