January 10, 2017

Terve! This past week we had exchanges in Espoo! It was with Sisar Burden and Sisar Cardon and it was so much fun. I got to spend the whole day with Sisar Burden and it was so much fun just having time to catch up and do missionary work together. It was amazing getting to speak Finnish with her after being in the MTC together and seeing how far we've both come. I also got to see the Helsinki Temple covered in snow and it was absolutely beautiful. Two amazing things that happened was that we were talking to people outside and all of the sudden I looked up and there was a Finnish woman coming toward us on skis and she had a big leather belt on her waist and pulling her was a snow dog!!! so we stopped her and tried to share the gospel. She wasn't interested but it was amazing. We watched her ski off into the distance with her snow dog and I feel that I must have a talk with my mission president regarding the the most effective way to travel during the winter. Also, later that night we saw something strange coming our way. This time we ran into a woman on horseback just taking a nightly stroll. We stopped her as well and she we talked to her about the gospel and also got to pet her horse. 

It got way cold last week, it was -15 Celsius! It's been really interesting for sure and it also took us at least 20 minutes to be sufficiently bundled before we went out. I was so scared of freezing that I might have gone overboard, I wore 3 pairs of tights, a wool jacket, a bigger jacket, 2 scarfs, 2 pairs of wool socks, and 2 hats. Needless to say I was very toasty. I feel blessed to be serving in southern Finland for winter, it's super windy but it's definitely not as cold as Oulu! My companions and I are going to the temple next p-day! It's our last Tuesday p-day together next week so we wanted it to be really special.