Wow, what a busy week! We were running all over the place! Like, Every single day! That is why we are emailing today :) The next couple days are going to be crazy too, we are finalizing transfers tonight with President and the next 3 days we are going to be buying travel and then calling every missionary in the mission to tell them their travel. Also this Friday and Saturday are huge holidays in Finland. They are called Juhannus. The mid summers day. That is going to be the brightest day of the year! Everyone has a nice grillout and it is awesome. Lots of people get drunk though as well, so missionaries are not allowed to proselyte on the streets or go knocking, so they will be spending time with members and teaching friends. We shall be in the office both of those days, except we are going to take an hour our of office work to go grill with a less active (find story below). But we are excited for sure!
It all started with working with Missionaries in Mikkeli. It is a nice little city in Eastern Finland. We left last Tuesday during dinner time, and arrived at around 9:30. It was a nice trip. The next day we had such a good time working with the Elders. They are zone leaders, and our good buds. Elder Bolingbroke and Jordan. We saw so many miracles during that day! I got thinking after working with them, why are exchanges with other missionaries so energizing? Why are they so spiritual and why does everyone go hard? Why dont we do that everyday? I think one reason is that during exchanges you have a goal in mind...not a numbers thing but a personal goal, something that you are working on. As we tried to help them with their goals, and to apply into their work, I really saw so many times when the Holy Ghost was leading us to opportunities to work on our goals. When we set goals that will make us better and push us, we will have more access to Heaven's Power. I really believe that! Also during the exchange we had a nice grillout with some of their investigators and members. It was a grand time.
The next morning, we left Mikkeli for this place called Joensuu. It was a 3 hour bus ride away. Super pretty ride. Joensuu is up in central finland closer to the border of Russia. We wanted to work with a couple of young missionaries. Joensuu is labeled as a hard place to find people that are interested, so we wanted to go get it fired up. It was crazy, even more Miracles than the day before! It was so fun to work with the young elders and give them some new ideas and to show them another side of missionary work. There was one point when me and one of the young guys were tracting and we were just having so much success. Three doors in a row were interested to meet, we taught one lesson and set up two return dates. This elder I was with started laughing in disbelief after the third one and asked "Elder Christensen, are we still in Finland?" "Yes my son, This is how missionary work goes in Finland." I am so thankful that i was able to be with them and learn from them!
The next day we took a train ride home, like 6 hours or something and went and drove throughout Helsinki picking up these big poster things showing Jesus Christ from missionary apartments. Next morning we woke up and picked up our big blue bus/Van and got all of the missionaries in Espoo and drove everyone to this city called lohja. Lohja just got a branch, so it is pretty small still. The leader there asked President if they could borrow the missionaries to help them raid Lohja for the day. It was awesome. There was 8 of us in total and we were placed in different parts of the city with a couple members each and just talked to everyone. IT was really cool. I really got to see the power of member missionary work. You could really tell the difference between when I would stop someone or when a member just dressed in his shorts and t shirt would stop someone. There is already that bond there between them and it was super cool to see. We all can do missionary work!
On Sunday (this is where we meet the less active to grill with) we went tracting to try and get in contact with this member that we have been knocking for a month now. We knocked his door again, but after about 2 minutes, no answer...but as we were walking away he opened up the door so we ran back! He is a super cool guy named kari. It was so cool to talk and get to know him. It was even cooler to see that he still had a testimony of the gospel, he wants to come back to church and to start attending the temple again! We set some goals with him and talked about how to get him to church. He was super happy that we stopped by. We also asked him if he wanted to grill with us on Juhannus and he said "totta kai!" of course!. So we will be bringing our grill to his place for a grillout on saturday :)
Then monday - Wednesday we were running errands for president Aura. We had to do some emergency stuff with missionaries and took a 9 hour total road trip from our place to a city called Lahti, from there to a place called hämeenlinna. In Hämeenlinna we got to see a castle that is older than America by 500 years. It has never been beaten in battle. Finnish Strong :) But we are back now.
I forgot to mention, that monday night before we began our journey, a house in the village burned down due to some an accident making fondue in the kitchen. It was a member's cousin, so they called us and asked us to go help. so me and elder Krause gathered another companionship as aid, and we charged to the scenery. We got to wear these nice suits. I felt like a scientist.
Bob is doing good, we set a new date with him for the 13th of July. We read Mosiah 18:8-10 with him and he really realized that he is ready, and that this is what he wants!
I love you all! Enjoy the Week!
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