April 25, 2017

Terve! This morning it snowed and now it's raining. I thought it was time for spring but I guess I was wrong! This week Sister Carter and I went on exchanges with the Turku 1 Sisters. We got to go to Turku which is seriously on of the most beautiful cities and it was great to do work with them there. 

Last Friday was our stake conference. Elder Charles from the Europe Area 70 and his wife came and we were able to meet talk with them! They were so sweet and it was great and also really weird to have some of the talks in church be in English! We had the 2 sets of sisters staying with us overnight for the conference. Our apartment is pretty tiny so it was a full house! It was so much fun and the spirit was so strong at the conferences. The Saturday night one was at our church building because it is the stake center. The Sunday conference was in the Tampere Talo and it was really cool to see so many members. Everyone from Turku, Tampere, Jyväsklylä, and Lahti and a couple more cities came to participate.

We have been really focusing on contacting people that have already been taught by the missionaries before and seeing if they are interested to learn again. Last night we stopped by a former investigators home and we were invited in! The woman's boyfriend was over as well so both of them became investigators. It was a great night and it helped me to see that the Lord's timing is perfect! 

April 18, 2017

Zone training!

Hyvä Pääsiänen kaikille! I hope every one had a great Easter this year. We had an eventful week with our Zone training last Wednesday. It's always kind of nerve racking when it's our turn to teach the language moment but we made it super interactive and made a game out of it. We had a great discussion on the doctrine of Jesus Christ and how we can help our investigators study the scriptures. 

Then, Sister Carter and I were off to Jyväskylä for exchanges with Sister Holbrook and Sister West! It was such a fun day and I am so glad to be in the same district as them because we get to see them every week! 

 

On Easter Sister Carter and I enjoyed going to church and then later at home we had Mämmi which is a Finnish dessert (Americans would not consider it a dessert) that is made from rye. You HAVE to buy cream and sugar to eat with it or else it tastes pretty bad. But overall mämmi is good! We also visited a member that night and she gave us hand knitted socks that she made for us for Easter. It was so sweet. A lot of Finnish people are into knitting. Everyone knows how to knit here! 

We have had a great week of teaching people as well and honestly this week has just flown by. We are headed to Turku tomorrow night for exchanges there and I'm excited to go back there again! I loved being able to study about the Savior in preparation for Easter this year and I know that Christ lives! 

April 11, 2017

At the leadership meeting in Espoo this past week.

Almost our whole MTC group was there!!!

It has been another great week in Tampere! I love having Sisar Carter here as my companion, doing the work with her has been such a blast. We have seen a lot of miracles here already as we have focused on following up with former investigators this past week. We seem to have success with old Finnish ladies. We also have a great investigator progressing towards baptism and the members have done so well with friend-shipping him. They have taken him to church the past two weeks and have invited him to come to institute and family night and he loves it. 

 

We have been preparing for zone training and we feel really good about what we'll be presenting tomorrow. It has also been good to follow along with the study topics on mormon.org that started on Palm Sunday. I have felt closer to the Savior as I have learned more about His earthly ministry. 

 

Here in Finland they have this tradition where all of the little kids dress up and go door to door on Palm Sunday. They sing a song and give you a branch that they decorated and then you give them candy. It is kind of like our Halloween except it's on Palm Sunday there is singing and branches. You might need to Google it to get a better description. Anyways, as we were out talking to people we were asking if we were ''trick-or-treaters''. I didn't know what that meant in Finnish at the time so I was just very confused but Sisar Carter keeps her dictionary on her and so we had a good laugh about it later. We continued to talk to people and we had an interesting conversation with a man who tried to convince us that Jesus was born again in Russia and that we should go to Russia to find out for ourselves. We will not be doing that but I was again reminded that the world is filled with interesting people. 

I am excited for Easter and for the message that Christ lives and I am grateful that I can share it with others. 

April 3, 2017

Me and Sisar Carter!

This past week has flown by! It started of with Sister Adams barely making her train to the mission home and Sister Carter coming back from Oulu! We have been running around going to district meeting in Jyväsklyä and back twice and watching general conference this past weekend. General conference was amazing and it was great to see our dear prophet Thomas S. Monson again. Although his talks are short now it has made me pay so much more attention to their meaning. I loved when he talked about how our testimony of the Book of Mormon cannot be understated and that we need to be reading from it daily. Unfortunately I did not read from the scriptures daily before my mission but it is also cool that I have been able to see the huge difference it has made in my personal life. And now I have a goal to never miss a day! We have another early p-day today because we are heading down to Espoo tomorrow for another leadership meeting. I am really excited for that and that we can go to the temple again with everyone. We have really been focusing on Easter and showing everyone the new video on Mormon.org. It is amazing and there is a 8 day study schedule that I am excited to do myself to learn more about the Savior this Easter. 

Also, we have a new investigator from China that is really cool and we had to explain the difference between a ''Profit'' and a ''Prophet''. I forget sometimes that English is a really hard language as well. That's why we draw pictures in lessons!