hyvää uutta vuotta (Happy New Year)!

On New Years Eve, we worked at the mission office like usual. 

Sister Airto took the day off, and Sister Herttuainen was still out of town, 

but the assistants were there and President Aura was there as well. 

For dinner that night we tried making a ham and blue cheese pizza. 

I never would have thought of having blue cheese on a pizza, 

but we have gotten a pizza two different times that had blue cheese, 

and we have discovered that it is actually pretty good. 

Plus we had some blue cheese that we bought at Christmas time to put on gingerbread cookies, 

and it needed to be used.

After dinner, I worked on a puzzle while Elder Shurtz read to me. 

We decided since it was New Year's Eve, we at least needed some snacks. 

We had some tortilla chips, but didn't have any salsa, so we made some from canned tomatoes. 

It turned out pretty good.

We started hearing fireworks on the way home from the office, but we couldn't see any. 

They sounded more like cannons or guns being shot than fireworks. 

We continued to hear them all evening. 

At midnight, we could really hear lots of fireworks and went out on our balcony where we could now actually see them. 

We sent this marco polo video to our kids to tell them Happy New Year!

The office was closed on New Year's day. Elder Shurtz was supposed to help some sister missionaries

 work on getting their visas extended, but the web site was down, so he wasn't able to help them. 

We walked to the office and picked up the mission van. We drove it to the mission home to pick up a bed. 

Elder Ormsby had called a couple of days earlier telling us that his bed fell apart in the middle of he night. 

We told him to put his mattress on the floor until we could get him a bed.

We drove to Hyvinkää and delivered the bed. Sister Aura sent them new blankets as well.

We found out that the temple was open even though most places were closed for the day. 

So, we decided to go to the temple in the afternoon. 

It was a great way to begin the new year!

It has been another short week. I guess that is what happens when the office isn't open every day.

We were glad to have Sister Herttuainen back with us on January 2nd, and Sister Airto back on the 3rd.

Elder Shurtz realized that since it was a new year, he could begin putting last years financial records into storage, 

and he could get the oldest box of records out of storage and begin shredding them. 

He hauled in the box of records from 2008.

Zone conferences are next week, so Sister Herttuainen was busy getting

 requested supplies ready to go out to the zone conferences. 

I should have taken a picture before, but this is what was left after we loaded the biggest pile into Pres. Aura's car.

Friday night, Pres. and Sister Aura came by and we helped them to load 

all of the supplies and packages going to the Tampere Zone.

We saw these on sale and decided to try them. They are very similar to peanut M&Ms. 

We noticed a few differences between them and M&Ms. 

They are much more irregular in shape, not as shiny, no Ms on them, and they taste a little bit different. 

Elder Shurtz also noticed that Tokmanni had their bulk candy on sale. 

He has always looked at the bulk bins of candy in the stores and wondered what they were like. 

He decided to get two of each kind of candy so that we could try them all!

We have tried several. Many are similar to things we have had before, and most are good. There are many that are licorice. Finnish people seem to love licorice, and it is found in almost every variety bag of candy.

We did try one, that I thought might be salmiakki (salty licorice). 

I picked out another type for us to try afterwards because I didn't want a bad taste left in my mouth. 

As soon as we tried it, I was sure that is was salmiakki. 

It was small and I thought it would be interesting to try, and I was planning to eat it. 

However, it was nasty! I ended up spitting it out. Elder Shurtz said it tasted like ammonia, but he ate his. 

I looked up more about it and found that ammonia chloride is the ingredient which gives salmiakki its flavor. 

I also learned that it comes in different strengths. I think that this one must be an extra strong variety.

Saturday morning, we went out for a walk. We walked past this stream and saw that there were ducks there. 

Some of them were swimming in the water and some were standing or walking on the ice. 

I would think that they would have very COLD feet.

We find it interesting that even though it is so cold (well below freezing) 

and the paths are all snow covered, that we see all sorts of people out. 

We passed some men who looked older that us carrying cross country skies 

they looked like they had probably finished skiing and were just returning home). 

There were many out on bikes. Some of the bikes have big fat tires, others have studded tires. 

We especially like seeing the babies and the small children all bundled up. They are so cute!

Elder Shurtz tried to get this baby to wave at him, but instead he (or she) looked up at his (or her) mom 

with a look that said, "there is a man waving at me, what should I do about that".

On Saturday, we decided to go to a museum. We decided to go to the aviation museum in Vantaa near the airport. 

It just so happens that the display areas of this museum are not heated, and it was a very cold day. 

We were fine with our coats on, but our hands were quite cold by the time we were done.

I found this "nose art" mascot of the fighter squadron 34 to be interesting.

There was a 52-seat Convair 440 Metropolitan plane from 1956 on display. 

The cabin was open to the public.

 The seats were much wider than what we are used to today.

 And there was plenty of leg room, much more than what Elder Shurtz finds in today's airplanes.

It was interesting to see how planes have changed over time.

There was a simulator that Elder Shurtz tried out.

 He could barely fit in.

 They did have some instructions in English, which was good.

 He had a hard time finding the runway, and he ended up crashing. 

I'm sure he would do better if he tried again, but someone else was waiting to use it.

Today is January 6, so it is officially the end of Christmas. 

Sister Broderick helped us to take down our Christmas tree.

We are grateful for another week to serve here in the Finland Helsinki Mission! 

We feel so blessed for the privilege to serve in this mission. 

We are also grateful to have a temple so close and to be able to attend so often.

We have now been on our mission for 10 months. The time is speeding by too fast.

We had 6:10 hours of daylight today.  It was already getting dark when we got home from church about 3:30 pm

We are now gaining over 2 minutes a day, and in a few more days will be gaining over 3 minutes a day. 

We are noticing the difference as we walk to the office in the mornings. 

Sunrise in Espoo at 9:22 and sunset at 15:32 for 6:10 hours of daylight.

Sunrise in Provo at 7:49 and sunset at 17:15 for 9:26 minutes of daylight.