Sisar Cäpps

Moi from Lahti Finland!!

My first area is a city called Lahti just about an hours train ride from the main train station in Helsinki.

I pretty much slept the entire plane ride from Salt Lake to here. I was a little sad I slept through the flight from London to Helsinki, cuz I wanted to be able to see it from the sky. But that's okay.

President Watson and his wife, the assistants to the president and sister training leaders all met us at the airport. We had a little ride around Helsinki and Espoo on our way to the mission home. We stopped by the temple on our way. It's so beautiful here. Everything is so green and rich, and there are biking-walking trails everywhere.

We stayed the first night in the mission home then had to go get registered the next morning. We had to go over some other legal things and paper work while we were in the mission home, then we had lunch, found out who our companions were and where we were going.

My companion is Sisar Albiston. She is so awesome and so helpful. This is her last transfer, so after these next 8 weeks, she goes home and I have to finish my training with another sister if I don't have to train someone. Because there are 23 new missionaries coming in this next transfer, it's likely that some of us will be trainers. But we'll see when we get there.

First day when I got to Lahti, we already had an appointment set up with a man that was a potential. Sisar Albiston and her previous companion had talked to him on the street previously he gave them permission to come back that day. So he wasn't an investigator yet, but when we talked to him that day, he agreed to continue learning about the gospel. So we got a new investigator on my first day in Lahti. I'd tell you more about him, but privacy laws in Finland are a big thing here and they're fairly strict. It's kinda like the HIPAA laws for healthcare. At least that's how I treat it. We're allowed to write a little bit more about it in our journals though, so I'm not too worried about it. But that also goes for the kinds of pictures we take, cuz we have to be careful about that. So I'll send as many pictures as I can, but just know that there are laws that kinda keep me from taking a bunch of them.

Otherwise, things are pretty slow. People are pretty set in their ways and they mostly keep to themselves, so it's a challenge to find people that are interested. But it's okay because any time they say no, or shut the door on us, I have to remind myself of what President Hadfield told me just before I got set apart: If knew that there are 50 people in Finland that are ready to hear the gospel, and there are 5 mil. people in the country, you're going to do everything you can to find them, right? If they close the door on you or shut you down, then you know that they're not one of the 50. That's what I tell myself every time they say no.

The language is pretty rough. My first Sunday, the first councilor asked if I would introduce myself and share my testimony. I had no choice but to agree of course (Their accent is different than we though, so I had to learn a little bit of their accent the past week). So I gathered some thoughts and introduced myself and shared my testimony. After sacrament meeting people came up to me and asked how long I'd been in Finland because "you have a great finnish accent." (The members are so great and welcoming) They said some other things that were comforting to hear. So at least I have good accent. haha. Vocabulary and grammar though... not so good. Usually if I'm understanding what's going on in the lessons (most often with less active members), then I'll jump in and bear my testimony of what ever we're talking about. At this point I can understand maybe 1/3 of what's going on in discussions.

Jet lag is still pretty rough, but thankfully sister Watson gave us permission to take little naps as needed for our first week. Utah is 9 hours behind us. So here when I'm supposed to be awake and studying, my body is still on Utah sleep schedule thinking that I'm supposed to be going to bed. But anyway, Finland is amazing and I wish everyone could come here and experience it.

Can't wait to hear from you all!

Rakastan teitä! Heipää!