Hope you all had a great week and that life is just fantastic. Erik, I can't believe your service is coming to an end. Congratulations on everything you have done. You've been a powerful example for me and I'm so grateful.
We had a bit of a slow week this week. Not as many people to teach as we have had in the past. That did mean a lot of time for finding though. Which leads to some great stories.
Monday:
Had a great P-Day. I've gotten a ton of letters from a bunch of my friends from my freshmen ward, so I had a lot of writing to do. After answering all those though, Elder C and I decided we should probably find a different activity to do on P-Day. We needed to explore this city a bit more. (We're going to an art museum today.) We had an appointment with a family in the ward Monday night. They're awesome. Their dog is huge though! It was the friendliest, nicest, quietest dog ever, but it weighed close to a hundred pounds and it's head was bigger than mine! I'll have to send you the picture. We had a great lesson and found out about some people in their lives we can pray for. Very spiritual lesson.
Also, while doing our grocery shopping, we found a cereal called "Sugar Puffs" with the cheesiest, cheapest looking, knock-off "honey monster" character on the box. We laughed so hard and promised each other never to buy it. Until we looked on the back and found out there was a cut-out mask of this "honey monster" character on the back of the box. So we bought it. It was terrible cereal, with no nutritional value at all, but that mask made it so worth it. Elder C now wears it to quiz me on Finnish and I can hardly talk because I laugh so hard every time I look at it.
Tuesday:
Had a chance to give a blessing to a sick woman we went to visit. She's not a member, but afterwards she talked about how good she felt during the blessing and she seemed brighter and happier after it. I love the power of the priesthood.
Wednesday.
Had a great district meeting, Elder C's final one. We had an awesome testimony meeting to end it. If you ever want to invite the Spirit, wherever you are, bear pure testimony. It always works.
Splits with the Zone Leaders the rest of the day. They're great guys, learned a ton from working with them.
Thursday:
Two of our three appointments fell through, so we had some time to tract and go try to contact formers. On the bus out to one of these formers, a woman tried to sit down next to me. She didn't notice my stuff was on that seat until she sat on my backpack though! She got up, and I quickly moved my backpack, but before i could move my hat and gloves she sat down right on top of them! I had no idea what to do except to pray that she would get off the bus before me so I didn't have to awkwardly ask her to hand me my stuff from underneath her. So awkward. While we were out walking around, Elder C gave me the sentence: "This building is made of rocks" to translate into Finnish. I didn't know how to translate it, so I just looked straight back at him and, with a perfectly straight face replied, "yes, it is" He started busting up. I love the great relationship we've developed over the past two transfers. It will be very sad to see him go.
Friday:
Had a blood drive at the Church. Unfortunately, missionaries aren't allowed to donate otherwise I totally would have. I think we really made a good impression on the Red Cross volunteers, both with how many people showed up and in the way we worked with them. When we went tracting later that night, we found a building that unfortunately was full of rather hard hearted people. One of them, a very old woman, looked at the Book of Mormon and frantically tried to cover her eyes with one hand while attempting to close the door with the other and murmuring something completely incoherent. We were so confused we just kinda sat there. It took her an awkwardly long time to close the door. We had a good laugh about that door. Also learned a great saying in Finland. If you want to say something works really effectively or intensely, you can say, "Toimi niin kuin junan vessa" Yep, it works like a train bathroom. Finns.
Saturday:
Weekly Planning Session, then missionary work.
Sunday:
Great fast and testimony meeting. Tried to go contact a few referrals, but no luck. One of the buildings we were in, though, produced a little miracle. We had come to the building to find a referral, only to realize that the address was incomplete. So we sat down and prayed. While praying, I felt like we ought to just stay in that building anyway and tract it. The very first door we knocked, we found a family. It wasn't a good time for them, but they said we could some back. We gave them an invitation to our Joulu Juhlat and made a plan to come back and visit them later.
So grateful for the time I have here. Not all of it will be perfect, and some of it will be very, very hard. But I know it is possible, and that's good enough for me.
Love,
Elder Hansen
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