Out with the Old, In with the New, and 15 Boxes to Boot

On Monday night, we invited the temple missionaries (4 couples) to come and join us for FHE. 

That morning, Elder Shurtz cut up some apples to make Apple Crisp for dessert. 

He was peeling the apples and then eating the peels while he cut the apple slices. 

Unfortunately we forgot to take any pictures at the FHE, so this is all we have to remember it. 

We did enjoy being with the temple missionaries and spending some time with them.

This last week was transfer week. We had a group of 7 missionaries arriving and 14 departing. 

On Tuesday afternoon, some of the departing missionaries brought their suitcases into the office and while they were there, some of them took care of paying their office debt in Elder Shurtz's office.

The new missionaries arrive on Tuesday, but we don't see them until Wednesday when we do some orientation with them. We forgot to take pictures at orientation, so here is a picture that President Aura took of the arriving missionaries 

(7 of them -5 Elders and 2 Sisters) when they stopped to see the temple on their way to the mission home. 

 On Wednesday morning, all of the departing missionaries (12 Elders and 2 Sisters) came to the mission office 

to drop off the rest of their luggage, pay office debt and take some pictures. 

Two of the missionaries in this departing group were the Assistants to the President when we first arrived. 

Of course, we are excited for their families that their missionary is coming home, 

but it is hard to see the missionaries that we have come to love leave. 

When Missionaries leave, Sister Airto presents them with a Fazer chocolate bar from the office staff. 

She wraps them with a little poem written on them. Here is a picture of sisters receiving their Fazer bars.

We stopped at Prisma (grocery store) on the way back to the office after orientation for the new missionaries.  

We bought some lihapiiraka (meat pies) and sinappi (Finnish mustard), and munkki (Finnish donuts) for dessert. 

Lihapiiraka is a favorite of Sister Airto and she had been working hard to get parking for the car that was just sent to Vaasa, she got things worked out so someone could go retrieve whatever is found in the Lahti Branch safety deposit box, and she figured out why a missionary didn't get money deposited in his personal bank account even though the branch financial clerk thought that he had transferred the money. We thought that she deserved to get a lihapiiraka. 

Here we are finishing eating our lihapiiraka.

We have 3 assistants this transfer. Here they are loading the departing missionaries' bags 

into the trailer that they borrowed from Pelican storage. 

The tires seemed very low, so Elder Shurtz went with them to pump them up, 

because they hadn't had any previous experience with pumping up tires in Finland. Now they know how to do it!

I think that we are getting to the end of the wildflowers. 

That is a bit sad. Here are some wildflowers and then some fern type plants that we saw on out walk on Saturday.

In the center of the following picture, you can see the last of these purple flowers that we have enjoyed.

They are not so bright anymore, mostly the flowers are gone. 

I found out that these are also in Alaska and they are known as fireweed.

Saturday turned out to be a very busy day for us. We spent most of it in the office, but after our walk 

we went up to our varasto and got the rollaway beds and mattresses to get ready for guests next week.

Then we went over to the office because we still have plenty to do as a result of the transfers. 

In addition, we knew that one temple missionary couple was heading to Turku that afternoon and Elder Shurtz had made arrangements for them to take supplies to the missionaries out there. He had already obtained an office chair to send to a threesome there, but there also were teaching supplies that were needed. It turned out that we sent 6 boxes of the Book of Mormon (20-22 copies in a box depending on the language) to Turku, as well as other supplies and mail.

Then we realized that with zone conferences this next week, that we could send supplies with the assistants, but they were leaving early Monday morning, so we needed to find out what supplies were needed and get them ready as well.

 There were another 9 boxes of the Book of Mormon that needed to go to the first two zone conferences. 

That was more than the assistants had room for, so we had to take 4 of the boxes over to the mission home 

for President Aura to take. That was a total of 15 cases that went out of the office in one day! 

Every time we pass one of these signs, I think that I should get a picture, but I can't ever get my phone out in time. 

This time I had my phone ready, but it still wasn't easy to get the picture, but maybe you can get the idea. 

These signs tell you how fast you are traveling, but then if you are going the speed limit or slower, 

it gives you a yellow smiley face. If you are going too fast, you get a red frowny face. 

I thought that if there were little kids in the car, they would encourage the driver to go slow 

so they could see the smiley face!

 

I am afraid that it will be fall soon. It is cooler now and I notice now that when we go to bed, it seems dark. 

The funny thing is that the sky is still quite light, and we still have a lot more sunlight than what is in Utah right now. 

Our sun rise today was at 5:26 and it sets at 21:24 (9:24), with 15:57 hours of daylight. 

However, we are losing over 5 minutes of daylight a day now!  

Compare with Provo where sunrise was at 6:35 and sets at 20:27 (8:27) with 13:52 hours of daylight 

and they are losing a little over 2 minutes a day.

We grow to love our mission, Finland, the missionaries and the people here a little more each day! 

We are so grateful for the opportunity to serve as missionaries in the Finland Helsinki Mission!