Spring has Sprung!‏

Okay so first off, I don't normally do this but CONGRATULATIONS TO MY BROTHER TYLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so proud of you and so excited for you to serve in Houston Texas! Gah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Now that we covered that, it has been a great week here in Finland! It is absolutely beautiful here! Spring is absolutely amazing! I am so excited! 

So we've really just been contacting and teaching! Weird, isn't that what missionaries do, right? But it really has been awesome! Having a Finnish companion is great because I have a perfect Finnish speaker right there all the time! It's going to a fantastic thing for me! ha

SO, the most exciting thing that happened this week: (now this is really exciting for us missionaries because not too many exciting things happen, but..) DRESS CODE CHANGES! I'm so excited! We now get to wear LONG SKIRTS, HATS, and SUNGLASSES. Sadly, I'm not in one of the missions that wears slacks, but still HATS! I'm super super excited and it is going to be a great thing! So watch out for all the Sister Missionaries now who get to wear hats! Ha yep, I'm officially lame. But really though, I'm so excited!

I don't have a ton of time to write today, because we are going to the center! YAY! I promise lots of pictures next week! 

I love you all! I want each of you to know that I love this work with all my heart! I can't believe how amazing it is. It is the most amazing thing I've ever done. 

Love you!

Sister Jones

And then transfer calls came...‏

	This week was super exciting! We got change calls this week and... I'm staying in Marjaniemi for another transfer! Its official, I am spending half of my mission in Marjaniemi! I love this ward so it's awesome that I'm getting to spend so much time here. My new companion is Sister Andersson, AND SHE'S A FINN!! I'm sooo excited to have a Finnish companion. She's the only Finn sister in the mission right now, so Its really going to be so much fun to serve with her. Hopefully, I'll actually be able to learn Finnish. Ha! This week was so insanely busy. First off, we had Zone Conference and that was such a blast! It was so fun to see everyone in the Zone again before we got all moved around this week. We also had Stake Conference here in the Helsinki Stake. We had Elder Joaquim Moreiro of the Seventy come and speak to us. Wow, what an amazing speaker he was. He gave great talks in both sessions we were able to attend. He talked a lot about being focused and really making the best out of bad situations. He really spoke to the missionary who's companion is going home in three days and it has made her miss home a little more than normal... It was a REALLY good stake conference! It was also sooo fun because we got to see the whole Zone again (since that is our whole stake) and we got to figure out everyone's change calls. It turns out that my prior companion, Sister Wunderli, is training again. That means I'm getting a "sister"! Ha! It has been weird with this being Sister Croft's last week, but wow - she's such an amazingly focused missionary who really has served a great mission until the very end! I'm really grateful for the past nine weeks that I've had with her! She's been such a great example to me.  I'm really excited to see what these next nine weeks hold for me here! Marjaniemi holds a really special place in my heart and I'm stoked to spend eight months here! I love you all! Have the best week! Love, Sister Jones My cute little Marjaniemi sign :)

Happy Cinco de Mayo‏

	Hei Everyone!! This was such a great week! I got to Skype with my family, which was soooo amazing! And yesterday I hit my 8 month mark! Its so crazy! I was shocked to realize that I have one more Skype before I come home.. Its weird to think I'm about to hit the last half of my mission next month... GAH!  Well this week was really sooo great and so busy but I feel like nothing all too exciting happened.. So that's a little awkward.. BUT I've got one really good story for you all :) So the other night Sister Crofts and I were walking home and we heard fireworks go off, but we didn't see anything, so we were kinda bummed, but we continued home. After planning meeting, I looked out the window and saw around 50 army men standing outside our apartment with guns pointed towards our building. Ha awkward. But then NO WORRIES, nothing happened. We actually live really close to a military training island, so its kinda not too surprising that they were training.. Nothing happened they just walked, stopped, kept walking, and then more came.. It was weird and we decided that the fireworks probably weren't actually fireworks.. It was pretty funny!  We also had splits this week and it was different since WE went to Espoo instead of having the Sister Training Leaders come to us. It was way fun and it was Cinco de Mayo! So we celebrated! Ha It was really a blast! This week is my last week with Sister Crofts before she goes home next week! Gah! Transfers! I can't believe it! This transfer went by so fast it was insane! I'm so excited to see what the next transfer has in store for me!  I love you all! Love, Sister Jones

Our Mustaches

The Soldiers outside our apartment

Kiitos Niin Paljon!‏

First off, I wanted to thank you all so much for the wonderful birthday wishes! Y'all are so great! 

What a fun birthday week! It started off quite interesting! So I'm not sure how many of you know, but I've always had some really extreme knee pain. It hasn't bothered me too much before my mission, but since I've been out, its really been hard. So this week I FINALLY went to a knee specialist. And well he told me that my knees are actually messed up. He told me that the cartilage between my patella and femur is uneven which causes grinding every time I take a step. Yep. That's a thing. Soo that's the best news you can receive as a missionary who walks 6 miles a day...

So the week stared really great. On Friday, it was my last day as a teenager so obviously I needed to do something CRAZY. Now I'm a missionary and I follow the rules. So we thought we would go and TOUCH the ocean. Now we can't swim, so we didn't, but there aren't any rules against touching the ocean. So that's what we did. Super crazy I know. So fun. Ha

Then SATURDAY WAS MY BIRTHDAY! Saturday was great! In Finland its actually a national holiday so there were balloons everywhere and it was a great celebration! Okay actually everyone was completely wasted and it wasn't safe for us to be outside so we were inside all night.. Ha still wayy fun though! And the balloon thing is totally real.

Even though I didn't want to turn 20 ( I considered moving my birthday to September) I'm so grateful I was able to do it here in Finland. I'm so grateful that I chose to come out here and to serve my Heavenly Father. With all that has happened over the past 8 months, I'm grateful more than ever that I have this chance to learn and grow closer to my Heavenly Father! 

I love you all sooo much! Thank you for all that you do! Thank you again for the wonderful birthday wishes! 

Love,

Sister Jones

Me and Sister Crofts STANDING in the water

Me and my birthday balloons