Goodbye Veli Jakko

Wow! What a great week we just had. Maybe one of the best ones yet. 

We had to say goodbye to Veli Jäkkö on Friday. It was such a good time with him. He gave us a big boost for sure. The testimony meeting at the end of the week long adventure was probably the most spiritually powerful meeting that I have ever been in. It was so amazing to see all these 11 teenagers feel the spirit that strongly really for the very first time in their lives. It really cemented again my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and how blessed we are as missionaries to be sharing it full time with others for these short couple of years! It was also really amazing to see that once you get even just a small taste of the joy that comes from helping someone else, you want to do it even more! All of these 11 youth want to serve missions now, and many of them did not have a testimony before. When I stood up to bear my testimony, I said "dear sisters and elders, and dear veli Jäkkö" and then he started to cry and hid is face, and everyone started crying and laughing. it was super funny.

But anyway, we had the best finding I have ever had on my mission this week. We had 8 new folks found. That is crazy! not sure that has ever happened in Finland. We were really blessed. There was one day when we had no lessons planned and so we decided to do a one hour calling session and call tons of potentials and we ended up setting up three lessons for that night! It was so cool. And they are all really awesome and ready. We are pretty booked now for this current week, which is a good thing, because we have two splits here in our area with some zone leaders, so that will help us out a lot. 

Today in district council we talked a lot about commitments, and how commitments help our friends in their conversion. The thought came to me while I was preparing "how has being the one extending invitations and helping others to commit affected my conversion" And that was a really deep question that I thought about for a while. After thinking about it, I know that for sure it has affected my conversion. I really do know that God keeps his promises. I have seen so many times of when Heavenly Father has given very specific blessings that were promised to my friends that were able to keep their part of the commitment. It is such a blessing to know that we have a loving Father in Heaven.

One scripture that I really liked this week is:

Mosiah 10:10-11 And it came to pass that we did go up to battle against the Lamanites; and I, even I, in my old age, did go up to battle against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that we did go up in the strength of the Lord to battle.

11 Now, the Lamanites knew nothing concerning the Lord, nor the strength of the Lord, therefore they depended upon their own strength. Yet they were a strong people, as to the strength of men.

I have seen so many times the importance of doing things the Lord's way. It is the best way! When we do it with him there is no way we can loose.

I love you all!

Our Mini Missionary

Moi!

Wow, it has been once again a while. We have had a really good past two weeks! So much fun! We have been working with a mini missionary. A mini missionary is a youth that does a 1 week mission experience. We were not supposed to get one because we are the assistants and we have lots of other stuff to do that is not really the "normal mission experience". But we could not find a family anywhere except in our ward to house him...so we were blessed with Veli Jäkkö! 

Sami Jäkkö is his name. He was actually in my ward 5 months ago for two weeks before our wards got split in two. He lives in a town called Lohja. It is about 30 minutes north of Kauniainen. So we actually have met/seen each other before. He is 19 and the coolest kid ever. Right when we announced his call that he was going to his same ward he was kind of bummed and everyone laughed haha. Some people are going to places 6 hours away. (11 youth in total) But he has loved it so much. We have too! We pick him up from his apartment at 9 AM and then start our day. It is grand. It has been super cool to see changes in him. President Aura told us that when Finnish youth are asked where they have found their testimonies usually it is from the "mini mission". 

There was one really spiritual lesson that we had with the returning member named Veli Rosenberg. He was the one we have been working with and is coming to church and now active almost again. It is amazing how living the gospel has changed his life. His nephew was staying with him during this lesson and we taught the Restoration to him. And at the end I told his nephew that I knew that we did not just knock Veli Rosenberg's door 8 times the past 3 months with no answer just to find him and bring him back to church, but also to find his nephew and share with him the joys of the Gospel. Wow, the spirit was so strong there. It was getting hard for everyone to breathe. The nephew in the end said he needed some time and was content with how his life was going, but what an experience for Veli Jäkkö! after the lesson he said: "wow, I had no idea this is what missionary work is like in Finland. I thought it was just people saying no." nope. dead wrong. I love being a missionary in Finland. There really are so many people here that love the Gospel and are interested. 

Today we just got back from the Temple. Veli Jäkkö was able to baptize me and then afterwards I was able to confirm him. Super cool! There are a lot of really good things going on right now in our area. Lots of lessons. we found 4 new investigators last week and we are super excited to get to work with them! 

That is all I can remember from the past two weeks, It is going way too fast. It feels like the day is just a blink of an eye and then time for closing prayer. ah well.....

I just remembered that we did have splits with the zone leaders in Oulu. we flew up there again and worked with them for the day. Really awesome. We were street contacting on this bridge and then they opened up the dam underneath us and all of this water came rushing out. Really cool!

Also, one miracle that we have had is that we are teaching the man whose house burned down a few weeks ago. I called him a couple days ago and asked if we could come back and share a message on how Jesus Christ can help us in finding joy through our challenges. And he says "of course!" It was really cool to teach him. It has been fun discussing in his home. They are rebuilding it right now. He gave us some really old Finnish newspapers that were stuffed in his roof for insulation. from the 1940s. That will be some good language practice! it is so cool how Heavenly Father prepares us for the gospel.

Love you all!

There Must Needs Be STRUGGLE....

Wow, time flies. Sorry for another two week gap. We have been pretty busy lately, but this week things have quieted down. We are ready to get some more missionary work done! We had lots of traveling these past two weeks! The Zone Conference tour! We started by driving to Tampere, and then Helsinki, and then finished flying to Oulu. The pic that says "Apulaiset" means Assistants. The zone leaders in one in Tampere make fun of us all the time. That is ok though, we are like best friends! We only got 4 hours of sleep when we flew to Oulu, and I was so tired. It is so amazing to me though that the moment you see another missionary from a different area and the meeting begins, all the tiredness goes away. The Lord really does sustain us and support us! I have seen that in normal missionary work as well. On those days when you just dont want to go outside or just dont feel super good, when you do it anyway, and give it your all, I feel as if immediately I can feel the joy coming back right during that very first contact! 

One scripture that has really hit home that I found a couple days ago was Mosiah 7: 18 And it came to pass that when they had gathered themselves together that he ^aspake unto them in this wise, saying: O ye, my people, lift up your heads and be comforted; for behold, the time is at hand, or is not far distant, when we shall no longer be in subjection to our enemies, notwithstanding our many strugglings, which have been in vain; yet I trust there ^bremaineth an effectual struggle to be made.

King Limhi has just been told that Heavenly Father loves them and is going to bless them and help them get freedom from the Lamanites. I love that he rejoices over this news, even though he does not know what or when or how it will happen. But he is confident that it will. And then the very last sentence sticks out so much! "Yet I trust there remaineth an effectual struggle to be made." Even though he knows that God is a God of Miracles, he also knows that that doesnt take away the need of our own efforts or even the effort being a struggle! Sometimes the miracle can be that we were able to do something hard, with the help of Jesus Christ! I have always had this sort of dream that on my mission, I would find the most golden investigator that is so ready for baptism and he would just walk right up to us and know it was true. It would not even matter what I say. But I have kind of learned that at least for me and the people in Finland, that is not the way Heavenly Father works. There needs to be a struggle, or great effort. As we do all that we can, we need to dig up the gold with maybe even many wagons full of dirt to find it. I am so grateful for those times when I have pushed pass the no, or dug a little deeper! 

After Zone conference we took a train to a city called Kajaani. Way cool place. We worked with two really cool elders, one of them is an Australian, one of like 5 non americans in the mission. way cool guy, He gave me lots of tips to work out when i get back. After kajaani we came home and helped with a move. There were some heavy things there, as well as many strugglings :) 

We had a really cool experience while preparing for zone conference, we had like 90 minutes of presentation material to plan and we had no idea what to do. It was supposed to be on Area Book Planner App, something that we just got on our phones. And we were giving info on it to the whole mission. But we had never used it or done anything with it, and there wasn't a whole ton of guidance. This last day of preparation, we were in the office planning our parts and in total it was around 9 hours or so, and our heads just hurt so bad, we had no idea what to present and after 4 hours all our ideas dried up and we were completely stumped. So we decided that we needed to pray and counsel with Heavenly Father. "Me emme tiedä mitä meidän pitäisi tehdä..." Nothing really huge or miraculous happened, but after the prayer we did some air punches and got back to work, little by little, the most tiny of thoughts would come to our minds, and then after we would talk about it, they would grow, and after about an hour we had a great basis for it all! We were also asked to teach the missionaries how to recognize the Holy Ghost, and I was able to share this experience : I know that the Holy Ghost gives ideas to the mind!

One last cool thing that happened this week was I got to give my first Baptismal Interview! I dont know if I told you all last week, but me and elder Krause are also district leaders, we are team teaching, because we dont have enough missionaries. And so I got to interview this sweet young sister who is going to be baptized on sunday! It was one of the most spiritual minutes I have had on my mission. She is from the phillipines and didnt speak a whole ton of english or Finnish, so she brought her member friend along to translate. It was so cool to hear her conversion story, and how she found the Gospel. She moved to Finland and then after two weeks or so her friend invited her to church. 3 months later she is getting baptized. The spirit was so strong as I told her that she was led to Finland because that is where her friend had been prepared to invite her to learn about the gospel. And then we talked about the Temple and that she needs to set goals for attending the temple, That is the place you want to be. After that she asked me "why are you crying?" and i couldn't really say much. The friend then said "tears of joy, they are tears of joy." Amen! What a joy it is to be able to see a change in people's lives!

I love it here.

Talk to you next week ;)