Part 1: A Car on the Night Train

This past week was Zone Conference Week. Elder Shurtz was doing car safety training this time,
so we got to go to all of the zone conferences. 

We started out driving to Mikkeli for the first one. 

Elder Shurtz needed to get a car to the Elders in Mikkeli, 

so the Sister Training Leaders (sisers Johns and Hollingshead) met us at the mission office and they drove that car 

filled with its summer tires and we drove our car.

I am always amazed with the way that they do the construction on bridges here in Finland.

Here are a couple of pictures of one that we passed on our way.

The car safety training this time was to help the missionaries to be even more careful with the cars, 

as we have had quite a few "incidents" lately.

Elder Shurtz prepared a list of descriptions of the incidents and he had me 

put together the pictures and number them for a little activity for the missionaries.

We are hoping that they will be wise and learn from the mistakes of others.

The sisters sang together for one of the songs.

Sisters: Nielson, Johns, Hollingsworth, Debiasi and Hartley.

1.  We brought supplies for the missionaries. We got to deliver an electric hand mixer to Sisters Debiasi and Hartley. 

East Zone

At the end of the day, we drove the Sister Training Leaders back in our car 

since the had to leave the car that they drove to Mikkeli. 

We stopped in Lahti on the way back to deliver a microwave to Elders Vawdry and Bäckstrom.

 We got to where the gps told us their apartment was, but we were unsure which was the Elders apartment. 

We called and Elder Bäckstrom just kept telling us the name of the street where they live, 

no matter what street or place that I told him we could see. 

I finally asked if he recognized any of the names of streets or place s that we were telling him made any sense. 

That is when he finally said that he didn't really know as he had only been there for less than a week.

We had a good laugh at that.

We finally discovered that we were just around the corner. When we saw them, Elder Shurtz just drove down the sidewalk to meet them. This is angular parking off the street, and he is going the wrong way into this parking space. 😁

We stopped at the office to reload the car with the packages and supplies to go to Tampere Zone Conference.

 Here are some of the missionaries working on the activity for the car safety training.

Tampere Zone

(We left a little early so we could get back and get ready for the next day.)

On Tuesday evening we went to the office and loaded up two cars.
We loaded our car with the things to go to the Helsinki Zone Conference
and we loaded the new car that was going to Kemi with all the things needed for the North Zone Conference.
That car had to have the 4 summer tires in it.
We loaded 8 boxes of Book of Mormon, 4 or 5 large packages for missionaries, other supplies and packages,
plus a few things that missionaries were needing for the apartments that we will be inspecting.
We also had to leave some space for our suitcase and other personal supplies.

Our car was filthy from traveling to the zone conferences.
The temperatures were above freezing and so the roads were a wet dirty mess.
Elder Shurtz took a bucket out from the church and washed it as best he could.
That made it look much better!

 Elder Skinner and Sister Coffelt presented a beautiful musical number.

These are 5 of the 7 sisters who were at the MTC when we were there.
Sisters, Hollingsworth and Kristensen, (Elder and Sister Shurtz) Smith, Johns and Hansen.

Helsinki Zone

We finished loading our things in the Kemi car after Zone Conference.
We headed to the train station sometime after 9:00p.m.
The car was stuffed!

 We even put things in the secret compartment between the spare tire and the "trunk" area.

 Here is a picture looking in after all the packages were loaded in.

Pulling out of the garage to head to the train.

 I even had my purse on my lap and more bags stuffed around by feet.

We had requested that VR load our car on the train.
When we got there, we went to the place that said "check-in here."
The man there told us to drive ahead to 3A and he would meet us there.
When he got there, he walked in and motioned for us to drive forward, so we actually loaded the car onto the train.

 We found our way on the path to the Pasila train station.

 We had over an hour to wait for our train, so after finding the platform where our train would be,
we found a heated waiting room where Elder Shurtz worked on his computer . . .

and I worked on some crocheting, 

but this picture was taken just as we were getting ready to go catch the train.

 We were getting on the IC273 train to Rovaniemi, although we were getting off in Oulu.

 As it got close to the time, we went out to the platform where our train would stop for us.

 We found our little sleeping compartment. It was a bit tight as we were trying to get ourselves situated.

 We had a little bathroom in our compartment.
The sink wall was on a hinge and could swing around to where it covered the toilet
and then it was a little shower. Elder Shurtz tried the shower the next morning just for the experience.

 We walked through the little halls of several of the cars.

 There were doors separating the different cars.
We went to the dining car, but we didn't get anything to eat.
It was so late and we just wanted to get to bed.

There was a little seat right by the window.

 We tried to get some sleep. Elder Shurtz took the top bunk. He slept pretty well.

We had very noisy, talkative neighbors. The talked all night long!
I had a hard time sleeping because of that.
This is a view from our window in the morning.

 We had brought some muffins with us which we had for breakfast.

 We arrived in Oulu and got off the train. It was much colder than it was when we left Helsinki.

 Here is a picture of our train...

 and the car trains that the train left behind. Our car was on one of these train cars, on the bottom.

 Here is the ramp where the train will unload the cars. Our will be coming from the lower level on the left.

 Elder Shurtz  drove the car off the train and came and picked me up in the shelter.

We had the 4th zone conference of the week in Oulu.
The missionaries helped us to unload the supplies and packages that needed to go into the church.

Sister Aura had all of the missionaries gather for part of her training.

 The Zone Leaders, Elders Bartholomew and Viitanen gave some training.

North Zone

 The flag flying outside the Oulu church building.

(To Be Continued)