Transfers, Training, and Visiting a Mokki

June 23, 2014

Finnish Country Home

Hello everyone! Well I had one of the funnest weeks of my mission this week! First off I'll tell you about changes, I found out I'll be staying here in Turku and I'll be training again so I go down to Helsinki on Tuesday with elder Jefferies to pick up my new companion and then head back to Turku on Wednesday. So I'm excited for that! It should be fun! Mostly though I'm just way excited to be staying in Turku!! I love it here so much. We had a way fun activity on Monday with the YSAs and we all played ultimate frisbee. There was this guy there who is a recently reactivated member that is like a way good friend to me now. He is like 32 and was baptized about 10 years ago in Helsinki, then moved to Turku and just stopped coming to church but one day about 2 months ago a sister here in Turku called him by accident and realized that she had called the wrong number on the ward list but just invited him to come to General Conference and stuff. Since then he has come to church every single week and plays basketball with us every monday and is completely active and AWESOME. The missionaries didn't even realize that he was an inactive member for like a month, they all thought he was somebody elses investigator haha it was a crazy story. But anyway he was there with his girlfriend who is a nonmember so that was a really good thing! Elder Jeffereries and I of course had a crazy week of working out and our buddy from the ward here who hangs out with us a lot and is like 18 did a lot of the workouts with us so it was way fun! We did some cool runs out to this place called Ruissalo which is this big beautiful island that ends at a beach and it was tons of fun. I've gained three pounds in the last month so that's way good for me haha! 

So, then on Thursday the sisters organized this little YSA party and so we were at that and there were quite a few nonmembers there which was great! After the party we slept over at the other elders apartment so that we could do splits with them on Friday! Splits was tons of fun but Friday and Saturday were both red days so we couldn't do actual missionary work and everything the other elders had planned pretty much fell through. On Friday all four of us elders went over to this members place who feeds us a lot and is the nicest guy ever and he was feeding us pizza and asked if we had anything to do the following day for Juhannus and we said no so he invited us to go out to his mökki with him for the day! So, Friday evening we just chilled at the other elders apartment again and grilled sausage on their balcony with a little grill that works for like 1 hour and then on Saturday the member picked us up and drove us out to the country side to his mökki! It was so awesome! Such a finnish experience, it was just a little log cottage basically but way nice and surrounded by forest and fields and stuff. We sat around the fire pit grilling makara for a while and then played badmington for hours which was way fun! Then the member drove us back to Turku and we just had a normal Sunday yesterday.

Grilling During Juhannus

 So overall a super fun week! Unfortunately we couldn't really do a whole lot of missionary work with all the holidays and stuff but we were able to meet with this one guy a few times this week who got baptized about 8 months ago and is in a pretty tough situation. He is a 24 year old guy from Nigeria and is doing amazing and is a solid convert, passed the sacrament on Sunday and everything but unfortunately there was some problem with his visa and now may be sent back to Nigeria. He's not positive yet, but he asked me to give him a blessing and is pretty worried because he doens't want to go back to Nigeria at all. He's having a rough time so I'm worried for him but I think he was comforted a lot by the blessing and is a very meek person so I know he'll make the best of whatever happens to him. Well This week should be tons of fun too and I'll tell you all about it next week! I love you all!