Lots of Missionary Work

Hey everyone! How's it going? Well we've had another super crazy week holy cow. Even this morning we had to go down to Helsinki to the mission office to meet with President and the APs and the language coordinator about language coordinator stuff and what we're going to change so that took forever so I kind of lost all of my P day which is pretty rough. So now we're emailing then have to buy food and then it will be about 6 so we're just rushing all over and we have to do the same thing next week but ... it's all good. While we in Helsinki though we went to this place called the Tortilla House which is a little mexican restaurant owned by members and so they always give missionaries like 50% off and it is SUPER good. By far the best burrito I've had in finland. It was great. I even got a doctor pepper and everything, I felt like I was back in America for a minute. Well this week was really good! We had a zone conference on Wednesday so that took up the whole day really but it was fun and it's always cool to see the whole zone together. It was my first normal zone conference with President Watson and it went well. We talked a lot about applying what Elder Bednar said and how we would use it to become the types of missionaries that Heavenly Father wants us to be. After Zone Conference Elder Downs and I taught a language school to two missionaries in the zone who have been in the country about 5 months and that was way fun! For language schools we just talk a little about language study plans and then let the missionaries ask us questions about whatever they want. So Elder downs and I just took turns answering questions and it went well. It was the first language school I got to help out with so it was pretty cool. This week we're going to do splits with Elder Downs for like half a day so that Downs can teach me some stuff about the computer program we use for language tests and so that we can come up with our recommendations for President ie what to do in the future for language training of new missionaries and stuff like that. So that should be a bit of a project but it'll be fun. I like elder Downs a lot he's a way cool guy so I'm excited for that. So after zone conference and all that stuff we helped drive some of the missionaries back to the train station and the mission home and all that kind of stuff. Then the rest of the week was pretty normal. We did exchanges though with a companionship on Saturday and that was super fun. I was with an elder named elder Ream who is going home in a few weeks but it was a great day. We got to play some basketball in the morning and had a great game and then got to enjoy elder Reams cooking the rest of the day because he's super good at cooking so he made us all sorts of delicious stuff. We had a really good weekend of missionary work though we had lots of cool experiences. While we were on Splits Elder Bascom and the elder he was with taught this guy who was a former investigator that elder Bascom had taught and then gave to the sisters because he lived in their area but then the sisters never really got back in contact with him. But we finally got back in contact with him and so Bascom went there and the guy said that he received a Book of Moron a few months ago from the sisters and so Bascom said o that's great! Have you read any of it? And the guy said "well no the text was really small so it hurt my eyes.... but I downloaded it as an audiobook and I listened to the whole thing." The guy listened to the entire book of mormon and like remembered everything very well haha he said that he believes the book is true and that he enjoyed listening to it! So we were way pumped about that guy we have another lesson with him scheduled for this week! Then yesterday we had a great lesson with another former investigator. This guy was in the phone so we just called him and he was down to meet. So turns out this guy is from Bangladesh originally but has been living in Finland since he was a little kid so speaks fluent finnish and is married to a Finnish girl and they have a baby boy. So this guy said that he's atheist and was just kind of interested in what we had to say so we taught him the restoration and invited him to pray and he prayed with us!! That usually never happens when it's an atheist on the first lesson! Then we told him about the Book of Mormon and he said that we can come back tomorrow to give him a Book of Mormon and teach him more! So we were super excited about him! Our other investigators are doing well, we had two in church yesterday which was great! But other than all that everything is just normal. I took some pictures of our little house for you today mom so you can see what it looks like! It's pretty sweet! Yes the weather here is getting very fall like and yes mom most missionaries that have had a winter here get pretty depressed right about now haha it's been cloudy and dark and rainy and kinda cold the last week or so and it willl be darker and colder for the next 8 months pretty much hahaha But it's ok I'm just grateful that I'm down south. We're spoiled down here with all our trains and buses and good stuff like that. Well I think that's all the news from this week but I love you all so much! Thank you so much for all the love and prayers, have a great week! 

Helsinki