Mission Tour Conference

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Monday morning was a bit cold for our morning walk. We saw something that we hadn't seen before. 

A truck was out grooming ice in the park where the basketball courts are.

Ice hockey is big thing here, so I would guess that is what they use this ice for.

Monday in the office, we got the things from the printer for the Light the World Christmas initiative. 

We had to hurry and get things divided up and packaged to send to the mission tour conferences.

Monday evening we had a farewell for Elder and Sister Nielsen (temple couple).

It was an ice cream social held at the Evans apartment.

 Elder and Sister Nielsen and Sister and Elder Ames.

 Sister and Elder Evans and Sister and Elder Matis.

Elder and Sister Nielsen. 

It has been great to get to know them a little bit in the short time that they have been here.

We worked on making a batch of marshmallow treats to take as dessert to our day of the mission tour. 

You can find rice crispies here, but marshmallows are a bit hard to come by. 

We found some white ones at Prisma. It was a bit difficult to figure out just how many we needed. 

They were kind of funny, because they were different sizes. There were at least 3 different sizes in the bag. 

We were sad to hear the Lucia had been having a bit of a set back. 

She was  having problems with spitting up and with elevated heart and respiratory rates.

Tuesday, we went walking again in the morning. It was a bit colder. 

We thought that it was interesting because it looked a bit like there was snow on the ground, 

but we don't think it actually snowed, but was more like frost. 

We also found it interesting that near our apartment there wasn't much frost. 

(Notice the Christmas stars on the light poles of the street lights.)

There wasn't very much frost in the forest area either. 

 However, in more open areas, there was a lot more frost. 

In fact there was so much frost that it looked like it had snowed.

We found the frost on the grass especially interesting.

About 8:45 in the morning, we saw a beautiful sunrise out our window.

 I thought the frost covered window was interesting as well.

We had loaded lots of packages that were to go to Tampere into President Aura's car 

when he was at the office, (especially the large ones, since his car is bigger than the Yaris).

On Tuesday, we organized the remaining packages so they would get to the correct mission tour conferences. 

These ones were to go to Tampere, and the assistants came Tuesday night and loaded them in their car.

The picture does not include the packages that the President took.

The packages in the hall were to be taken to the Conference in Marjaniemi.

We got several cute pictures of Lucia. 

In her excercise clothes.

Sweet baby dreams. Sleeping with her eyes half open.

We also got a picture showing that all her pumps were turned off.

And one of my favorite.

We needed to make more batches of rice crispy treats. I wasn't real happy with how the ones turned out on Monday. 

It thought that they would work better with mini marshmallows.

We went to the store to get more rice crispies and more marshmallows.

They had mini marshmallows. 

They are a bit smaller than the mini marshmallows that we are used to, and they are colored. 

We figured we needed 6 bags.

We separated them by color and made a batch of pink rice crispy treats.

We made the green batch Wednesday morning and the yellow batch Wednesday evening.

Also on Wednesday evening we met the assistants to finish loading packages into our car and the assistant's car. We couldn't fill our back seat because we were going to take Sister Airto and we also needed to bring her "Ferari" as well. The Assistants couldn't fill their back seat either because they were also taking two missionaries in their car. So we each only filled about 1/3 of our backseats.

 Thursday, we enjoyed being at the mission tour conference.  Area Seventy Elder Torben Engbjerg from Denmark was the visiting area authority.
The themes were Light the World and ministering One by One.

I especially enjoyed listening to the stories that Elder Engbjorg told. He talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon and about how at one point in his life he realized that often he was busy with church callings and life and raising a family and that he hadn't been reading the Book of Mormon as much as he should have. He had gone to Israel for business and he found himself alone at some point in the Garden of Gethsemane and found himself on his knees there praying. He promised Heavenly Father that he would do better and he promised he would read the Book of Mormon everyday. He made little charts and he has read the Book of Mormon every day since then.
He said that the Book of Mormon in his spiritual daily vitamin.
It is the most important vitamin you can take each day!

We enjoyed hearing a story about Paul Cardall and the song "One By One" with words by Elder David A. Bednar. I thought you might enjoy hearing it as well.

 Paul Cardall song "One By One".

We found the slide in the above picture interesting. Here it is, so you can see it better.

I helped Sister Lehtinen in the kitchen for part of the day. Elder Shurtz and I finished cleaning up so that the Lehtinens could go help their daughter who was moving.

Also, during the lunch time, all of the missionaries (including us) got our flu shots.

 Here is the picture from the Tampere/North zones. We weren't at that meeting, but we love all these missionaries.

 Here is the picture from the Helsinki/East zones. This is the conference that we attended.

At the end of the meeting, I prepared and set out fruit and bread for those missionaries 

who were staying for, or coming to the extended MLC which was happening afterwards.

We left with just enough time to get to the Haaga building for the RS activity.

It was a night to share nativities and food. They asked all who had one to bring a nativity.

I wasn't going to bring mine, but Sister Lehtinen told me that I should. 

I brought both of mine, but only ended up putting the knitted one out. 

It was interesting to see the nativities that were brought. 

The first nativity that caught my eye was the wooden puzzle that is very much like one that I have at home. 

Then I noticed a felted one just like the one I brought, which is why I didn't put that one out. 

The other one that was very familiar was the paper one. I remember it from primary.

 Here are some of the other nativities that were there.

They had each of us get up and tell about the nativity that we brought.

On Saturday, we took the train to Helsinki again. I wanted to go to the Christmas market which opened Dec. 1.

The Christmas market is set up at Senate Square. There is a huge Christmas tree set up. 

From what we could see, it looked like the trunk was stuck in a hole in the ground through the cobblestone 

and then there are pieces of wood pounded in around it making a tighter fit and helping support it. 

There were Christmas trees and wreaths that could be purchased at the base of the tree.

 It was crowded, and just kept getting more crowded as time went on.

 There were lots of interesting things for sale.

 There was a carousel ride for the kids.

 Not only was it crowded, it was COLD!

 I had worn my walking shoes with two pairs of socks, but my feet got very cold. 

We thought it would be fun to go see inside the church at the top of the stairs. 

Once inside, we looked around and then sat in a pew so I could warm my feet.

 This nativity was in the church.

 Organ pipes

The view from the top of the stairs.

 THere was a booth to meet joulupukki. He looks a bit different from the Santa that we are used to.

We went around the rest of the market and then saw that the Helsinki City museum 

was just across the street, so we decided to go check it out for another chance to get warm.

There were several interesting things there. I of course was interested in the old sewing machine in the old living room.

 I also found this street sweeping cart quite interesting. 

It looked like you would sweep the garbage into the circular recepticle in the "dustpan"

and then there was a lever that you would lift and it would dump into the trash can.

I thought the broom was particularly interesting.

We walked to the kauppatori and found some things that we wanted to buy to bring home. 

We also got a salmon plate for lunch. 

There was a tented area with clear plastic sides that kept us a little bit warm while we ate.

I was cold, so I bought a hat. Here is a picture of me in the hat that was taken a bit later.

A few minutes before 3:00, we walked down Aleksanterinkatu to see the Christmas lights. It was getting dark down on the street and all the lights were on. I couldn't get a good picture though because the almost setting sun was still lighting up the clear sky. It makes it look like night time on the street, but if you look up the sky looks like daytime. Very weird!

We walked over to the Amos Rex museum. It has only just opened this year. 

There was a line to get into the museum. We decided to wait in the line. 

I think we waited about 1/2 an hour outside and then it probably took 10-15 min. inside before we got to the ticket counter. 

The regular admission is 18€, so good thing we have our museum card!

The exhibits were quite interesting. They were all done with light and computers.

The first room was waves.

The next room just seemed like lots of color at first glance.

But as I started looking closer, I realized that there were flowers and frogs and birds and alligators. 

 There were some rooms where people were coloring pictures, 

and then I realized that the pictures that were colored then became part of the exhibit.

The frogs were hopping around and alligators were swimming on the walls and the floor. 

I really liked this exhibit.

The largest exhibit space was called "Vortex of Light Particles". This was under the large dome that we saw last week from the outside and wondered what it was.

 

Here is Elder Shurtz getting his coat,scarf, gloves back on. He is showing the locker where we put our backpack and coats. 

Several of the museums that we have been to have coat rooms or lockers 

where you can put your things while you go through the museum. 

The surprising thing is that so far the ones we have used have been free. 

Sometimes they seem to take a 1 euro coin, but you get it back when you open it. 

Sometimes they have given us a token to use. This time we chose our own numbers to lock and unlock the locker.   

We went back outside and walked through the international market that we had walked through last week.

They had a little carousel, but it was much smaller than the one at senate square.

 We thought that these looked interesting, but I wasn't brave enough to buy one. 

Be sure to read the sign under it to find out just what it is.

On Sunday we decided to try to make the little torttutaikina things 

that we had bought the dough and fillings for a couple of weeks ago. 

 We weren't real sure just what we were doing, but I think they turned out pretty good.

We got this cute picture of Lucia on Sunday.

We can't figure out how it got to be December already! Our mission is half over, but we don't understand how that can be since it seems we only just arrived a couple of months ago.

We are so grateful to be able to serve here in this mission. We love serving.

Sunrise on December 2nd in Espoo was at 8:59 and sunset was at 15:18 for 6:12 hours of daylight.

In Provo, the sunrise was at 7:30 and sunset was at 17:01 for 9:30 hours of daylight.