Is it Winter Yet?

It's not Winter yet, just a preview!

Hello everyone!!!  Well anyway thank you so much for all the birthday love everyone! I miss you all so much, especially with the most important day of the year tomorrow, but you are all the greatest! I'm sure the package will get to me soon mom thank you so much for sending one! You know you really don't have to! hahaha well if I must give an ideas for a christmas thing... the only thing would be like a nice looking scarf. I bought this neck and hood thing to kind of shield my face, but all these Finnish guys walk around with super classy scarfs … and they look dang good so I want to embrace the culture hahaha so that would be an excellent gift idea! But anyway, we had a good week here in Seinäjoki! 

We had two new investigators accept baptismal dates and one other new investigator accept a baptismal invitation! WOOT WOOT! It has been great! Our most promising investigator is this guy from India. We met him about a week and a half ago on the street and have met him like 4 times since. He married this women who lives in Finland, but then they got a divorce and he has been going through a lot of hard times, but he grew up a christian and has a lot of faith. He is a really cool guy and he has accepted and enjoys everything we've taught so far. He was out of town this weekend but we hope he comes to church next weekend! As far as other investigators we have this really cool really religious guy from Africa who is a student here and then we've found a couple other new investigators so we've been staying pretty busy! The thing thats hard is like all these international students are pretty open and willing to learn about the gospel, but it's hard to teach actual finns. They are just very content with their lifestyle and usually don't see the need to join a different church. They are great people though, always very kind and they think its super cool that we know finnish haha. Especially like college aged Finnish people when they hear we're from America they just think were super cool hahaha. A lot of young Finns speak pretty good english so they want to practice their english on us and a lot of people are very interested in religion, but more just to talk about it not really to test it out. So it's tough, but it's been so great! 

We didn't have any investigators in church this week, but we had a less active lady we've been working with there and another family that usually goes up to Vaasa for church, but this week they were in our branch so we had 19 people in church on sunday! It was awesome! It's funny what a difference 7 people make when you go from 12 to 19 hahaha, but we were super excited about it. I even blessed the sacrament this week which was a little scary but I nailed it haha and the sacrament prayers sound awesome in Finnish. My companion gave a talk in sacrament this week and the branch president asked me to give a talk in two weeks.... a fifteen minute talk.... It will be kind of hard hahaha I need to start working on that one early, probably shouldn't try to wing it. So, yesterday morning we woke up and looked outside and there was snow everywhere! I almost started crying hahaha so we biked to church through the snow storm and my face was numb when we got there and so I said to the branch president that winter has come! And he looked at me and just said.... no ..... winter has not come winter WILL come in about a month when we have a meter of snow everywhere and its thirty degrees colder all the time...... ouch hahaha I'm so scared. I did buy my coat and another beanie last week though and some mittens! so now I just need to buy some snow boots. I want to buy a big russian hat with fur and stuff but you cant wear those hats with helmets so I guess I'll have to stick with beanies. The bike I've been using has been horrible, one of the tires popped again this week and then yesterday my seat popped up while I was riding…. so I'm just going to buy myself a bike today haha it's not worth it to use this one all winter because it could be lethal. 

Well, we did splits this week for the first time which was fun! So our district leader and his companion came down from Pietasaari (the swedish speaking city) and they were with us for the day. I was with elder Gustaffson, he's a really cool guy and he actually used to serve in Seinäjoki, it was his first area as well, so he introduced me to some former investigators and helped us out a lot so it was great! Elder gustaffson has been in Finland about 7 months, but he's been learning swedish for the past 3 months so it was funny because there were several times throughout the day when we were in lessons or talking to people and we both just had no idea what they were saying hahahaha and it's not like he's bad at finnish, but he just hasn't used it in three months so it was tough, but it was good because we kind of took everything together, usually I can always rely on elder Christiansen to understand everything, but with Gustaffson I really had to focus all day so it was really good. We had a great time though! So, tomorrow we have a district meeting here in Seinäjoki and then we're all going to eat at this asian buffet place so that is how I will be celebrating tomorrow hahaha 7 euro asian buffet! But, I'm excited I like my district a lot it will be fun! Well, we had a few hard days this week as well, we had to drop one investigator, the 77 year old guy. Which was really sad…. kinda makes you feel like a bad missionary, but I mean he didn't really ever listen to what we taught and he said he didn't want to receive any answers about the book of mormon and wouldn't come to church or do anything so .... had to move on I guess. 

Well the weather hasn't actually been too cold yet but the thing is its dark and cloudy like every single day, I've seen the sun like 4 times since I've been here haha and it rains a lot, and yesterday it snowed on us like all day so I'm just always wet and numb and by the end of the day my hands are frozen haha, but it still hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be already! But in another month or two I will be crying about it every week, but Finland is beautiful and everything has been great! The food is all good! We eat these little things for dinner almost every single night haha they are called riisipiirata and it is basically a rye bread crust with like rye bread budding inside and then you put butter and cheese on it ... and it may sound kind of gross but it is SO GOOD! So everything has been great and I'm having lots of fun! I love you all and hope all is well at home! I miss you all! Moi Moi! 

On splits