To Lahti and back: with bunkbeds

 
 We woke up to snow on Monday morning. It pretty much snowed all day! It is a heavy good-packing snow. The ice pile next to the office is covered in snow. The trees look pretty with their snow coats.

On Tuesday morning, the sun was shining and they had "cleared" the walking paths. We are not exactly sure just what they do to clear the paths. It doesn't really seem like they plow, or if they do it isn't all the way to the ground. But the paths were still covered with packed snow, and the pile next to the office had more snow added to it.

It has been a bit warmer the rest of the week and now the walking path between here and the office is mostly clear.  There is still snow and ice, but it is slowly melting. 

One of the things that makes shopping a challenge is that most things are written in both Finnish and Swedish. Sometimes it is hard to tell if the second line is Swedish, or if the Finnish words are just on two lines. I knew I would have a hard time with the word for orange (the fruit) because it is appelsiini (pronounced: ahh pel see knee) and that sounds a bit like applesauce. The word for apple is omena (oh men ah). Now just to confuse me further, the Swedish word is Äppel. It is a good thing that these boxes of juice have pictures that correspond with the correct type of juice that they contain.

We were trying to find some beef bouillon at the store. We could find some that looked like it said calf, 

and some that looked like it said ox. We weren't sure just what these bottles said, but we wondered if it was reindeer.

Our desks at the mission office can be moved up or down. 

One day Sister Shurtz was tired of sitting so she was able to stand at her desk for a while and keep working. 

(The desk is usually the same height as the shelf unit on the right hand side of the picture.)

We decided that we would like to have some cookies, so one night this past week we made cookies.

We are grateful to have a Bosch mixer in our apartment. 

It is much smaller and very different than my Bosch mixer at home, but we are so happy to have it.

They don't have chocolate chips here, so we cut up chocolate candy bars to make chocolate chunks for our cookies.

                   

One morning we saw this truck from our balcony. It pulled this giant garbage bag out of the ground then held it over the back of the truck and the bottom of the bag was untied and all of the garbage bags that were inside of it fell into the truck. The bottom of the giant bag was again tied up and lowered back into the ground. 

We have never seen anything like that before.

We got a phone call from the assistants Saturday morning telling us that they needed some beds, desks and chairs to be moved into a couple of apartments to be ready for transfers this week. We were so sad that the Perkins weren't here to tell us just what to do. We met the assistants at Pelican (where we have a storage unit rented) and we tried to figure out just what we had in there. We could see some beds, but when we got things unloaded enough to see them, we realized that there were two beds for senior couples, but no single beds. We did find a desk though. 

We loaded the desk into the van and we went back to our apartment to pick up some tools. The Assistants went to their apartment to get an office chair and to unload the seats out of the van. We picked up Sister Potter so she could go with us and she needed us to stop at the office so she could pick up some supplies that needed to go to Lahti.We met the Assistants at the sister's apartment where we finished taking apart a bunkbed that they had there. 

We only lost three pieces that fell into the holes of  bed pieces. 

With a little patience and using the magnet from a name tag they were able to retrieve the lost pieces.

The bed is loaded into the van along with the desk and chair and we are ready to go.

We drove about an hour and a half to the sisters apartment in Lahti.

It was a beautiful day for a drive. We enjoyed seeing what it is like to drive in Finland. 

We especially enjoyed seeing the frozen "waterfalls" on some of the rocks. (The rocks reminded me of driving in Tennessee from Nashville to Murfreesboro - except for the snow and ice😀)

When we got to the sisters apartment, we found what we thought was their building and a sign that we thought said guest parking, and waited for the sisters. They were very busy, but met us there between appointments and helped us get everything up into their apartment using the elevator. We have moved and helped others move, but I think this was the first time we helped move things having to use an elevator. That was interesting. I tried to get a picture of Sister Potter and I with bunkbed parts in the elevator, but it didn't work that well. Here is Elder Shurtz with the desk.

 

The sisters helped us with the bed, but they were now late for their appointment, so we thought we could drive them to where they needed to be as they were going to take the bus, but had now missed the next bus. 

That was a bit of a challenge because we only had 3 seatbelts in the van. We didn't think it was quite appropriate for Elder Shurtz to drive the sisters alone. Sister Shurtz thought maybe she should drive them, but then that meant leaving Sister Potter and Elder Shurtz alone in the apartment which didn't seem quite appropriate either. 

So, Sister Potter drove the sister in the van while we finished up putting the bed back together.  When she got back, the parking spot was taken, so she just waited in the van while we finished up. Then we drove back. We really enjoyed visiting with Sister Potter and getting to know here a little bit better as we drove.

We had to take the van to the parking garage near the office. (Parking is a real challenge here. I would say that it is similar to parking in downtown Chicago or other major cities where parking is scarce and you have to pay in most cases to park. Of course the other challenge is trying to read the signs and understand just what they mean.) 

We walked over to the office and picked up our car which the assistants had driven to the office, and drove Sister Potter home. She and Sister Romberg live in a different apartment building than we do.  The temple missionaries who are from the USA also live in that apartment building. Their apartment building is on the other side of the mall from our apartment. We parked under the mall (you can park for free for 4 hours -just remember to set you parking clock and put it on you dashboard.) and went to Lidl to get some groceries. We decided to try some liha-piirakka (translation: meat pies) for dinner. They look and smell like donuts, but instead of some sort of fruit or cream filling they have meat in them. You warm them and eat them with sinappi (yummy Finnish mustard).

Today was Fast Sunday. We participated in a "nationwide fast". All the members and missionaries in Finland were fasting for missionary work and the hearts of the people to be softened and for members to be able to find a natural and comfortable way to invite their friends and neighbors to a church activity or to learn more about the gospel. We felt privileged to be able to join in fasting with the wonderful missionaries and members here.

The amount of daylight is increasing.  Tomorrow the sunrise is at 6:22 a.m. and the sunset is at 20:24 (8:24 p.m.) that is just over 14 hours of daylight! (In Provo tomorrow there will be just over 13 hours of daylight.)