Part 2: Road trip with Apartment Inspections and Beautiful Skies

This photo really belongs later in this post, but I wanted the photo that will show up to be this one. 

You will have to wait until later in the post to read about it.

We went with the Harrises to Pannukakku (Finnish pancake) to get some dinner.

They had both sweet and savory ones to choose from.

What we had was basically like a pizza, but on more of a pancake than a crust.

(We forgot to take a picture.)

It was a beautiful, clear evening to drive to Kemi.

When we arrived in Kemi, we checked into Hotelli Toivola.

We took all our luggage out of the car as we parked right near the front door of the hotel. 

However, when Elder Shurtz tried to open the door, it was locked. 

It turns out we had to check in at the convenience store/restaurant next door.
That is where the breakfast was the next morning as well.

 It was a cozy, but nice room with comfortable beds, and a nice, although small bathroom.

We had to hurry over to the Kemi apartment to do their apartment inspection.

As we were driving over to their apartment, I could see something that looked a bit like smoke, but it seemed 

to be going the opposite direction from the smoke that we could see coming from the smoke stack. 

The more I looked at it, I realized that it looked like 

the wispy beginnings of when we had seen the northern lights before.

We were already running late, so we just had to go to the Elder's apartment.

We were having prayer with them and their phone rang. They returned the call after the prayer.

It was a member asking if they had ever seen the northern lights.

We all hurried and put our coats on and went out to see if we could see them.

They were a fairly bright green right over and around their apartment building even though there was quite a bit of light. If we had been somewhere it was darker, I am sure they would be incredible!

It was pretty exciting to be able to see them!

Elder Jimenez was especially excited as he has only been here less than two weeks!

Since we were not able to capture it on video, I am adding a link to a video that was taken this same night,

 (although I think this video was taken in Rovaniemi).

Click on the link and then scroll down the page to the videos. Look at the middle one that is labeled 28.02.2019.

This is very much like what we saw, although we were looking at it about 2 hours south of this 

and near apartment buildings and trees so what we saw was not nearly as clear or as vibrant.

aurora video

We did the apartment inspection, but decided to come back the next morning to trade cars.

That also gave us a chance to get to the store the next morning 

to pick up a few things that they needed for their apartment.

We parked next to the Elder's car and Elder Shurtz began working on 

scrapping the windows while while the Elders came down to meet us.

 The three of them took the tires for the new car to the varasto and brought the tires for the old car out.

The missionaries helped Elder Shurtz to inspect the car.

 Elder Lewis and Elder Jimenez with their new car.

Before leaving town, we stopped at the Kemi LumiLinna Snow Castle. 

We decided not to pay to go inside. There is a restaurant and hotel inside as well. 

It cost 29€ each, which didn't seem worth it. 

Elder Shurtz went over to check out the construction. 

They make the snow with water from the sea and blow it directly into forms 

and pack it down and let it freeze for a while before removing the forms. 

We thought these snowball people were quite interesting.

We also went to the pink church. 

We walked around the grounds but the church didn't seem to be open. The snow was quite deep.

Some parts of the path were rather icy!

We next drove to Tornio which is at the border with Sweden.

We stopped at a museum there. 

 There was an interesting piece of art at the building next door.

We drove North from Tornio pretty much following the river which is the border between Finland and Sweden.

We checked into our hotel in Pello (Hotelli Pellonhovi).

The hotel was situated above the buisinesses that are on the street level.
Our room here was a bit larger than in Kemi, but not nearly as nice.
Notice the little TV screen that Elder Shurtz is standing by.

There was an tourist information sign nearby the hotel,which we stopped to look at.
That is a huge pile of snow in the parking lot!

We drove up the road aways and drove to a bridge that crosses the river to Sweden.
We are not supposed to go out of mission, so we just took a picture showing that we were 150 meters from Sweden.

We were above the Arctic Circle once again.

We saw plenty of signs like this, but we didn't actually see any reindeer on this trip.

Statue of Olympic skier Eero Mäntyranta.

We came across a great place to watch the sunset, which was amazing! And it just kept getting better!

 Elder Shurtz walked out onto the frozen river . . .

. . . so he could be in the picture.

We had dinner at the Joppari cafe/restaurant.
Elder Shurtz had a the traditional Swedish dish.

I had the salmon cooked in cream.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then headed towards Rovaniemi.
We stopped at Ritavalkea ski resort. We were surprised because it was such a beautiful day,
but there seemed to be only a handful of people there.
We thought this giant pig statue thing was interesting.

We decided to rent some snowshoes and see what that was like.
They even had some that would fit Elder Shurtz.

Mine were quite a bit smaller. 

The trail passed by the dog kennels.

We saw a group of people out on a dog sled excursion.

They had great trails!

We only fell once!

The trees were being covered in frost as we went.

The frost even covered my hair.

The setting was so beautiful!

As we were heading back, we to a cut off on an unofficial path.

Several people had sunk in before us.

We saw this fun wooden sled.

Afterwards we had lunch at the Valkea Restaurant there.
Elder Shurtz had smoked reindeer salad.

I had lohikeitto (salmon soup).

It was a nice drive to Rovaniemi.
In some places there was quite a bit of packed snow on the road, but it was graveled and not too slippery.

We couldn't believe how great the weather was for our drives.

We checked into the Guesthouse Borealis.
It was a very small room and a bit older, but I would stay there again.

We went to the Elders apartment to do their apartment check.
Elders Kester and Sanders seemed to be doing well.

We love being able to be with the young missionaries!

 It is always fun to see someone out on their kick sled.

We drove to Lumberjack's Candle Bridge.

 We found a place to park and saw these interesting snow sculptures.
Elder Shurtz spotted a swimming hole in the ice so went to get a closer look.
There was a snowmobile out on the frozen river.

 We stopped at the grocery store to get a few things to have with us to eat on Sunday.
We also bought some ice cream for a treat in our hotel room.
It was cold enough that we were able to just take the rest of the ice cream out to the car where it could stay frozen.

Sunday morning brought another beautiful drive.

 We drover to Kemi to go to church.

 The Church has a very nice building in Kemi.
We thought that the baptismal font was interesting.
There was a window to the outside that gave a view right into the baptismal font.

We enjoyed attending there even though they did not have any translation.

We continued our drive, this time the destination was Kajaani.

Once again, it was a beautiful drive. . . 

It was a bit of a challenge though when the setting sun was directly in front of us on the road.

We arrived at the Hotelli Kajaani.
We had received a text the day before which was in Finnish.
With the help of Google translate,
I figured out that it was saying that their reception desk was closed on Sundays,
but there was a lock box near the door and we would find our key in there
and they gave us a code for the lock box.

We were glad that it was still a bit light because the parking lot was a bit tricky to find and it was all snow covered. 

There was only one other car in the parking lot. 

Our hotel was interesting.

 The room and bathroom were adequate.

We went to visit Elder Eyring and Vawdry to inspect their apartment. They were especially happy that we brought them a brighter lightbulb for their bedroom.

 Elder Shurtz helped them to get some junk out of their varasto (storage).

It was a beautiful Sabbath day. 

The weather was wonderful. 

The drives were beautiful. 

We felt the spirit in the church meetings.

We enjoyed being with some of the young missionaries.

Sunrise in Espoo on Sunday March 3 was at 7:15 and sunset was at 17:52 for 10:36 hours of daylight.

We were in Rovaniemi for sunrise at 7:25 and in Kajanni for sunset at 17:32 so we had 10:06 hours of daylight.

In Provo the sunrise was at 6:57 and the sunset at 18:20 for 11:23 hours of daylight.