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!

12/20/16

​

Merry Christmas everyone!I can't wait to be able to skype home this week.
We got two new investigators this week. They're really awesome, and in their first time coming church they both made comments in

​ ​

Sunday school. It was really great! One of them even volunteered to help prepare the
Sacrament, but luckily bishop was sitting next to him and explained to him that he couldn't really do that
quite yet. That part comes after you receive the Priesthood.

​ ​

So glad to see they're willing!
Haha.

We visited a less active member (she shared some yummy Finnish blueberry pie with us), and

​ ​she

​came

 to 

​​

church

​ ​

Sunday

​ as well.​

. This was the first time she had been to church in about a year. In church that day, one of the

​ ​

High

​ ​

Councilors

​ ​

had come to speak, and he was actually her home teacher a while ago. How cool is that?! He didn't know that she hadn't been coming to church, so that was a blessing for them both. After meeting with her on

​ ​

Wednesday, we were able to get home in 20 minutes,

​ ​

even though

​ ​

it took us an hour to get there. It was quite a blessing because we wouldn't have gotten home on time otherwise.Another day, we were out trying to find a referral, and couldn't find it. It was in an area that we had never been before, so we didn't know which busses went there. We went to a stop and waited for a second. I had the feeling to hurry over to the next stop, so we did, but on our way a bus came that we knew could take us home. We weren't to the stop yet, and the bus had passed us, so we were afraid we weren't going to catch it, especially

​ ​

because

​ ​

president has advised us not to run for busses or trains because we don't look professional when doing so. We were able to make it because the drivers were switching shifts. We knew that was a blessing from Heavenly Father.

There were some other sisters having a baptism at our church building because it's the stake center, so we decided to invite some of our investigators to it. When we invited our

​ ​

Chinese investigator, he mis-understood, because he thought it was

​ ​

HIS

​ ​

baptism. His response was "Oh, okay. I'm a little nervous, but I think I can do this." It was so cute. He was just so humble and ready to do what we asked of him, even though we would always make sure it was his decision, not ours, for him. He asked us when the soonest was that he could get baptized, and that this is something he's really serious about. He's awesome. He has plans to go back to China

​ ​

rightafter Christmas, but he found out that if he gets a job, he can stay.

​ ​

He wants to so he can keep coming to church here and learning
about the Gospel

​ ​

from us.

Saturday was the baptism of the other sisters. Our

​ ​

Chinese investigator and one of our newest investigators came, it was really cool. Because the church was in our area, we had to prepare the baptismal font.
We woke up and came straight to the church to start filling it up so it would be ready by

​ ​

noon. When we got to the church (we had a lesson a little bit before), the water was really cold. So we decided that we would let it drain
out

​ ​

a little bit

​ ​

and

​ ​

turn the hot water back on. 20 minutes later as we came out of the lesson,

​ ​

​

a member told us that the font was

​ ​

nearly empty!!!!! We went and checked and there was only a foot of water in the font!!! It takes

​ ​

4 hours to fill it up,

​ ​w

e 

​really ​

didn't think it would drain almost completely in 20 minutes. Keep in mind that this is 30 minutes before the baptismal service is supposed to start.

​ ​

So the elders, us, sisters, everyone is grabbing pots from the kitchen and filling them with the sink,

​ using ​

hoses

​ and​

 everything

​ ​

we could think of. They ended up postponing the baptism for another 20 minutes. But we were

​ ​

still

​ ​

able to fill the font in only 40 minutes

​ ​

instead of 4 hours. Heavenly Father was definitely watching out for us!

​

 At church on

​ ​

Sunday, as we were greeting people at the door,

​ ​

our mission

​ ​

President and Sister Watson walk in the door. Surprise!!! Of all the weeks they picked to show up, it was probably the best one because we had 4 of our investigators in church, and a couple less active

​ ​

members. After church President and Sister Watson invited us to come over to their home for dinner with the 

​​

elders. We were really surprised because 1) they live out of our area, and President has a rule that we can't have dinner appointments out of our area, and 2)we can't have dinner appointments with the

​ ​

Elders. 

​In this instance though, the President was in charge, so it really wasn't an issue after all. Just surprising. ​

We had yummy

​ ​

Shephards pie, cinnamon apple slices, carrots, pulla, and glögi (finnish christmas drink). We talked about Christmas traditions, and favorite

​ ​

Christmas movies. It was really

​ ​

awesome to interact with President and Sister Watson on such a casual one on one basis.  It was fun.

Well everyone, it's been a great week. Thanks for all the love and support. Love you all, and I can't wait to skype home at Christmas!!!

-Sisar Cappskarissa.capps@myldsmail.net

https://www.mormon.org/fin?locale=fin
Myöhempien Aikojen Pyhien Jeesuksen Kristuksen Kirkko

11/8/16

Hey 

​all​

!!!

This week has been a great week. We'll be going to the temple 

​in Helsinki ​

today, so unfortunately we don't have hardly any time to email. 

​I do have some pictures though. 

Enjoy!

​

Love you all!!!

 
All bundled up for winter! 

Our Backyard! Beautiful!

The tallest hill in Helsinki!

Sunsets and icy roads

Sis. Nelson and Sis. Capps in the snow.

10/11/16

​​​​​​​​​​Hello everyone back home!                                     10/11/16

Wow, what a great week! It's been super crazy fun getting everything ready for the baptism. The baptism went very well. He kept telling everyone he felt so light, and that he felt like flying afterwards. He is an amazing person, I can tell that he is on his way to even greater things.

We had splits with the sister training leaders yesterday. So many miracles came about from it. The first sister I was with, we went to tract in Leppävaara (I got lost on the way there, haha). We got a return appointment with one person we talked with, and gave a Book of Mormon out to another. The second part of the day after lunch, I was with the other sister training leader. We had planned to tract in the area we lived in, but realized that the other sisters had all the books to keep track of what doors we knock on. So we decided to go to our area and find former investigators. We got lost on the way there again, but Heavenly Father had a plan for that. Once we got our bearings again, we started down a street, talked to a man, gave him a Book of Mormon and set up an appointment, walked about 5 feet, talked to a lady, gave her a book and set up an appointment. Walked another five feet, talked to another man, gave him a book and set up an appointment. We had multiple miracles happen within just a couple feet. This pretty much never happens in Finland. People are hardly ever this willing to learn about a new religion.

A street or two later, we see this lady standing next to a tree, and she was doing something strange. As we got closer to her, I leaned over to the sister I was with and asked, "Sister, is she stomping on acorns?" She said, she sure is, let’s talk to her!! So we stopped and talked to her and started stomping on acorns and taught her almost the entire lesson about the Restoration of Jesus’ true Gospel upon the earth. So cool!

The last part of the day I was with the first sister again, and we went to a lady who was a self-referral, meaning that she sent or called in a request to send missionaries to her. She told us she is looking for the truth. She is so awesome, and she is definitely so prepared and wants to keep taking the lessons. We're super excited to keep teaching her.

It's been a great week.

Unfortunately that's all I have time for, but I love you all! Thanks so much for your support!

Rakkaudellani,

-Sisar Capps

https://www.mormon.org/fin?locale=fin

Myöhempien Aikojen Pyhien Jeesuksen Kristuksen Kirkko