moikka

No niin fämily, a week has gone by already and with the clock ticking down I should just dive into the details. . . .

-Yes, even with the snow and everything I am STILL riding a bike, haha. It's been quite the adventure. On Monday I was trying to put something in my pocket while riding, then when I looked up, another biker was headed in my direction for a collision. As quick as I could I reached for the breaks . . . just happened to be the wrong one, the one that snapped a few weeks ago. The collision was epic, but no fatalities and both victims are ok. :) Speaking of bike crashes, my companion got in a pretty epic one the other day . . . . gotta watch those turns, it's icy! I think we've both crashed 3 or 4 times just because of the slipperyness in the past week.

-So, we were supposed to have a baptism this past Saturday . . . .no go. We haven't been able to even get a hold of him for a week now, so yesterday we went over again and he was home and we had a pretty good teach. Turns out he was just busy with school and even went to Helsinki for a bit. He's from Pakistan. Speaks Urdu, Arabic, English, and trying to learn Finnish now.

-Another investigator with whom a baptismal date is set also has to reschedule his date because he didn't show up to church yesterday. They have to be at church at least twice before being baptized. It was a big bummer too because this past Friday our District Leader came down from Kuopio and had the interview with him and everything . . .AND it went pretty well . . . .still didn't show to church. Reason still unknown, but no baptism this Saturday either.

-N on the other hand is still doing amazingly well. She even took us out to eat on Saturday at a new Chinese place . . .which was also amazing. The whole time we've been teaching her she has told us that she wants to be baptized in a lake . . . . not anymore . . .we all went down to the river before we ate and put our hands in the water and basically immediately lost all feeling to our hands, haha. In the church is ok too :)

-Saturday was Pyhäin Päivää in Finland (All Saints Day I think) so everything was shut down. On this day, the Finns light up candles everywhere so it looks really cool, especially because it gets dark here at like 3:30 now a days. At night when we were biking home we went past a cemetery and at each gravesite was at least 1 candle, so everything was lit up and looked awesome.

-District Meeting was held in Joensuu this past Friday. We all went out to lunch afterward and through the window we saw a drunk guy crash his bike into a bench. We went out to help him up, then noticed it was one of our kinda investigators . . . always drunk . . .glad to see us though, haha.

-I'm headed to Helsinki for the WEEK this week. No, no transfer, just a training meeting. My comp went to this meeting last change, now I am going. It's for all the leaders in the mission and those who the leaders bring with them. Most of the mission has been to this meeting, so this should catch everyone up. But I am excited to be there and to learn from Pres Brown for a whole week!! I hop on a train with my DL, Vanhin Gorringe (MTC Bud) today and we come back on Saturday. So I have a little suitcase packed . . . . haven't done that for a year now, haha.

As always it was good reading all your e-mails and I appreciate the news and the thoughts. Your all in my prayers. Love you.

Rakkaudella,

Vanhin Watson