Hello everyone! Well this week was way good. I am super excited to hear about the Superbowl results and all of that fun stuff. Nobody in Finland really knows anthing about American football and they all diss it all the time so I haven't heard much at all about the NFL. Well to explain my subject line: Minä syön hevosta means I eat horse. And I wrote that because I found out a few weeks ago that the lunch meet that I have been eating for the last year and a half has horse in it..... I never knew that haha it's way delicious though I love it. They eat just straight up horse here and last week we saw a huge kilo horse steak in the grocery store and considered buying it haha So that was just kind of a funny foreign food story I thought. I just never took the time to read the labels on my good old lunch meat and find out what it was made of but now I'm a huge advocate of horse, it's pretty tasty.
Well my week here in Oulu was good. Unfortunately elder Ahlquist got pretty sick this week and we had to take him to the doctor and stuff so we were inside for quite a few days but he's feeling much better now. In spite of the sickness though we were still able to teach a ton of member present lessons that we planned in the evenings and find a few new people so despite the circumstances we had a great week! We have this one investigator that is super cool and is preparing to be baptized in March. He is progressing and came to church again on Sunday and is loving the church. He's a student from Bangladesh, working on his thesis for a masters degree, and is Catholic but he has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying regularly and I think he will get baptized. We had some sweet lessons with him this week and we're feeling great about him. We have several other great investigators right now including that awesome little Finnish family I talked about last week. They were out of town this weekend so couldn't come to church but we're going over to their place again tonight so we're still feeling really good about them.
Ok so I have a way cool story to tell that I meant to tell a while ago but kind of forgot to tell it during our skype call, but now I've found out more about the situation recently and it's just an awesome story. Probably the coolest thing that has happened on my mission thus far. Ok so like 11 months ago I got transferred to Turku and was serving with elder Anderson. During our time together there we got invited by this member to go help her do a school presentation at a local high school. the school class consisted of 14 and 15 year old students and she just got a little excited and started teaching a lot of things that weren't on the powerpoint we had and the kids didn't undersand any of it and were kind of laughing and making fun of us the whole time. So it was a bit of a disaster. At the very end she turned the time over to us and we got up and I just said to the kids that what we really believe is that God loves us and that he answers our prayers. That Jesus Christ is his son and that he made it possible for all of us to live with God and our families again eternally. We bore testimony and that's all we said. So now fast forward from that day to six months in the future. I was serving in Espoo and I saw my buddy elder Ahlquist (who is now my current companion) at a meeting down in Helsinki. He had been in Turku with me at the time of the school presentations and had just gotten transferred away from Turku hile I was in Espoo. Elder Ahlquist tells me that on his very last day in Turku. It was p day. Him and his companion were walking to the church and a 15 year old girl came up to them and told them that six months earlier she had been in a school presentation where people from our church talked. She thought the church was crazy but then two young boys got up (us) and while we were talking she said that she felt something really good. She didn't know what it was. So for six months she researched the church on the internet and finally couldn't take it anymore so on that day she had walked from her house to the center of Turku (a 45 minute walk) and asked random people where the Mormon church was. She then walked all of the way to the church and right at that moment she ran in to elder Ahlquist. So the elders called the sisters right then and the sisters came and started teaching this girl and for the past 4 or 5 months they have taught this girl and she wants to be baptized! Her parents haven't given her permission but she told the sisters there that she knows the Book of Mormon is true and she will join the church as soon as she can.
On of the sisters serving here in Oulu is the sister that taught her there in turku the whole time and she told me all about her and it's just been an amazing experience to find out that the stuff we do that even seems like a failure can actually have a massive impact down the road. It's been a pretty spiritual realization for me that what we're doing out here really does matter every single day.
Well this week we are going down to Vaasa to do splits and just have a normal week planned. But it's been a really good week. Thank you for all of the love and everything you do for me. I love you all!
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