Arrival of a Senior Couple!

Beautiful weeds!

Elder Shurtz made blueberry pancakes with some of our wild blueberries. YUM!

Elder Shurtz wanted to show you just how small these wild blueberries are, so he took this picture.

On Tuesday morning, I was trying to hurry to get ready so we could be a little early to the office.

I hurried in to put in my contacts. I put the right one in a started to scream!

I guess I had squirted the ClearCare contact cleaning solution (hydrogen peroxide)

on my contact before putting it in my eye!

It hurt so bad, I couldn't open my eye to get it out.

Elder Shurtz came to help, but there wasn't much he could do.

I tried to pry my eye open under running tap water. I finally got the contact out.

I had Elder Shurtz grab the saline solution from my closet and 

I squirted almost the entire bottle of it into my eye. 

(I actually did this on our first mission also, and 

I actually changed my contacts routine so that I wouldn't do that again. 

I guess because I was in a hurry, a very old habit returned and 

I grabbed a bottle to rinse off my contact before putting it in my eye 

and it was the wrong solution.)

When it happened on our first mission, it wasn't as bad. 

I am not sure if I got more in my eye this time, or if it stayed in longer, or if it is 

because they have changed the formula and it now has something called hydroglyde in it as well.

Steve gave me a blessing, and we finished getting ready and headed to the office.

Needless to say, we did not get to the office early.

By Tuesday afternoon, my eyelid was beginning to swell and my eye looked very red and sore.

Sister Laitinen (who is a nurse) told me she thought I should go show it to a doctor. 

She tried calling, but it was taking too long to talk to a live person and she finally gave up.

Sister Saarnivaara (who is a retired pediatrician) looked at it before she left for the day 

and she said she thought I should go see an ophthalmologist. She was worried about it getting infected.

She told me where there was an opthamologist in Helsinki. 

I looked online to see if I could find one closer, but it looked like every place was either closed or closing soon.

I was very hopeful that it would begin to heal while I was sleeping and 

I would wake up with it looking much better.

I woke up with with my eyelid much more swollen, and it was difficult to even open my eye.

Wednesday morning, Elder Shurtz called and talked to Sister Aura (who is also a nurse), 

and she told us to call the terveystalo (health care center) and ask for an eye doctor.

There were no available appointments for a week.

When Sister Saarnivaara heard that, she called the Terveystalo 

and got an appointment with a general practice doctor that afternoon.

She said that the general practice doctor would probably look at my eye 

and give me a prescription for some antibiotic ointment.

Sister Laitinen went with me to the appointment. 

The doctor was very concerned about my eye and said she wanted to talk to an eye doctor 

before deciding what to do (if she should send me to the hospital).

We had to wait for a while because the line was busy when she tried to call.

When she called me back in, she said that because it didn't seem to be affecting my vision 

and because it was seemed to be improving (the swelling had gone down a lot by time I went to the appointment),

the eye doctor thought it was OK to not go to the hospital 

but to just use a some antibiotic ointment  and some moisturizing eye drops. 

She gave me a prescription.

Sister Laitinen went with me to the apteeki (pharmacy) to get the prescription and the eye drops.

I was so grateful to have her with me to do this things!

My eye has continued to improve. Here are some pictures of my eye and it's progress.

On Tuesday, Sister Smith came into the office before going home. 

She is from the group that were at the MTC when we were there. 

She is going home a few weeks early because of some school related commitments.

 Sister Saarnivaara was the one to give her her chocolate bar.

Sister Saarnivaara took the bus to Helsinki to pick up a parking pass for the Jämsäs car. 

While she was gone, we got a phone call on our google voice number 

from someone who was just getting off a cruise ship 

and had a package they were trying to get to a missionary. 

Sister Shurtz was able to find on Google Maps where Sister Saarnivaara was and then later where the couple was 

and we were able to tell them how to help them get them to meet up together.

Here is the couple that had the package.

Here is Sister Saarnivaara after returning to the office with the parking permit and the package!

We have been doing some house cleaning at the office. 

We have lots of pass along cards that missionaries don't ever use. 

We tried to gather them and asked Pres. Aura what we should do with them. 

They are mostly for offers for DVDs, and they have incorrect website names now.

So we are putting many of them in recycling. 

We filled several boxes for Elder Shurtz to take to recycling.

We still have more blueberries, so one morning, Elder Shurtz made blueberry muffins.

This couple stopped by the office. He had served here as a young missionary in the late 80's.

He looked at the missionary picture board and saw the office missionaries. 

He pointed to Sister Saarnivaara and said, "She was my pediatrician". 

He said that she looks just the same as he remembers her.

He had lived in Finland twice as a child when he father was working at the embassy here.

We were sad that she wasn't in the office when they stopped by, but he left her a note.

(Another interesting side note, they are from Las Vegas, so we had a bit in common with them as well.)

Sister Laitinen thinks that my monster cookies are the best cookies ever 

and she wanted to know how to make them, so Thursday afternoon, we made cookies in the office.

On Friday morning, we changed our routine and walked on a different path.

Here are some of the flowers and other things that we saw.

Elder and Sister Jämsä were supposed to arrive on Friday afternoon, 

but their plane had problems in Salt Lake, so they got rerouted the next day.

They arrived on Saturday morning, but Pres. and Sister Aura had to leave Friday evening to travel to do interviews. 

Elder Shurtz and I (and also Sister Laitinen) went to the airport to meet them.

This is the first couple that has come to the mission since we arrived here. 

(There have been some temple missionaries arrive, but not for the mission.)

Sister Laitinen was moving on Saturday. 

The Jämsäs are going to be working with the YSA, so we gave them an opportunity to jump right in to service. 

They came with us and we went to Sister Laitinen's apartment 

where she has been living with roommates, and loaded all of her stuff into the van.

 We drove to her new apartment and unloaded everything.

She is so excited to have her first apartment.

Her name is even on the door!

We spent most of the day with the Jämsäs. We went to Subway to get some lunch.

It is the first time we have eaten at Subway in Finland. 

We took a picture especially for Holly because it made us think about her.

It was really warm today (Sunday)! I think that it actually got to 90 degrees!

It was especially warm in Church. They don't have air conditioning. (They usually don't need it.)

Today after church, we stopped at the temple on the way home. 

We had Elder and Sister Jämsä join us for dinner. 

We made Salmon soup, but we forgot to take a picture.

Beautiful temple flowers.

Sunday the sun rose in Espoo at 4:50 and it set at 22:03 for 17:08 hours of daylight.

In Provo the sun rose at 6:21 and it set at 20:44 for 14:22 hours of daylight.