WEATHER IS BACK TO BEAUTIFUL

Perhe! 

I heard that the fundraiser was great, my friend Amanda emailed me last week about it and I wasn’t surprised in hearing about the great results! Nice job! :) I am sure that is a stress reliever.

Wow, well I don’t know what to even say about the week! I went well! I am still being pushed everyday with being a trainer and Sister Nelson never ceases to impress me. We are having a good time together, I think my biggest challenge is forgetting that she is new and having to remind myself to slow down and explain certain things to her. I am sure I will get better :)

The weather is back to beautiful here, it is weird that it is nearly June. We had the opportunity to do service this week, which is always great, I love being of help to others! Being a missionary is like being a free service company, I wish people who take more advantage of it here haha but we are always able to find ways to serve in little ways and spreading the light of the gospel really is the greatest act of service! The work is moving forward here and we are finding and teaching new investigators.

Right now our pool of investigators includes a man from Nepal, a man from Bolivia, a man from Cameroon, a man from the Congo and a woman from Finland. I love the opportunity to see all different cultures :)

I learned a lot this week on how to continually rely on God. Sometimes we feel that once we have practiced and been trained at something then God just expects us to know how to do it and He doesn’t help us as much. But being an "experienced" missionary has taught me that I always need His help and He is always waiting and willing to help me. All I have to do is ask. What a beautiful truth!

Well, that is all I can think up for this week, have a great week everyone! Work hard! I love you!!!! :)

Crazy Busy

Perhe! 

Welcome Sister Nelson

Well, no niin! It has been a crazy busy week but all super exciting. Being a trainer this time seems different than the first time for some reason but let me just tell you, I am exhausted! But in the best of ways haha. 

I was able to spend some time with the missionaries who just went home which was fun, and now I am the oldest! And then I got my new greenie, Sister Nelson! She is from Las Vegas and I keep on forgetting that she is new because of how awesome she is. She is so willing to participate and humbly learns and asks questions as well. It is going to be a blast of a transfer, I can already tell. 

We saw many miracles this week- as we were knocking on doors in an apartment building, we both felt the need to knock on a particular door and Finnish woman answered and invited us in her house (which has literally happened on my mission maybe 4 times- miracles of having a trainee!) and she is pretty golden. She has such a strong belief in God and we started talking as if she were a missionary! She said when she holds the Book of Mormon she can feel the power that is has and she told us that we were most definitely led by God to come to her house because everything that we told her was exactly what she needed to hear. She also loves when we (especially Sister Nelson) speak Finnish because she is just so impressed. And she gave us cheddar cheese because we are American! Haha I don’t even like cheddar cheese but the thought was simply touching. 

I am grateful for the guidance of the Spirit because I know that without it we would not know where we need to go or what we need to say! But with the Spirit I can have comfort and confidence in knowing that as long as I am obedient and working hard, then I don’t need to know everything because it will be given to me. 

Well, all is well here in Finland, it has warmed up again to feel like summer! So beautiful! And I got my first mosquito bite... yikes! My body is so allergic to those little things here... Anyway, I hope you all have a great week!! Love you!!!! :)

Post Skype, Goodbye Sister Toomey

Family!! 

Super awesome getting to talk to you all yesterday! I guess this update won’t be super long because I don’t have too much to add... But it was really amazing to be able to see all of your bright faces and just remember that my family is even cooler than when I left them. And I didn’t even think that was possible. But I definitely win on best family ever! I love you guys!

Things have been super busy the past week with a zone conference, stake conference, transfer calls, Skype call, and now trying to organize everything for the new transfer so the greenie doesn’t have to come in to a mess (in all honestly the apartment should always be in great shape but you lose the time sometimes haha). Sister Toomey is leaving tomorrow and I don’t know what I will do without her laughs and directional skills! I am banking on getting lost a lot but I will give myself plenty of time to find the various places we need to get to. 

Exciting things happening! Can't wait to see who I will be training, I know I am going to learn so much this transfer! God always gives me the perfect situations to strengthen my faith and to improve myself. I love Him. Oh ya, and I was thinking that having my homecoming on JULY 24th would really be nice, unless you really think that EVERYONE is going to be gone. But my only concern is if the Brown´s will be in town so we can whip together a great musical number. Let me know what their plans are, but it would be nice to just have my homecoming right when I get back.

Anyway, the work is going so well, we already have a couple lessons this week with new investigators so I am happy for my greenie to be able to get right into the work! I hope she can experience a good transfer of teaching and hopefully even a baptism. Well, that is all for now, good luck with the fundraiser!! I will pray it goes super well!! I love you all!! Jatkaa eteenpäin työhönne! :)

Enjoying the Sun

Sunny Day

Hey family!!

First off I apologize for the typing of this letter, I am at the temple using a Russian keyboard and I am still trying to figure out how the question mark works....  So I guess I will sound overly enthusiastic when I ask, how is everyone!! Korea sounds awesome, I cant promise my Finnish is as good as Nate's Korean but Finnish is the hardest language and I have 6 less months haha, still no excuse!  Oh ya and happy mothers day mom!! I can’t wait to Skype on Sunday. And just to repeat myself, here is the Skype info SUNDAY MAY 15 at 17.00 standard Finnish time (that is 8AM in Utah) using GOOGLE HANGOUT. See you then!! I can’t wait to see the house and talk to you all!

Birthday Party

It was a good week this week, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous for over a week now. The Finns still say that winter is going to come back but I am praying it stays this beautiful all summer. Or at least until I leave... but it has been really great talking to people outside and enjoying the sun. A miracle experience happened this week that I will share. We were given a name and address by our bishop who received it from the church website (meaning that someone sent his own information in and requested a copy of the book of Mormon). We were pretty excited and went to visit this person that night but he didn’t answer the door, so we tried again the next day. Well, someone answered the door but said he had never heard of the guy we were looking for, though we were positive that the address was correct! Anyway, I felt prompted to continue talking to him and he was super interested in our message and how we spoke Finnish, and he took a book of Mormon and we set up a time to meet with him to talk more. I have no idea if this other guy (the actual referral) even exists but it was a neat experience to see that the Lord places prepared people in our path, even if it is not the way that we expected it to happen. Transfer calls are this week and I cannot believe I will soon be the oldest sister in the mission.

Wow. I am so grateful to be here, learning about myself and how I can be happy, not stress, and just enjoy being in the service of our God! I love it :) well, I hope everyone has a great week! We will see you on Sunday!!! Be prepared with questions and things to update about yourselves. Can’t wait! Love you!!! :)

Usual Good Week

Perhe! 

Gosh everyone is just killing it, wait till I get home before you all start becoming famous prodigies without me! haha. Skype is in less than 2 weeks, I can’t believe it. The plan is set to be talking through Google Hangout at 5pm Finland time on Sunday, March 15th for 40 minutes. Good? That will be 2 days after I get my last transfer call so you will get to know where I am spending my last transfer! Though I think I am staying in this ward in Helsinki, but we will see.

I am looking forward to hearing about Korea and hopefully getting some pictures, have fun! It was a good week this week, as it usually is. We have been meeting a few pretty solid investigators, one of which is really working towards a baptismal date in June. I have a possibility of seeing a baptism before I leave! How exciting :) And he is a Finn! So that is awesome. He is really great and loves reading the Book of Mormon and finding inspiring verses. 
Yesterday we had a neat experience while teaching a new investigator from the Congo. Of all the many Africans I have taught throughout my mission, my heart just went out for him. He told us how lost he is with living here in Finland and being told that God doesn’t exist and that school, money, a girlfriend or a good job is what brings you happiness.  Well, after he has done all of those things and every "if you do this, then you will be happy" statements of the world, he expressed deep sorrow to us of his reality-that he has never been able to find true happiness. It was heartbreaking to hear but an amazing testimony to me of the message of hope we have. What a beautiful moment it was to tell him of the love God has for him, that it is never too late to turn to Him, and that there is actually a way in this life to be truly happy- Mosiah 2:41. He was so grateful for the message we shared, I can’t wait to teach him more!

I know that happiness comes from following the example of our Savior, I truly know that trying to find happiness anywhere else will just leave us empty. But when we choose to follow God, we can feel filled, forgiven, strengthened, enlightened, and happy. I hope you all have a great week! Love you!!! :)