Zone Conferences

This week we had zone conferences. 

Vanhin Shurtz was asked to go to the zone conferences to do some safety training for cars. I got to go along as well.

For part of his training, Vahin Shurtz had the junior companions sitting with the senior companions behind them. 

They were given a maze (thank you Sister Romberg) and a marker and the junior companions had to close their eyes. 

The senior companions were told to guide the junior companions through the maze. 

The catch was that they could not talk or give any verbal directions. After they had tried this for a little bit, he told them that he could see this wasn't working, so he wanted them to trade places. 

This time he gave them about 15 seconds to begin with to discuss what they were going to guide them.  

They still had to close their eyes, they still couldn't talk during the activity, and they had to trade mazes with someone else, so they were using a maze they were not familiar with. This time he gave them a bit longer and they were able to do much better. It was interesting to see what each of the different companionships did to help guide their companion. 

Tampere Zone

East Zone

Helsinki Zone

North Zone

We drove to Tampere Monday morning to be with the Tampere zone. 

The zone leaders were in charge of clean-up afterwards. They did their best to help clean-up the rest of the dessert!

We drove to Mikkeli that evening.  It was a beautiful drive. It took about 3 1/2 hours. 

We especially liked seeing the wildflowers and the tractor out cutting the hay.

  

 We also enjoyed seeing trucks carrying different loads.

We saw a couple of new signs. There was this one, and one just like it without the red slash. 

We are not quite sure just what they mean.  The driving in Finland book we have says that the one without the slash is Road for Motor Vehicles, and the one shown below means the End of Road for Motor Vehicles. 

We saw them both on the side of the highway, and the highway and the cars kept going even after the sign with the red slash. We think that the meaning is different than what it sounds like to us.

 We arrived shortly after 8:30 p.m. We checked into the hotel and then went down the street to find some dinner. 

We found a little pizza place that was still open for another 10 minutes. 

They said that if we hurried and ordered they could still cook a pizza before the ovens turned off. We thought about getting something in the grocery store as well, but they also closed at 9:00, so were closed by time we got our pizza. 

We ordered an Americana. It had ham and pineapple and bleu cheese. 

(I thought it was a funny name because I have never heard of a pizza with bleu cheese in America.)

 I wasn't sure if I would like it but it was good. (It did make the pizza look a bit moldy though.) 😏

This church was between our hotel and the pizza place. 

I wrote last week about how much daylight there was in Mikkeli. 

Here is a picture taken out of our hotel window. It was taken about 10:15, and the next one at 11:00. 

 

 We got up the next morning and went for a walk. Here is another picture of the big Luthern church. 

Where it looks like there is light in the windows, it is because the light is coming in from the windows on the other side. 

The sun is high in the sky even though it is only 7:30 in the morning. 

This building reminds me a bit of the Provo City Center Temple when it was the tabernacle.

 We found a park, kirkko puisto (church park) where the church was originally, but it burned down. 

It was now a beautiful park in the middle of town.

 We got a picture in front of the church building.

 We often see (school or daycare) kids walking somewhere. They are always accompanied by several adults and they all wear reflective vests for safety. These kids seem quite a bit older than most that we see.

We drove back to Espoo that evening. We got home and grabbed some quick and late dinner and headed to bed.

The next day was the Helsinki zone conference. Sister Lehtinen made a delicious chili, with a side salad (cabbage, apple, raisin) and bread. She had asked me to provide the dessert. Sister Potter brought the cookies that we had made on Saturday, since she had put them in her freezer. They were a big hit with the missionaries!

In the Helsinki zone, the sister training leaders and zone leaders put on a Studio C type skit 

which made their training of being bold but not overbearing fun.

After the zone conference, we went over to the office to get some things done that had been neglected while we were gone. We couldn't stay too late though as we had to get up early the next day.

Thurs. morning we got up at 4:30 so we could be ready to leave by 5:30 and drive to the mission home. We drove to the airport with Pres. and Sister Aura and flew to Oulu for the final day of zone conferences. We have been surprised at how much farmland there is here. Pres. Aura says that Finland wants to be as self sufficient as possible without having to rely on imports. Here are a couple of views from the plane. It is too bad that we didn't spend the night here as that day there was 22:55:48 hours of daylight there. It rained most of the day though, so we didn't see the sun. 

Elder Shurtz had to help 3 missionaries work on applying for extensions on their visas while we were there.

At zone conference, Pres. Aura introduced some roll-up banners that the missionaries can use outdoors to try to introduce people to the message of the Gospel and the Book of Mormon. They were designed by the assistants. 

They are beautiful and quite impressive.

 

Here are the zone conference pictures:

Tampere

East

Helsinki

North

We had lots of work to catch up on at the office on Friday.  We were quite exhausted! 

We are in awe of Pres. and Sister Aura and their stamina and ability to keep going 

in spite of such an almost constant busy pace like this.

We love it though, even if it is exhausting. 

One of the great things about being full time missionaries is the chance to focus our lives on serving the Lord and trying to learn what He would have us become.  It is something we all are trying to do, but when you can leave the cares of the world behind and spend each hour serving others it makes it a little easier.  On the other hand, we appreciate that we have much room for improvement.  Perhaps it is because we are called as full time missionaries that we can see those shortcomings more readily.  At the same time, we better understand the love that Lord has for each one of us.

On Saturday, we had to get some air in the tires. 

We went to the gas station where we thought Sister Romberg had told us we could find some. We drove all around, but couldn't find it. Elder Shurtz had just gotten out of the car to go inside and ask when he saw someone come and pump up their bike tires. It was just at the end of one of the gas pump areas. Ilma means air. 

We had grocery shopping to do and other things that we needed to get done around our apartment. 

One of the things that we bought was Fazer chocolate bars. 

There is a tradition that the office gives a Fazer bar to each departing missionary and our supply was almost out.

It was also raining on and off during the day. We did go for a walk in the afternoon. 

We wanted to go to a boardwalk that we have seen before, so parked near one of the museums that we went to for the senior conference and then just started walking, not knowing just what we would find. 

It was beautiful. There were ducks, geese, a swan, some crow like birds, gulls, and other birds as well. 

Sign near the beach.

We walked on board walks across the water and into forested areas, 

where you could see water through the trees, and even along a beach.

A swing that we found on the beach.

We have had lohikeittto (Finnish salmon soup) twice now. 

The first time, Sister Lehtinen fixed it for us when the office staff went to their place for dinner. We had it again this week in Oulu for zone conference lunch. I had been told that it is a simple soup to make, so I googled a recipe and tried my hand at making it for Sunday dinner. It turned out pretty good, I think.