Happy Easter

Hello! Well ok this was a very exciting week! Lot’s of good stuff to tell you guys. So, first off we got our change calls and elder Anderson is leaving, I get to stay here in Turku and I will be training a new missionary! So that will be way fun I'm super excited. I will hop on a train tonight and head down to Helsinki and spend the night down there, then tomorrow morning we have a trainers meeting and then are matched with our trainees and then will head back to Turku tomorrow night! I am way pumped, he won’t understand anything and will be terrible at Finnish, but it will be fun! Usually when people train they have a good chance of staying with their trainee for two changes so I may stay in Turku all summer which would be awesome! Anderson and I are sad to split up though, we have had a lot of fun together, but we're both happy with our change calls. Well other exciting news: I ate reindeer this week. On Thursday we got our change calls from President and elder Anderson and I wanted to celebrate a great change together so we went to this restaurant called Harald's and it's this viking restaurant so they have all traditional Finnish food like all sorts of deer and reindeer and elk and all that good stuff. We invited the other Turku elders to join us and we feasted. I of course went with the Wild Witch of the North Reindeer platter. Including reindeer meat, cheese bread, an assortment of sauces.... and reindeer heart. Yes I ate a reindeer heart. It actually wasn't too bad. It was covered in some weird cream stuff and it was super chewy but overall not bad. The reindeer meat itself was absolutely delicious. O man it was awesome. The meal itself was like the ultimate man lesson.

Reindeer Heart!!

Well we all had a great time doing that and then on Saturday the sister's in our ward had a baptism so we all go to be there for that! The guy that got baptized was like a 40ish year old single finnish guy. A very nice guy and very sincere. It was the first Finnish person I have seen get baptized since I've been here. It was really cool and the baptismal service all went great! After the baptismal service we left with a member out to his house. He invited a friend to the baptism so that was great we got to know him a little bit, he’s this 60 year old finnish man and was very nice. But, anyway we went to the members house who lives outside of Turku and has a pretty big piece of land and we helped him chop wood using some machines and stuff for like 5 hours haha we chopped sooo much wood I am still a little sore. But it was fun! It was nice to do some manly labor and they fed us a nice meal of lamb and potatoes afterwards haha it was a very Finnish day. Unfortunately, they fed us Mämmi for dessert…. the really gross traditional Easter food they love here. I got mämmi twice this week, but I have gotten pretty good at pounding it really fast. We asked why he need so much wood chopped and turns out it was enough wood to use their sauna for the next twenty years hahaha so that was pretty cool.

The Mortensons and Elder Wilson and Anderson had matching ties!

Well yesterday we had a good day of church. Had some very good talks about the life of Christ and the new member received the gift of the Holy Ghost, so it was a very nice day. None of our investigators could make it yesterday, but the new trainee and I will hit it hard this week and get them all there this week. Well the weather has been absolutely perfect this week. I had to bust out my sweet sunglasses and everything yesterday and Anderson made fun of me for having such cool sunglasses as a missionary but hey, I looked good. Well a lot of the less actives we work with were out of town this weekend and all our investigators were busy for the holidays and stuff (in Finland good friday is a really big holiday and today is another big one) But, yes that is pretty much the whole week. We didn't get to do the castle tour unfortunately but I will see it sometime before I leave Turku. We had a very good district meeting on friday, the last district meeting ever for the Mortnsons. They bore their testimonies and it was a very sweet meeting. Well that is it! Next week I will tell you all about my little trip to Helsinki and the new guy! I love you all have a great week!

All the Turku Elders