Shurtz Start to Finnish

The Finnish summer is beautiful and we keep seeing different kinds of wild flowers. We love seeing them as we go walking and as we drive places. We were with the sister missionaries and walked past a car with a wiper on the headlights which we found interesting. Vanhin Shurtz really likes grapefruit for breakfast. He was excited when we first got to Finland to find that they had grapefruit. The price has been increasing as the season goes on and last week when he looked, he decided that the grapefruit was way too expensive to keep buying them, so this is his last grapefruit for a while. On Monday, we celebrated my birthday in the office. Sisar Potter made a delicious carrot cake for me.  President Aura and the assistants were there to celebrate with us. We sure do love these people that we work with! This week was a big holiday in Finland. It was Juhannus (midsummer celebration).  Of course, the summer soltice was on Thurs. and I was anxious to ...

Wow! We arrived to Finland 3 months ago today! We can't believe how fast that time has gone.  At the same time, when we think back to the snow and ice that was here when we first arrived, it seems like that was so long ago that we can hardly remember it. Weird mission time warp! Interesting picture of the sun streaming down through a hole in the clouds. This past week was transfers. We were supposed to have 4 new missionaries arrive on Tuesday,  but their visas are still pending, so they were temporarily reassigned to other missions.  We tried to tell sisar Romberg that since the new missionaries were not coming,  that everything was on hold and no one could leave either, but she wouldn't listen.  She didn't want a big going away celebration,  but she did say we could have brownies and ice-cream with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.  We are so grateful that she extended her mission so that we had a chance to work with her...

Monday night we were invited to the Marjaniemi ward grilli. Sister Potter came with us.  I took a picture of Sister Potter with this great companionship to send to their moms.  We sure enjoy when we can be with the young missionaries. We like to take a cookie for each of us along with our lunch each day. The first time we made cookies we made chocolate chip, the next time we made sugar cookies and this week we actually made two batches of cookies. I made oatmeal craisin and Elder Shurtz made oatmeal raisin.  We haven't taken many pictures this week.  The time has flown by, but the beginning of the week seems like such a long time ago.  We are truly caught in the mission time warp. On Saturday we drove to Turku to visit the Turku castle.  It is the oldest castle in Finland.  It was started being  built in 1280 and added to over the next several hundred years.  All the wooden parts were destroyed by fire i...