Zone Conferences, Night Trains and New Granddaughter

Brother Laitinen is originally from Tampere.
He told us that while we were in Tampere, we had to try mustamakkara (black sausage).
It is a local delicacy and specialty of Tampere
(although you can get it most everywhere in Finnish grocery stores now).
It is a type of Finnish blood sausage eaten with lingonberry jam.
They had some at the breakfast buffet in the hotel.
Elder Shurtz took this picture to prove that we tried it.

President Aura told us that there was a mandatory detour that we had to take that morning on the way to the church for Zone Conference.

It was to a beautiful vista site at the top of the hill near the hotel.

He tells us that it is the little things like this or taking the scenic route in driving,

 that take just 15 minutes longer, but add so much to make your travels more worthwhile and peaceful.

 We passed a group of missionaries walking from the train station to the church. 

I wasn't able to get a picture taken from the car, but I went out to meet them as they arrived at the church building.

Elder Shurtz took a couple of pictures from the training.
(I was out in the kitchen helping with the food.)

Zone Conference picture of the Tampere Zone 

We ate food in the car on the way back to Espoo. 

We went directly to the office to finish printing things for the next two zone conferences, 

gather the supplies and for Elder Shurtz to take care of some financial things. 

We left the office at about 10:30, but it doesn't seem so bad when it is still so light outside!

 Elder Shurtz went up to the varasto to get the winter tires to put in the car we were taking to Oulu,
but found that it is closed from 10:00pm to 6:00am.

I took a load of the things to the apartment and then went to help with the rest of the things.

Elder Shurtz had managed to get everything else from the car so we didn't have to make another trip.

Tuesday morning, we were off to the Haaga church building for the Helsinki Zone Conference.

Apparently, the only picture that we took was the one of the 5 Yaris cars all lined up in the parking lot.

Zone Conference picture Helsinki zone

You can see Sister Saarnivaara sitting next to me in the picture.
She is starting to come to the mission office now for training.
She will be taking Sister Laitinen's place in August.

After Zone Conference, we went to our apartment for dinner
and to get things packed and ready to go on the night train.
We were sooooo tired! We would have like to have just gone to bed after dinner.

We had to have the car to the loading station between 10 and 10:30.
We drove almost to the front of the train car. There was only one car parked in front of us.
(You can see our car in the distance.)

 We walked over to the station and found a place to sit. We were glad that it wasn't so cold this time.
We had well over an hour to wait. We worked on things on our computers while we waited.

We wanted to just get to sleep when we got on the train.
We got into our pajamas and Elder Shurtz went to sleep.
I pretty much just dozed because they had not come to check out tickets yet.
Finally, an hour after getting on the train, they knocked on the door to check our tickets.
Elder Shurtz slept through that, the next morning, he didn't even know that they had come by.
Here is a picture of our little sleeping berth.

 Here is our little bathroom.
The wall with the mirror and the sink is hinged and can swing over
to cover the toilet and then the little room is the shower.

I had just fallen asleep good, when I was awakened by a voice saying,
"Caution - speed alert!"
and it would repeat every few seconds.
I tried to quietly tell Elder Shurtz that he needed to turn off his phone.
He was asleep, but woke up and I could hear him fiddling with something.
The voice came again. I told him to turn it off.
He said, "I'm trying."
The voice once again.
I asked him to hand it to me.
He said, "I can't, it's on the wall."
I told him that his phone is not attached to the wall, and he said,
"Oh, it's my phone, I thought it was coming from this speaker on the wall."
(This is what he was trying to shut off.)

He finally got his phone turned off.
He has a car insurance app that monitors driving,
and apparently it didn't know that we were on a train and not in the car.
😏
We got up in time to get ready and eat the breakfast that we brought with us
and be ready to get off the train at 8:10.
We walked over to the car loading area. We found that the station was open
and we were able to go in and sit down to wait.
We could see the loading area from the window, so that worked out well.

We drove to the Oulu church building with time to get the supplies out of the car 

and to greet the missionaries before it was time to start Zone Conference.

 After Zone Conference, Elder Shurtz helped the sisters to check out their new car (our car),
and to get our things moved to their old car for the return trip.

In Oulu, the same sisters always prepare the lunch and they always make lohikeitto (salmon soup).

Here we are standing in line for seconds. (It is delicious!)

 In the Oulu zone, there is only one companionship of sisters. There are three in the companionship.
The two sisters on the left are the Sister Training Leaders.

 Some of the Elders visiting after zone conference.

Zone Conference picture North zone

A few blocks from the church, we saw this great group of missionaries headed to their trains.

 We took Sister Aura to her hotel, because President Aura was still at the church doing interviews.

Then we found a grocery store and bought some things for our dinner.

(A sandwich, chicken taco salad, juice, fruit and cookies.)

There was a park across the street, so we walked over and found a bench to sit on to eat our dinner.

Back to the car loading dock.

We were glad that we had gotten a car off the train here, otherwise we would not have known where to go.

This car seemed even longer! We had to drive on and then walk out a long ways. 

Once again, there was only one car ahead of us.

We had to wait for almost 2 hours before our train was to leave.

We saw a train when we dropped off our car. I wondered if it may be ours.

When we got to the platform side, that train was pulling away. 

It went over and then backed up and hooked onto the car carrier.

It eventually came backing over to the platform. 

Here is the car carrier as it is going past.

 It was a very LONG train, for a passenger train. 

This picture is looking to the right towards the front of the train.

 Then from the same spot looking to the left to the rear of the train.

 We had to walk a really looooonnnngggg ways to get to our car, which was at the front of the train.

We walked part way to the last bench to sit until they opened the doors so we could get on.

This picture is from the front of the train. 

You can't even see past the 6 double decker sleeping cars at the front of the train. 

Then there are 5 or 6 single deck cars for sitting and the restaurant car, etc. 

Then there are 4 or 5 more double decker sleeper cars that will later be unhitched to go to Turku. 

And finally the car carrier.

 This is the corridor outside our compartment, and our little sleeping compartment (very similar to the last one.)

 

Our view out the window.

 Lots of beautiful farm land and forests!

 The view just after 10:00, shortly after they finally came by to check our tickets.

If you look at the sky and the shadows, it looks like late afternoon.

And the view when I woke up about 12:30. Look how light the sky is still!

We arrived to our station in Pasilla just after 6:00 a.m. 

We walked back to the car station and Elder Shurtz went to retrieve the car.

That was the end of two nights on the car train.

We drove to our apartment and slept for about 40 minutes before getting ready to go to the office.

On Friday, Sister Laitinen made lunch for us. It was so good!

She had red lentil tomato soup and had also brought some bread.

She had us try some Tupla candy bars for dessert - licorice and original.

On Friday afternoon, I went out for a walk.

I went over to the park with all the daisies.

They are past their peak, but there were many flowers, insects and berries to take pictures of.

On Friday evening, we got the exciting news that our 32nd grandchild had just arrived.

She is the daughter of Amy and Mark. Her name is Susan Jane.

We are so grateful for her safe arrival.

We are beginning to notice that the days are not quite as long as they were at midsummer. 

It is especially noticeable now that we have been up north where the days are even longer.

Today, the sunrise in Espoo was at 4:08 and the sunset at 22:42 for 18:34 hours of daylight.

In Provo, the sunrise was at 6:04 and the sunset at 20:58 for 14:54 hours of daylight.