February 21 2017

 
Hey everyone, it's been a great week here in Turku!
     Last week we had to go to the US Embassy in Helsinki cuz of my passport stuff, so we got to have a fun little adventure there. The island of Suomenlinna is really near by there as well, and it was a really pretty day with the frozen ocean, so that was really "cool" too. We took lots of pictures.
     Then Wednesday we went to Tampere for another zone conference. 

     One of our four investigators that has a baptismal date has officially quite smoking!! We're so proud of him! He's officially on his way to baptism! It's been so awesome to be a messenger of the Lord in helping bring his children to come unto Christ and to help them become truly converted. I love being able to see the enabling power of the atonement work within people and help them make significant changes in their lives to turn their life around and follow the example of Jesus Christ into the waters of baptism. It has definitely strengthened my own testimony, and makes me want to be a missionary and disciple of Christ.
     We also had this really great lesson with another one of our investigators on enduring to the end. We shared with her the movie clip on LDS.org about John Tanner and his conversion story. It wasn't the movie we were intending to show to her, but it ended up being perfect anyway because it touched on every aspect that we had been wanting to talk to her about. We also read with her D&C 122:7 where it talks about how all this shall by for your growth and your experience. After reading that, she turned to us and in English said, "This is exactly what I needed right now." We were really happy to hear that, especially cuz she had been having a really hard time at work, and we could tell it had brought a lot of comfort to her and had touched her heart.
     So funny story: we were out contacting the other night, and we went to stop this one man and as we were talking to him he just kept looking between the two of us. He didn't move at all or say anything. He just kept shifting his eyes between the two of us. We tried to give him a book, he didn't budge. Tried to give him a card, didn't budge or say anything, or even show any emotion, the entire time. So eventually we just wished him a good night and left. It was really weird, but after we were far enough away from him we just started laughing because it was so funny and awkward.

     In church this Sunday, it was really awesome, because I finally felt like I could understand almost everything that was going on in church. I still didn't understand everything, but I understand almost consistently the gist of everything. Finnish is such a cool language, I love it! 
     Well, it's been a great week! Thanks for all your love and support! Hope all is well. Love you all!

A frozen playground

January 31 2017

Hey everyone!

 I made it to Turku safe and sound! It's been a great first week here. Though I do miss Haaga and especially the people there tons, but Turku is beautiful and I can tell there are new things for me to learn by serving here.
Our first full day together we had the worldwide missionary broadcast which the presidency came out with some really cool new adjustments to the missionary schedule. Now it's more flexible in how we schedule our days, and we can even get an extra hour of sleep if we wanted to. It'll take some getting used to, but it'll be a great adjustment. They wanted us to be able to exercise our agency in how we schedule our days so we can have a better adjustment when we go home, and so that we can fit our schedule to the needs of our area. It's nice. This also means we have more time on p-days. Not to email per-se, but just to do all our p-day stuff. Our p-day starts at 8 now instead of 11.
We had a couple appointments with some really awesome people, and 2 of them currently have solid baptismal dates for March. We're really excited and praying for their preparation towards baptism.
Friday we had a dinner appointment at the church with our Ward Mission Leader (WML). Apparently he feeds us every Friday evening. That night he and his wife served us reindeer (don't tell the children! haha) on mashed potatoes, and blueberry pie. Soo yummy!! Sunday we had 4 investigators to church. It was awesome but hectic as well, especially because President Watson showed up at church too. Haha. So in between meetings we were shuffling between investigator to investigator trying to get them where they needed to go. Then on top of that a non-member decided to show up to sacrament meeting. So we got to tell her a little about it and brought her with us to our classes. We have a scheduled meeting with her for this wednesday.
After church our WML had us over to his home for dinner. It was about an hours drive too. They actually invited the non-member to come with us. She's a young sweet girl that's about my age. Our WML built this really cool cabin with lots of taxidermy's and animal pelts and wooden logs. It was really cool. I wish I had taken a picture, but I forgot to. :(

Anyway, Turku is beautiful with lots of beautiful old intricate buildings of which I haven't been able to take a picture of yet. Gah, sorry! But the Turku castle and Muuminmaailma are both in my area. It's in our plans to go see them during this transfer.
Love you all! Thanks for all the love and support!