Conferences and Easter

It is interesting to us how it keeps snowing every once in a while. Often when we walk to the office in the mornings the paths which were melting and mostly clear the night before are once again covered in packed snow and ice. 

This is a picture of the path on the way to the office and the pile of ice/snow that is by the corner of our building. 

The daytime highs since we have been here have mostly been above freezing and things are slowly melting. 

Then the nighttime lows are well below freezing and everything refreezes! 

There is gravel on the paths in the snow and ice which helps to provide traction, but with the thawing and refreezing,

there are many spots where it is now slick ice on top of the gravel. 

Here are a couple more pictures of what the ice is like. Most of the parking lots have ice in them. Here are some stairs that are facing in a way where they don't get any sun and they have almost become a ramp of ice instead of stairs.

 

On Monday we celebrated Sister Potter's birthday. Sister London and Sister Romberg made many decorations to acknowledge many of the things that Sister Potter does. We are so grateful to have her in the mission office!

 

 
Sister Perkins taught us how to make a flower to represent the yellow rose of Texas since that is where Sister Potter is from. (Many of the decorations are made using some yellow stickers that come with the Book of Mormon orders. Instead of just throwing them away, the office staff has found some creative ways to use them.)

Elder Shurtz went with Elder Perkins to the dump to get rid of our old TV. (We inherited the Perkins TV.) 

Elder Shurtz wanted to know where the dump is and how things work there. 

This week was Zone Conferences. There are 4 zones in this mission, and they hold a zone conference in each zone. 

We were able to attend the Helsinki Zone conference. 

We met this cute sister there. Sisar Brinton is the granddaughter of our friend, Kay Richards from Fruit Heights. 

I was able to give her a big hug from her grandma!

Sister Romberg is the vehicle coordinator. 

She is very clever and I had heard that she does great trainings at the zone conferences. We were not disappointed. 

Driving can be a challenge here. The signs are very different from what we are used to. 

Sister Romberg prepared a game where we were to match the pictures of the signs with the correct card telling what the sign means. It was done as a relay race and she included the senior missionaries as one team. 

The seniors lost :(

(Could that have something to do with the fact that three of us haven't driven and two of us have only been here a week?  Maybe this was a set up?  We were grateful that the young missionaries did so well.)

These are the ones we got correct.

These are the ones which we missed (now corrected). 

As you can see the blue with white arrows are very similar and we just had them switched, and the red with yellow circle or line are also very similar and we just had them switched as well. 

One of the biggest challenges with driving, is actually with parking.  (You may have noticed that many of those signs had to do with parking.) The signs can be very confusing, especially to us since they are all new to us and if there are words, they are in Finnish and we can't read them. Parking has been a challenge for all the missionaries, so Sister Romberg wrote a song to help the missionaries remember some of the rules about parking. It is written to go to the tune of "Follow the Prophet". All the missionaries enjoyed singing along with Sister Romberg. 

We were very grateful for Sister Romberg's training because in the next few days we had several opportunities to put what we had learned to use as we had to find parking places.

Tues. evening it was time to say goodbye to the Perkins and the Londons. Sister Airto presented them with their wrapped bar of Finnish chocolate (Fazer). It is tradition to present a Fazer bar to the missionaries as they depart. 

Wednesday was a sad day for us. The Londons, Vests and Perkins were all departing that morning. 

The assistants were meeting them at the mission office at 4:30 a.m. to drive them to the airport. 

We decided to go over to say goodbye. Elder Shurtz made muffins for them. 

He ended up going with them to the airport so he could see just how that all works.

Here is a picture that was taken at the airport before they headed through security.

When we arrived at the office at 9:00, we were the only ones there. 

Sister Romberg traveled to be to another zone conference. 

Sister Potter was picking up Sister Airto, and they were running late. 

We had devotional when they arrived, 

but it was pretty lonely with just the 4 of us!

We had to deliver a microwave to some sister missionaries. The Perkins had run out of time. They had purchased the microwave, but asked us to deliver it. The Londons told us that their address was programmed into the GPS. When I arranged a time, the sisters had me write down their address, which I did. We tried to find out about where to park, but the sister don't have a car so they weren't sure, but thought that we could park where the cars park for the train. We followed the GPS and found a place where we could park (because now we recognized some of the signs). 

Elder Shurtz got the microwave out of the trunk and we started walking in the direction of their apartment. I called them because we weren't sure just which was their apartment. They said they would come out to meet us. After waiting for several minutes, I got a phone call from the sisters saying they couldn't find us. 

We discovered that we were at their old apartment! 

The address hadn't been changed in the GPS. We had to load back into the car and find our way to their new apartment, and once again find a place to park. Elder Shurtz was doing great in recognizing the signs and where we could park. The sisters actually stood out waiting for us so we would be sure to find them.

Here is Elder Shurtz delivering the microwave.

We got it all installed and it works!

Here is how most of the lettuce is packaged and sold here. 

There have all sorts of different varities, It is packaged in these cellophane bags, but when you get them out, 

they are actually in little pots. Very different than how I am used to buying lettuce.

 

We went out for a walk on Saturday morning.
We found a walking path not to far from our apartment.
It is amazing that we can be in the middle of the woods just a few blocks from our apartment, which is across the street from a big mall.

 Notice the contrast between the pictures. In this one we are now coming back to the apartment buildings and more citylike environment. (Notice the parking sign. Can you tell if and when you can park here?) 

When we were packing to leave home, I put a scarf into an inside "pocket" in my coat. It didn't really fit very well, but that way it was part of my coat and didn't add weight to my luggage. When I wanted to wear it, I looked for it but couldn't find it. I reached inside the pocket, it wasn't there. I checked the other pocket. I couldn't find it. I felt in all the pockets even though I knew they were too small. It wasn't in any of them. I thought that maybe I had already unpacked it and put it somewhere, but had just forgotten about that with my jet lag. I kept looking for it throughout the week. 

I thought for sure that I would find it last Saturday when we spent some time organizing where things should be kept in our apartment. No luck. We actually looked at Prisma to see about buying a new scarf. 

They only had a few because it is the end of the season, but they were on sale. I decided not to get one yet. 

There were a couple of times that I really wished that I had a scarf, and I was so disappointed that mine must have fallen out of my pocket somewhere in one of our flights or at one of the airports as we traveled. 

I finally decided that I should just go ahead and buy one which cost about 1/3 the regular price, rather than wait until next winter and have to pay more for it. We bought a scarf the next time we went to Prisma. I took the tags off and wore it the next day. The day after that as I was zipping up my coat, I felt a big lump in the bottom of my coat near the zipper. I tried to figure out what it was. I reached in my inside pocket and there was the scarf that I had brought with me! 

Not sure why it was not there the many times I had looked for it previously. Now I have two scarves! 

The new one is probably much warmer, so maybe I will be glad to have both.

General Conference is a new experience here. The Saturday morning session is at 7:00 p.m. here. 

We went to the church to watch it. The temple missionaries had invited us to ride with them to the church. 

We enjoyed getting to know them. We enjoyed participating with the saints here in that session. 

They had Finnish set up in one part of the building and English in another. We were especially touched as we participated in the solemn assembly and were privileged to sustain Russell M. Nelson as our prophet.

On Sunday, they showed a recording of the Priesthood session at noon at the church. 

The men had a potluck lunch before the session. Elder Shurtz went with the temple missionaries to that. 

(By that time we had read the news about the significant changes that took place at that session, 

and we had received a text from Nathan welcoming his dad to the Elders quorum.) 

I listened to the Priesthood session on my computer while he was gone. I was touched by how powerful it was when Pres. Nelson had them all stand by quorums and then they all sang!

At 3:00 p.m. they show a recording of the Saturday afternoon session. 

At 5:00 they show the recording of the Church World Report. 

Then at 6:30 we can watch the live Music and the Spoken word, 

and at 7:00 the live session of the Sunday morning session.

Here is a picture of an interesting Easter candy that we found here. 

I mentioned that Fazer chocolate is a famous delicious Finnish chocolate. 

This is a Fazer egg. It is an actual egg shell filled with chocolate/hazelnut yumminess.  

They empty the egg through a hole on the bottom and then fill it and plug the hole.

It is definitely my new favorite Easter egg!

We enjoyed the sessions of Conference that we were able to watch this afternoon and evening. 

We especially enjoyed the Sunday morning session which we watched live at 7:00pm.  We particularly enjoyed thinking that our children and grandchildren were all watching it as well. In between the two sessions, we stayed at the church and ate the little dinner that we had brought. The young missionaries did the same. I got this picture of them (plus a few others) all standing around visiting in the kitchen.