Kirkas Kontaktilima and Red Rubber Bands

Monday morning, there was a beautiful sunrise. 

I saw Sister Alakoski posted a sunrise picture that day as well. 

She lives in a much more picturesque area and her picture showed the sunrise over a lake instead of some buildings. 

I guess either way though, the sky was beautiful! 

And it is nice to have the sun come up before we go to the office!

On our morning walk, some parts of the walk were basically dry with just gravel, 

and some parts would have been more easily crossed with ice skates!

 Some were kind of in between, but we were very glad that we had worn traction aids on our shoes.

On Monday morning, Sister Airto was teaching us about clothing for our Finnish study.

We sure appreciate the efforts of the others in the office to help us try to learn the language!

This was a busy week because of transfers.

Departing missionaries came to the office on Tuesday to drop off their luggage, pay their office debt and receive their chocolate bar from Sister Airto.

Departing Elders Childers, Haws and Jordan; with Sisters Harttuainen, Laitinen and Airto and Elder Shurtz.

Departing Sisters Atkinson, Hooser and Britton; with Sisters Laitinen, Herttuainen and Airto.

Picture with the Assistants, new and old. Elders Christensen, Weeks and Jacobsen; 

Sisters Laitenin, Herttuainen, Shurtz and Airto, and Elder Shurtz.

The picture of the luggage for the 6 missionaries who are going home. 

I forgot to take a picture the last time when there were 12 going home, so we had twice this much luggage.

The new missionaries arrive on Tues. afternoon, but we don't see them until 

Wed. morning when we meet them at the mission home for orientation.

Here is a picture of them when they arrived at the airport.

Pres. and Sister Aura, Elders Andersen, Kimball, Jimenez and Sanders; Sisters Cox, Debiasi and Anderson.

They are a great group of missionaries and we look forward to serving with them and getting to know them better.

There were 5 of us to go to the orientation. 

Elder Shurtz drove, Sister Airto sat in the front and 

Sister Herttuainen, Sister Laitinen and myself all squished into the back seat. 

It was a cozy fit.

Wednesday afternoon, Elder Shurtz sold his first car in Finland. 

He doesn't actually do any of the selling here, but he did deliver the keys 

to the Hyundai dealer who was buying the car that had been Pres. Aura's car.

Then on Friday, he "sold" 3 more cars to the Toyota dealer.

A year ago, Elder London bought a "member card" for the Forenom Aparthotels that basically prepaid for 30 nights. 

They all had to be used before the expiration date which was Feb. 21.  

In the past, there were many senior missionaries needing hotel nights, 

but with so few senior missionaries, we haven't really been using our nights. 

We had been hopeful that we could use some of that when we had to be out of our apartment for 3 weeks, 

but we felt like the rooms at the Forenom were a bit too small for that long and 

even though we stayed in a Forenom Apartment, they said we couldn't use our member card for that. 

I had always understood that we had to use our nights before they expired, 

and I thought that meant that the dates had to be before Feb. 21. 

That was unfortunate because the Harrises were going to zone conference 

and then doing apartment inspections in Oulu this next week and could have used them. 

I helped them to get a room for two nights using the discount code that Forenom gave us 

because they have discontinued the member cards once they have expired.

I was feeling bad because we still had 11 nights left on the card 

and so the mission was really just loosing out on the money that had been spent last year. 

The morning after we had purchased the nights for the Harrises, I had the thought that what if the fact

 that they had to be used by Feb. 21 really meant that we just needed to have the rooms "purchased" by then. 

Elder Shurtz said he would call and ask. I was really expecting the answer to be no, 

but they said that if we reserved (purchased) the rooms before Feb. 21 that we could use our member card. 

I was still not sure if it would work, but I reserved the two nights for the Harrises, 

plus we figured that they could also use some of the nights for when they come to Helsinki 

at the end of their mission in March. That used 5 more nights. 

 Plus the Lehtinens were going to Turku next week and I looked and there was a Forenom there, but it wasn't clear that our member card would work at that location. 

It took 24 hours to get the confirmations back, but we were able to use the member card for all of those rooms. 

That meant that we only had 3 nights left on the card. 

Pres. Aura and his counselors have a District Conference in Oulu in April 

and so I was able to reserve rooms for all 3 of the couples, and that used up the last 3 nights!  

We felt like that was a tender mercy and that 

the Lord had inspired me to question what I thought I already understood.

Elder Shurtz was having a hard time trying to reset the TPMS (tire pressure monitor system) 

on a car that we will be taking out to Mikkeli tomorrow. 

There is a video that shows/tells how to do it, but it is all in Finnish. 

Elder Shurtz had Sister Laitinen watch it with him and try to explain what to do. 

He tried, but he was still not able to get it to reset. 

Sister Laitinen tried it and she was able to get it reset!

We are trying to get ready to go on our trip at the end of zone confernces to do apartment inspections. 

When we were with Elder and Sister Harris in Vaasa, they had snacks in the car. They had some interesting cracker things that they had made. We found the mix and decided to try making some. 

My boots that I found in a closed missionary apartment early last fall, were in sad shape. 

Their soles were beginning to fall off. Elder Shurtz found some "Kirkas kontaktilima" glue 

(Google translate: clear contact adhesive) at the apartment that was for the Bridges. 

He used it on my boots to see if it would work to glue the fronts of the soles back on. 

He used rubber bands to "clamp" them together while the glue dried.

I hope it works. I guess we will find out as I try wearing them this week.

 Elder Shurtz got all of our shoes shined on Saturday.

We baked cookies to take to the missionaries whose apartments we are inspecting.

On Saturday, the Relief Society arranged to do a group tour at the Fazer Experience Center. 

The ward was subsidizing the cost for the sisters (asking us for a 5€ donation) 

and mothers could bring their children if they wanted to pay the total amount for the children. 

Elder Shurtz drove me there and then he worked on his zone conference presentation while I was on the tour. 

It was fun! It was especially nice to have children there with us. 

I was worried that it would all be in Finnish, but they divided into two groups (one for English and one for Finnish).

The time is going all too fast. We have had some warmer temperatures (above freezing) this week. 

It has made me excited for spring, but I am sure that we haven't actually 

seen the end of winter or the cold temperatures yet. 

It is nice though that our days are getting longer and 

we were excited to see the sun shining several times this past week.

In Espoo, the sunrise was at 7:36 and the sunset at 17:34 for 9:58 hours of daylight.

In Provo, the sunrise was at 7:07 and the sunset at 18:12 for 11:04.