Turku Week 1

Hello everyone! 

Well Turku is a super big city compared to Seinäjoki, it seems massive to me, but I love it. We live in the center, it's like the Finland equivalent of living in downtown Los Angeles or something haha our apartment is super nice and the city is beautiful!  There is so much cool architecture here and everything is beautiful. Well not only do I like the city a lot but I love the ward! There are a bunch of really good families and young people! Theres a couple super chill 18 year old guys and one of them always wants to go on lessons with us and stuff and is just a super solid member. There's families everywhere and everybody loves the missionaries. They all have us over to eat all the time and are super sweet to us. All these old mummos (grandmas) are just feeding us like crazy it's awesome haha so everything like that is great. Elder Anderson is way cool and we get along great! Everything like that is awesome, the actually missionary work is a little slow though, but I think that missionary work with such a big ward will be a lot easier and much more enjoyable! We also have received two referrals already which is awesome! I never got referrals in Seinäjoki. So I think our area could explode, we just need to put in the effort. Our areas are just like the northern borders of the city and some random further away neighborhoods.... basically what happend is this whole area is brand new, they split the Turku 2 ward into two sets off missionaries and so we don't have anyone in the area book really, it's kind of like were opening a new area. The other set of elders in Turku who live in the turku 1 ward were both with me in the MTC! so it's super cool, I'm glad I get to see them again. 

Finnish Disney Store

My trip here to Turku was a little weird, I left Tuesday evening, then stayed a night in Tampere with the zone leaders there, then took a train Wednesday morning by myself to Turku. It was a little weird to be on that train by myself but it wasn't too long and I was kind of just bored haha. 

People here in Turku have a bit of a different accent than up north, it's a little bit harder to understand. They speak super super fast and they don't say the last syllable of words so it's a little funky but not too bad. My district is just the 8 missionaries in Turku so it's pretty cool we all get to see each other all the time and play basketball and whatnot so it's pretty fun. It's way different though than in the north, Up there district meeting meant you travel for an hour and a half and sleep over somewhere but here we all just meet at the chapel real quick so it's super different. We also have a senior couple that lives here in turku and they're awesome I love them. The man, elder Mortenson, served a mission here as a 19 year old and then was a super succesful doctor in Utah his whole life and he still speaks really good Finnish and stuff and they are just way cool. 

Mom you're probably right I don't think it's worth it to send the basketball shoes, I will just use my Nikes or buy new ones, thank you though! Well mom I loved all those pictures you sent me so much! hahaha they were adorable! Those little bowties were the cutest things I've ever seen hahaha and man I can't believe baby Rosie is so big and chubby already! I miss all those kids! I plan on only speaking to baby Rosie in Finnish so that I have someone to talk to in Finnish all the time when I get home. And from your emails evey week it sounds like I will refuse to ever let Sammy drive me around when I get home hahaha that is pretty terrifying. All the Finns we're going crazy that Finland slaughtered the US in hockey haha they were loving it. I've developed an interest in hockey out here, Finn's go crazy for it and they talk about it with us all the time. 

Well on Saturday we went over to the place called Naantali which is this little town on the Northwest side of Turku and it's right on the ocean and O man.... it is the most beautiful place I have seen yet in Finland. It was so cool out there! It is just this little town and it feels like you're in a little beach town in Hawaii or California or something but then there is a huge church that is like 400 years old and it's just super old scool European looking. It was beatiful they had all sorts of cool stuff out there including a funky little finnish Disney store that I took a picture of haha 

Well the weather is a lot warmer here and it's delightfull! They say it's the warmest place in Finland! I'm super glad to be here haha it does get pretty windy though since it's right on the water which makes it a little chilly but it feels insanely warm compared to the north! 

Well that is pretty much the week! I love you all!

Elder Anderson and Elder Wilson