It's ya boy Elder Love reporting Live from Kajaani Finland. The reason why I have this sad subject line for the email is because I haven't seen the sun all week. And y'all know how much I like my sun haha. It has been cloudy here for the past week, it's like this one huge cloud covers the entire country and never wants to move ahaha but I still love it here. It also gets like completely dark here by like 5ish which is something I am not used to at all haha and my companion tells me its only gonna get darker ahah so this should be way crazy to see how dark it gets up here in the good ole north ahah.
Wednesday was super fun! We went on exchanges with the district leaders. So we picked them up Tuesday night and they stayed with us all of Wednesday and left Thursday morning. Now they have this thing here called Exchange Magic. Apparently you always have a really successful day on exchanges which you should always be excited for to find some potentials or investigators. Our exchange magic was not so magical ahaha. Me and one of the district leaders chatted with a guy in his way too tight boxers with flames on them and a t shirt that was too small for him. It kind of reminded me of that one scene from Tommy Boy... and if you've seen the movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about ahah. It started out good for the first 5 min and we were talking about God, but then he decided he wanted to talk about how there are too many immigrants in Finland and how they just need to go back to where they came from. Not gonna lie I think he was a little drunk but hey you gotta talk to everyone ahah. So that was quite the treat but also really funny. That night we went and got some pizza and apparently every missionary eats a meat here called Kebab. So you know... hey why not try it ahah. Well its actually a not that bad tasting meet, the only thing with it, is that nobody has any idea what it is. It's just a mystery meat,but its pretty good. Me and the district elder went to play Sähly with the ward members which is like Finland's version of indoor hockey... and these old guys that play are amazing and lets just say they kicked out butts ahah.
Thursday we had district meeting. So these days are always fun cause we get to go up (2hr train ride) to Oulu and meet with the entire district and just have a good time. We do our meeting but then after we hang out and talk and eat food and then go play sports sometimes. So it's a ton of fun and our district has 10 people in it so with so many people it makes everything really fun! That night while waiting for our train we walked around Oulu. The ciy of Oulu is huge... well compared to Kajaani it's huge. You could probably fit Kajaani into Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain like 4 times haha.
Friday was a really good day. We had and amazing lesson with our investigator R. I really wish you guys could meet this guy cause he is so cool. We taught him the plan of salvation and he was super interested in it. Things just flowed really well between testifying, sharing a scripture and everything tied right back to what we were talking about. He was super interested in what would happen to animals and that was a little bit of a challenge to answer, but we got his questions answered. We gave him the baptismal invite cause we felt like it would be a good idea to bring up... and thought it would be good to do it in this lesson and he dang near said yes. He was like "Yeah......I..... I don't know" And he was like I would if I receive some revelation that this is true... and then we went and told him that he could find out that this is true. And we testified some more and he told us he appreciated what we had said. Now it all comes down to him but I have faith in him cause he wants to know. He even told us some of the things that's holding him back from coming to church.. he just doesn't have the confidence in himself to go. So we are working on building him up as well. This work is a lot more than just teaching people and bringing people to Christ. Sometimes you have to not only help them build up their relationship with God, but also build up themselves. It's so rewarding to be there in that room and be able to talk with a complete stranger and get to know them and you become friends instantly. It's a great experience. I also made Dads famous potato soup for dinner and it turned out bomb!!!, so that was also a plus to the day. Good lesson and Good food.
Saturday... It was a crazy day today. We had decided to do all of our studies in the morning so that we would have the rest of the day and night to be out working with the people... cause that's when you get the most people... in the afternoon and night. We went out street contacting and we talked to this old guy for a really long time but turns out he wasn't interested, which was a bummer but hey, sometimes you just gotta drop the seed into the soil. It will eventually grow. That's one thing I've figured out being here in Finland. Yeah it would be great to get a baptism but the most important thing is you plant the seeds in those you don't have it. You nourish and help the seed in those who have it. Then you let God take the reins and he takes care of the rest. A lot of the work here is just planting seeds, and its great cause you get to talk to so many people. We went and taught our Investigator J. Her nephew was there and joined our lesson and this is the craziest lesson i have ever been in. There were 3 languages spoken at this lesson. So her Nephew speaks English and Swahili. Sister J speaks Swahili and Finnish, me and elder Reed speak English and Finnish. Plus sister J understands Swahili better so we would talk to her nephew in English, then he would translate it into Swahili, then she would either reply in Finnish to us or speak Swahili back to her nephew and he would talk to us in English. It was crazy and you get confused really easily,but it all worked out. It was a little hard lesson too cause he Nephew wanted everything we said to be backed up in the Bible. This guy really tested my Bible knowledge. My comp. just kept asking me if I knew anything in the bible that talked about what we were discussing cause he couldn't remember..and I found what he was looking for. Just a little Tender mercy from the man upstairs helping me remember all the things that I learned in the bible from my Sophomore year in High school ahah. But it was a great lesson. Then it was late at night and we went to go tracting cause it was Pyhäin Päivä in Finland. Which is Finland's day to like honor the dead. So everyone is at the cemetery lighting candles and talking with family by the graves. We didn't want to disturb people so we just went and took part in the culture. We went to a Cemetery here in Kajaani and looked at all the lights and it looked soooo cool. There are candles on literally every single grave and some people go all out with statues and christmas trees... it was really cool to see. I got some pictures of some of the decorations that they had.
Sunday was a really busy day for the Kajaani Elders! We had church, a quick visit with Investigator J and then we had to drive to Otanmäki which is about a 30 min drive from Kajaani to go visit a member and give them the member missionary discussions. These are lessons to help the members be apart of the missionary work. With this though Brother and Sister K. Had made dinner. They had freshly baked rolls, some lasagna (Not sure if that's how its spelled but I tried hahah) and salad. It was seriously sooooooo good, these rolls that she made were amazing. Then they pulled out desert which was like this pancake stuffed thing with strawberries and cream. That was really good as well. We left and we were soooo stuffed. It also didn't help that it was fast Sunday and so we hadn't eaten all day.... so thankfully The K´s made lots of food and just told us to keep eating ahah. The members here are seriously amazing. It's weird being in a branch with like 15 people on a good day,but they are so great and you get to know a lot of them so well cause there are not that many people to talk to haha.
We had a late Lesson with our new investigator who is from Mexico. Way cool lesson cause he doesn't believe in God. He had a friend there too who also doesn't believe in God. He told us he met with some of the JW´s and they asked him since he doesn't believe in God " Who do you thing watches over the world and has power over everything?" His answer made me laugh so hard he said " America"!! So we had a great time with him just getting to know each other and get to know him and his thoughts on God. Super interesting to hear his thought but we were able to still testify of what we know and he invited us back, so we are super excited to go back and talk with him cause he is such a cool guy. Plus it helps that he speaks English so I can actually understand him.
The language is still kicking my butt but I'm learning more every day, so hopefully sooner rather than later I will know what people are saying ahah.
Hope everything is all good back in the great state of Utah.
Love yall
Elder Love out
Austen's dad asks him questions every week...and I thought I would include a coupe of them here. I loved Austen's answers:)
1) Best part of your mission so far?
Answer: Teachin R. I look forward to every Friday cause that is when we get to teach him. That is probably my favorite part, and this new investigator we got, I am really excited to teach him. He is a way nice guy and it's so fun for me to listen to what people believe and why they believe it. And it's crazy too on how quickly you adapt to the situation. We were going to teach the restoration, but if he doesn't believe in God, well we gotta get you to believe in God before we move on , cause if not none of this is gonna make any sense to you. We were teaching him and I had a thought and it was "Ask him about his tattoos?" Weird, but I did it and he explained to me what they all meant and one of the tattoos was perfect to take something that he knew well and loved, and you could relate it to what we were teaching him. It seemed to make more sense to him than anything else we had said. So it's cool when you have moments like that.
2) What is the best thing you have learned so far?
Answer: The scriptures have the answer to everything. Kinda make me feel a little dumb that I wasn't that good at reading them before, but that's probably the best thing I have learned...cause it not only applies to me...but the people I teach.
Pictures from Kajaani
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