Wow this has been an eventful week and had a lot going on! Just a warning... I believe this is longer than usual:)) It seems pretty long when I have it on my phone so good luck with that.:))
Wednesday we got up wayyy early and got ready for our train that left at 06:48am. We got ready and left the apartment at like 06:15 to walk down to the strain station. So we hopped on our train and made our way down to Tampere. Wasn't all that tired so I was awake the whole time while the others slept. But we got to Tampere and we made the long trek to the church and when we got there.... Holy cow there were a lot of missionaries!!!. But also I realized really quickly when you serve in the North you never meet anyone besides the ones in the north and that's every 6 weeks. So lots of new faces. But it was so fun to see all the missionaries. I got to see Elder Lakatos and Elder Cox who I haven't seen in over a year. So it was way good to see them again. And I got to see the other boys like Elder Isom and Elder Aitken. I got to see sister Moss who I met at EFY like 4 years ago so that was pretty fun as well. I never thought I would see someone that I actually knew from before in Finland. So that was cool. But wow so many missionaries. We had Elder Sabin from the area presidency and his wife come speak to us. We talked a lot about the plan of salvation and the simplicity of it. We talked about stress and we talked about happiness and enjoying the adventure of life. We managed to listen to him speak about a lot cause he talked from like 10- 16:45. We had some meatballs, and potato salad, and some tomato thing. And the rolls were way good. I could have eaten a 1000 of those...also because I was hungry as well. Since we ended late.... we took a picture with everyone there... and then tried to grab some pictures with other people... but we don't have too many cause we were all just talking. Live in the moment ya know?:)) But we got some good ones of the MTC group. Then we picked up our stuff and headed to the train station to catch our delayed train. Lucky us Haha. And then we trained back to Vaasa. When we got back to Vaasa we went to visit an old friend that I used to teach and go fishing with quite often. So it was way good to see him and he was pretty excited when I came up... so that made it way fun! Then we went back and had a really late dinner and chatted and then went to bed.
Thursday we got up in Vaasa and went to catch our bus back to Pietarsaari in the morning. We hopped on the bus with the Kokkola elders and rode back to Pietarsaari. I was way tired and after doing some studies I tried to take a nap on the bus and woe that was the most uncomfortable thing ever. But I did get a little sleep so that was nice. As soon as we got to Pietarsaari we said bye to the Kokkola elders and we got off and biked back to the apartment to change real quick so we could help a less active member move his parents couch.... which went really quick so that was nice. We went back to do some studies and we went to go teach a lesson. Well we got there and they said they would come later cause they weren't home. So we left and came back and guess what, they were not there. They said they would be there soon. An hour later we are still waiting. So we set up an appointment for the next day cause we had other things to do. Well sadly biking home we see our friends we were waiting for. And one of them had had too much to drink that night cause he could barely walk. But luckily his girlfriend was sober and hadn't drank anything. But it was really sad to see. But then we went to go help our other friend that we are teaching fix her bike. Well she didn't have any of the parts to replace it so we couldn't fix it that night but we ended the night with her teaching us Swedish in the stairwell... but hey it works Haha. And I think that is about all that we did that day.
Friday well wow that was an interesting day. So we had a lesson in the morning with two of our friends. So we planned for them and headed out to their place to go teach them. These are the same people we were supposed to meet with the day before. We got in and we started talking with them. We started following up on the word of wisdom and asking them how things are going.... Which led to a really good lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While we were teaching them things were going really well and we were having a good conversation and things were feeling right. Also the spirit was telling us things were going right. So we invited them to be baptized. And they said yes! Then we started working and talking about a day that we could work towards. We got all that figured out and we invited them to church and our Christmas party that was gonna happen the next day. And it was just a really good lesson! Plus it was great to see them again cause it had been a while since we had met with them. They have a really long way to go but we are gonna help them get there! That was like the big thing of the day cause we went home after and had lunch and then we started weekly planning. That took a long time like it usually does. Then after we had some dinner, went to invite more people to our Christmas party and then went to help our investigator fix her bike. Again. But this time I think it's all fixed so unless she like crashes into a herd of moose I think we will be okay and not have to fix the bike again. But that took a while cause the parts were not playing nice and going back like they were supposed to. And then we came home and studied swedish for a little bit with the time we had left in the night.
Saturday was a pretty slow day. We got up and did our studies and then had lunch. We then went to the church to start helping with the branch Christmas party. We had to get there and make about 11 liters of riisipuuro/ris gröt. So we were there for like 4 hours making this with our German member who is awesome... he is so funny and he sounds like the guy that owns the winter shop from frozen. The big summer blow out guy. So it's always fun hanging out with him and we had a lot of time to chat. We had made the riisipuuro and he comes up to us and is like "uh oh" and were like "uh oh what?" And hes like "we forgot the salt, the 5 tsp we needed" and he was cracking up like oh well hope its still good. And earlier he's like "what if we change the color?" "Let's add more milk... right now?... yeah why not I don't know what I'm doing" it was so funny hanging out with him. Well time came and the party started. Our friends who we met with the day before came. We listened to people sing christmas songs. We sang some Christmas songs with the girls that come to the youth night. And right after we had to go change to dress up as shepherds for the nativity thing that they were doing. Lucky for us we didn't have to say anything except stand there and look surprised when the angle showed up. So it went very well Haha. We played some games with the branch and it got pretty loud Haha. But it was majority of listening to music and talking with people. Then we ate the riisipuuro and that was way good. I had 2 big bowls of it. Sadly I didn't not get the almond so I did not win the candy cane prize but that's okay. Afterwards we just had about a million dishes to do and we got that knocked out and then came home to study Swedish. But didn't get too much in cause we had to call some people and text a few people so that took up some of our study time. Seems to happen a lot. People always contact us during that time. But what do ya do Haha.
Sunday we went to go pick up for our friends for church and sadly they were asleep. And then after some guy that we have seen quite a bit who doesn't like us started yelling at us to not disturb people on Sundays and how we shouldn't go to church. We saw him like 2 days ago and we was asking us about who gave us authority to come to Finland. So we just answer his questions and leave. But he's just a really annoying man. But what do ya do. Then we went to church and that was way good. I blessed the sacrament for the first time in Swedish this week. We have to say it in both languages so I've just always said it in Finnish but I did it in Swedish. The members told me I had good Swedish so I guess we are headed in the right direction for that:)) We met with our ward mission leader. After church we had some late lunch and then went out and visited our friends and wanted to share the new Christ Child video. But instead we had this person for like 2 hours. We listened to them and their story about how they got out of Turkey and why they had to leave. So that got depressing pretty quick to hear about all those stories. These people have been through a lot. But they fed us cake and glögi and it was really good. Then we came home after that and studied Swedish and then we had sweet pork burritos and those were really good. But that was about our day and it was really good!
Monday was a really good day. We bussed out to a smaller city outside Jakobstad called Nykarleby to go follow up with some people and visit some less active members. Our first visit was to a less active that I have never met before. Luckily she was home and we got to talk. Kind of surprised... but this lady has a stronger testimony than most active members. I was just amazed talking to her. But she's been having a really hard time and she just kind of broke down in front of us and just told us about everything that's going on. We were more than happy to listen and to be there to tell her that everything is gonna be okay. We talked to her for a while and got to know her better but one of the nicest people you will ever meet. It was great getting to meet her. But we were out there for a few more hours. Followed up with all the people that we were gonna see. We met this funny lady. She was 88. And told us " I don't want to listen to you Jehovas Witnesses" and we're like" that's not who we are" and we got to introduce ourselves and then she replied "You're the Mormons! You are more than welcome to come back any time... you guys are so nice. But not today cause I'm just too tired from being out in town today" so that gave us a good laugh. Also talked to our friend who can't read, write, or hear and he's 94. He told us we could come see him again as long as he doesn't die soon. So I guess we will see what happens with that one Haha. We bussed back to Jakobstad to finish some studies and get dinner before we went to a lesson we had set up. We met with our eternal investigator and made some progress in hope. We showed some tough love and I hope things continue to go well. But I guess we will see. But all seemed well so I guess that's a good sign. By then it was late and we had to get home and that was our night.
But it's been a really fun week this week. Sorry I think this is longer than the ones I usually send. But if you it this far good on ya.
Have a good week.
Elder Love out
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