Moi! Minä on Suomessa!
The day finally came! I am in Finland! Can you believe it? I'm actually here! So first things first, I'm serving in Helsinki in an area called Itäkeskus. Not going to lie, its pretty sketchy. But it's all good! The Lord's work must move forward throughout all the earth! My companion is Sisar Wunderli from Sandy, Utah! We are over the Helsinki 1st Ward along with two sets of Elders. Guys I'm in an actual ward, IN FINLAND! I really love it here so far! Finland is such a magical place and I'm just soo excited to be here!
So here's the deal: Finland has some pretty insane privacy laws. So I can't exactly share too much personal info about our investigators or else its sorta illegal... Just so you all know.
My first night when we arrived in Finland we drove around Helsinki seeing the beautiful scenery and such. It was super cool because I've never really seen Finland in the dark. It gave me a new perspective of everything. It took a while for me to figure out where I was but I eventually got it and I was just so excited! We then went and walked around the temple in Espoo. MY FAVORITE temple ever. It's so incredibly beautiful it's like insane. Ha I love that place. We stayed at the mission home that night and then had meetings in the morning just to get us all acquainted with Finnish laws and customs. We then met our trainers and we were off to our areas!
Our very first night Sis. Wunderli had us going around doing street/metro contacting. I was soooo freaked out! It was ridiculous (but what greenie wouldn't be?). I didn't actually say anything to anyone but it was good to just be out there doing missionary stuff.
So we have this investigator "P". P is an atheist, but he says never say never. He's a classic Finnish man and very stubborn. Ha! My second night here we taught him and his lessons are all in Finnish. Cool. Newbie who doesn't know the language teaching a lesson in Finnish. We also taught the Plan of Salvation which definitely has the hardest vocab out of all the lessons. I was sorta struggling through my part and he could tell, so he offered to have the lessons in English. I told him that it was okay and that I needed to learn Finnish anyway. The lesson went really well I think.
The next day we taught an ENGLISH lesson with "Z". Z is a Muslim who has no idea who/what God is. So we are pretty much starting at square one with him. It was his first lesson with the missionaries so it was all new to him as well as me. It seemed to go well. We were able to give him a Mormonin Kirja in his language and he seemed so excited! It was really weird to be teaching in English because I've never done that before. It was cool though!
We've done a lot of street and metro contacting. We've also done a lot of tracting, just trying to find more people who are ready to hear the gospel. I've officially stopped many people on the street, started a door conversation and started a metro contact. ALL IN FINNISH! Sisar Wunderli said she didn't even attempt to Metro contact until last transfer and she's about to hit her year mark.
It's been interesting talking to people. Yesterday we had a lady yell at us on the Metro about how religion is a personal thing and that it's very rude for us to be out talking openly about it. Sis. Wunderli said after, "If you have the cure to cancer, why would you hide it?" But really though, we have just an amazing message and we know its true so why would we just keep it to ourselves!  |
| Me in front of our apartment building! |
