Shurtz Start to Finnish

Christmas Eve morning, we went for a walk. It was still quite dark at 8:30 in the morning.  There was a full moon shining, and snow on the ground so it was lighter than other mornings when it has been cloudy.   We bought these hyacinths for 0,50€ cents each on the Saturday before Christmas.   They were just all green when we bought them,  although we could see inside the green leaves that the flowers would bloom soon.  I gave them a little bit of water and in two days they had blossomed out alot.  I took a picture almost every day. After three days, I had to prop up the flowers with rulers or they would tip over.  It is fun to see how much it grows each day.  The first picture is taken on Christmas Eve and the last one on this animation was taken on December 29. Every year at noon on Christmas Eve, the Christmas peace is declared from the city of Turku.  It is a tradition which launches the Chr...

We wanted to include some pictures of the final versions of the jars of caramel sauce  we made for Christmas gifts for our friends here in Finland.   We put the labels on our bottles of caramel sauce and got our temple note card gifts ready to give to people. It has been fun to give them to people and see their appreciation. This week was transfers, so it was a busy one for us.  The church has some blackout dates for flying at Christmas time,  so our missionaries had to fly home on December 19 instead of December 20.  So that added a few challenges to work out as things had to be done in a little different order than they usually do. The returning missionaries brought their luggage in on Monday afternoon,  and then they came back on Tuesday morning to finish "checking out".  We got a picture with the office staff and the departing group.  Of course Sister Airto handed out the candy bar gift to each of the d...