Footprints in Finland: #82 Well....so that happened

Well... I think we all know that the world is going to crap. Nobody can find toilet paper, borders are closing, and nobody seems to know what to do anymore. Well I hate to break it to ya... but the same stuff is happening here as well

here's the week

Tuesday night we trained up to Oulu cause we would be having zone conference the next day. When we got to Oulu, we went to the church to help set up tables and chairs for the next day and then met the rest of the elders back at the ZLs appartment for mango sorbet and Sprite floats.... and just chatted with the boys. Got to see Elder Cox again so it was fun chatting with him. And yet again had another great night sleep outside on the parveke listening to the rain hit against the windows. It was quite fantastic and Ihan Suomalainen haha.

Wednesday we got up and got ready and then headed to the church. Zone conference was a really good one. We talked about Believing in Christ. We did some role plays on how to handle situations we face... in a normal way Haha. We also watched a video by Elder Uchtdorf about that as well on how to be normal and natural. Of course we talked about the Corona virus and how to keep ourselves safe from that as well. The Easter campaign was introduced and after zone conference we had a small meeting with the other district leaders and zone leaders to talk about the conference. It was way fun getting to see all the missionaries again. Although the Zone conference is always good... my favorite part is probably getting to see other missionaries and chat with them. We all have a lot of fun together. Then we took a train and bus back to Jakobstad. The whole train ride the missionaries were all talking about the possibilities of what could happen to us with the corona virus.... but some ideas got pretty crazy cause they just kept building off one another and since we really know like nothing... it was interesting haha.

Thursday morning me and elder Kuntz went out and got some good ol tracting done. Not too many people were home that day. We were in a bit of a nicer neighborhood that morning so we figured all these people were at work. But we did get to talk to a few people that were at home... so that was nice. We had some lunch and studies and then we went to help Ville at his parents house to move some wood flooring that they had just bought. So we moved a bunch of flooring and then we ended up chatting with Ville for like 2 hours... and we had a really good talk with him. We learned some more information about him that could help us in our teaching him. We went home and had some sweet pork burritos with homemade tortillas and a homemade lime cilantro sauce. Wow that was really good. It took a lot of prep during some study times earlier that day to be able to have this delicious meal... but wow it was all so worth it. It tasted amazing. Then that night we did some street contacting as well as picking up some bike lights for elder Kuntzs bike. We met this Lestarilainen guy. Not sure what that church is in English. But we chatted with him and he told Elder Kuntz and I that he hopes we find the true kingdom of God here on earth... and the proceeded to forgive us of our sins. So now according to this man I am clean... cause outside the grocery store he cleaned me Haha. I wish this was the first time someone on the street had cleaned me of my sins but it's not haha. But there were not too many people out on the streets but it was a good contacting block.

Friday they dropped a bomb on us. We got an email saying we were going to have a mission wide video call with President Aura. So it was a little crazy up to that point just not knowing what's going on. We finally got on the call with all the other missionaries and President started giving us news and updates to the missionary work. We had some senior missionaries and some missionaries go home for health reasons. Apparently the church called them all home. Then he gave us an update on the Corona Virus here in Finland. After talking about that he told us that we would not be allowed to go Tracting or even street contacting for the next 3 weeks... and if we teach... we should try to do it online unless the people we meet with are okay with meeting in person. We also can't meet with anyone over the age of 60 which pretty much means we can't visit any of our members here in Jakobstad cause like 99 percent of the branch is over 60 years of age. That even wiped out one of our investigators. So after that we are now down to 1 investigator. Our eternigator Jenni haha. But she's doing better so that's okay. We got some other restrictions and that's fun. So pretty much we are on "lockdown" or "quarantine" but we are still allowed to go outside... but we are just not allowed to talk to anyone which blows. But we met Jenni that night cause she wanted to talk about the priesthood and that went really well. She's been doing better cause now she's been asking us all her questions very slowly about all the things she fully doesn't understand... so now we can help explain which is awesome!

Saturday was an off day. We did studies in the morning and then went to Prisma and bought our 2 week food storage for whenever the time comes that they tell us we can not leave the apartment. So we went and got all of our non perishable food items which sadly isn't a large variety. But the rest of the day was some more studying and we cleaned a bit. We only did the kitchen to spread out our work Haha. But then we met with this one family we found last week and introduced the Book of Mormon to them. We will see where is goes cause they are pretty devout to their Islamic faith so we'll see what happens. And then we enjoyed our walk home. But man it was so depressing to just walk by people knowing you can't do anything and you walk by all the doors... and you cant knock a single one. It feels like your identity has just been taken from you. But we will figure out what to do so we can talk to people... but we really got nothing going for us right now.

Sunday was a pretty good day. We biked over to a members home to watch sacrament meeting. But it never worked so we never got to watch it. But we did share a spiritual thought as the "talks" and we got the sacrament and that's the important part right? After church we did lots of studies and took a few walks to get out of the house for a little bit. Honestly it's a little weird not being able to do much but we are figuring it out day by day. We made some good pizzas and that was about it for Sunday.

Monday we had studies in the morning and that went really well and passed by pretty fast. We had some lunch and then went out for a walk and went to the church. We sent out a spiritual thought to the ward while we were there... and that was pretty good. We talked about the restoration. On the way back we took the long way home and walked through the old part of town behind the old cigarette factory and took some pictures of the old buildings. We came back for some more langauge study and then made ourselves some more dinner. And after we studied some more Haha.

So as you can see we are working on adjusting to this new schedule so hopefully we will figure it out haha. Hope y'all have a good week

Elder Love out

1) Our apartment

2-3) Old town

4) "Where should we go?"

5) "cool houses....where you can buy marmalade"

6) Old cigarette factory

7) City hall

8-10) We walked around old town

12) Cemetery across from where we live

13) Austen outside the church

14-17) Home made tortillas and sweet pork burritos