Shurtz Start to Finnish

Singing Birds and Railway Museum One of the many signs that spring is here, is the sound of the birds.  We don't hear or see many birds in the winter, but they are definitely around now.  Here is a little video that I took on our morning walk so you can hear the birds. The leaves on the trees are just now coming out.  Here is a picture by the manor house taken on Tues. and another one taken on Friday.  Notice how much more the leaves have come out in just those few days. In Finland they celebrate Second Easter, or Easter Monday.  They also celebrate Good Friday and offices are generally closed on both of those days. We were in the office on Friday and Sister Airto came in on that day.  We went to the office on Monday, but the Finns took the day off. It feels a bit strange to walk to the office on such holidays.  The traffic lights near our apartment are turned off, and there are very few cars and no people.  It i...

On Monday, our Book of Mormon order arrived.  It was a good thing because we had just a few cases left. Moving the cases from the pallet in the hall to the storage room  goes pretty quickly when there are 4 of us to do the work.  (Elder Shurtz is taking the picture, so he is not in it.) Many years ago, missionaries could mail a Fazer bar home with one international stamp.  About a year ago, some missionaries told us that would be a good birthday gift  for our grandkids and that it only cost two stamps to mail one.  At that time, we realized that it actually would cost much more than two stamps to  mail a 200g Fazer bar. We sent out an email at that time explaining that, and suggesting that if the missionaries wanted to mail a Fazer bar home that they should take it to posti so it could have the correct postage. This week in the mail, there was a Fazer bar that was returned because it was unable to be forwarded. It had been ...