Mornin' Glory

Hey everyone, thanks for all the wonderful e-mails this week, I had a few laughs and moments of appreciation and thought, so thank you!

First off, there still was no baptism. It was pushed to this Saturday, but even then, when we recently spoke to her she said she still wants to delay it. We are meeting with her on Tuesday, so hopefully we can pump some confidence into her and get her in the font. We have no idea what is holding her back, she's definitely ready. She's been coming to church, and the members seem to love her, so, if nothing happens on Tuesday, then we may pull things back for a while and give her some time.

It's been quite the busy week. We had our highs and our lows, the laughs and the confusion, the anti's and the wonderfuls, all in all, it went well. :) With having bikes now we have been able to get around a lot better. We biked out to an area to go tracting and we had to go through a forest and WOW, it was beautiful. We took pictures! Hopefully I'll have time to attach a few. It really is getting beautiful here. It's really green and flowers and blosoms are blooming . . . it's awesome. I realized that I've now seen Joensuu in all the seasons but Fall, haha . . . . .maybe I'll still get the chance :) . . . only God knows.

Our bikes got stolen, yup, stolen, by our own building manager. He sent us all notes saying we had to put our names on everything in storage or outside or else they'll be taken away and shipped off. Of course, we forgot, we go outside and they were gone. We call the man up and find out where they were, then called up our Branch president and he gave us a ride and we got our bikes back. We then had to bike from there, all the way to a teach we had scheduled. We were late, but all is well now. haha

We had a few new teaches this past week. One was with a young man from Sri Lanka. We ordered a Book of Mormon for him in Tamil, his native language, and he is way cool. Another teach was with another mummo . . .gotta love 'em. :) She was nice and everything, but she was already forgetting things we were saying, so she just fed us some gummies and cookies. Always a reward with those mummos. :) Another teach was with 2 young college guys. In the end, they only wanted to ask questions and learn more about Mormons, but they didn't have a sincere interest. Nice guys though. We are also teaching a young college man who is really interesting. He struggles socially and has a lisp and stutters (haha, think of that, I thought finnish was hard, think of trying to understand it with a lisp and stuttering), but he asks great questions and is really nice. Then, tonight we should have a teach for the first time with a referral we just got 2 nights ago. A member in Helsinki has a friend here and gave them a Book of Mormon. This woman has read a bit and has been marking it up and loves it, AND, she's agreed to meet with the missionaries!! I love members! We've only talked to her on the phone, but she sounds way legit and we are really excited abut her.

We ran into some anti's this past week as well. :( We ran into one at the same place, twice in the week. The first time I felt so horrible, I was shaking a bit, I had aches, aww, it was bad. There was not a good spirit about her and it took a while for us to recover. The second time we just said that we had to go and said good day and left. The other anti was right after the first, and we just said the same thing. We felt really bad, but, as President Brown said in his weekly letter to his missionaries this morning, they aren't rejecting us, they are rejecting the person whose names we wear on our chests, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The experiences with them just made us stronger, and made us realize the blessings in our lives more.

Well, I'm low on time, but, sorry to hear about the van, haha, poor thing. When Dad said Audi I smiled real big. The blessings left for the van when Layne got home, but the new ones are coming from me with the Audi, hahaha. There are Audis everywhere here. I actually rode in one to our DA yesterday with a member who gave us a ride.( a DA with steak . . .again) It actually might be the same one you were talking about dad. :) I'll send a pic. Soooo nice. Brand new too. hahaha

Well, send grandma my love. I'll try to write her today. Layne, congrats on the talks, I heard they were awesome!!

I have to go. I wish I could write you all but it's so hectic on P-Days. I'll try. :) I know this is the true and everlasting work of this eternal gospel. I am so lucky to be here, with the family I have, with the mission I am on, with all the blessings that come with it, all because my ancestors chose to join our Savior's true church. Thank you everyone. Love ya more than AC and Seth's awesome tie that I saw in the pic Layne sent me. I want one!! :)

Moikka, Vanhin Vahtsön