Week 55 in Rauma (Finally got that ancient camera working...)

Well well well, what have we here?

Pictures! Pictures have we here! Let's take a look at 'em:

A few test photos for the camera - featuring Elder Ames, Yours Truly, and Bishop Vesterinen!

Elder Olsen, Viitanen, and I, heading to the mission home to pick up our trainees(to be fair, this was two weeks ago)

My lovely little missionary son, Elder Hale! He's from Mapleton Utah, and speaks like, 7 languages. We've already taught a few discussions in French and Romanian(I'm the moral support, anyway... my high school French gets me nowhere)

So this camera won't turn flash off...

Our district started a ton of goals this transfer!

I didn't take too many pictures of this week, but I've purchased a new camera, and it should be arriving within the next few days(call it an early birthday gift)!

-We found a new investigator! She was a member referral, and we taught her with said member. Super shy(as is your average Finnish person, especially around missionaries), but super willing to learn! In the words of our member, "Veljet! Opetus meni tosi tosi tosi tosi tosi tosi tosi tosi tosi tosi hyvin! Se oli täydellinen!" Super cool!

-Zone conference was last week(what a wonderful conference, too!) - the pictures from that should be on the mission's Facebook or something...

-The Vesterinens, for dinner, treated us to some nice, American Corn on the Cob. Tastes like home(Although admittedly not as good as our home-garden-grown corn)!

-Ooh, and I can't forget, here's a story! So, let me explain:

1: The Lutheran church owns the Finnish translation of the Bible(eli, 'Raamattu').

2: The modern(1992) translation is the generally circulated version.

3: The old(1933) translation is generally accepted as the better translation(except for the fact that it just leaves out a few verses[14, to be exact] from the collection of books. Just cuts them out. Since when can you pick and choose your bible verses?).

4: I decided that I wanted a 1933 translation, but you can imagine how common those are. So, I asked one of our older members, where could I find one?

5: He offered me one right then and there. Said that we could stop by and visit them that week, and when we visited, he gave me an extra copy of his!

BUT!

6: Not only was it a 1933 Raamattu, but it was a Finnish quad. Old+New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine+Covenants.

7: They don't make those(quads) in Finnish anymore.

Long story short, one of our incredible members gave me one of the rarer books in Finland. It's freakin' awesome, and I'm so ridiculously grateful to him!

Here are some pictures of the masterpiece!(Side cover, and open to Alma 39)

That's the gist of this week! Hope all's well at home, I love you all! Stay strong, and stay close to this wonderful Gospel!

Love,

Vanhin Bolingbroke

Week 54 in Rauma (Blinding, ain't it?)

Look at that.

Beautiful, look at it!

Look at what, you may ask?

Well... nothing. You see, my camera is still kaput. I borrowed another, older(very very older) camera from Bishop Vesterinen, but unfortunately, the pictures can't upload to this computer. So... we're blind today. But we should be able to go camera shopping soon! My apologies for not having pictures this week, but hey - I should have a surplus next week!

But, let's take a look(heh heh) at what went down this week!

On Tuesday, I said goodbye to my beloved Elder Ames, and headed down to Helsinki, stayed the night with the Neitsytpolku Elders! (For those of you who remember that far back, neitsytpolku was my old stomping grounds! I also got to teach Abdi, one of my best friends from Helsinki, with Elder Viitanen and Faught!) The next morning, we bussssed out to the mission home, and met our new companions!

My trainee is Elder Hale, from Mapleton Utah! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, but imagine him. He's a whiz with languages, and is picking up Finnish really nicely! We came back the same day via Tampere, to Rauma!

The next day, we had a wonderful first District Meeting of the transfer, and set some wonderful proselyting goals for this change! We also had a few lessons that day!

Friday was planning (also some wood chopping for one of our members!), super fun, Saturday was full of work, super fun, and Sunday was church! The members here love Elder Hale!

We also have a ton of potential people to teach right now, so this future week is gonna be full of that.

Hmm... what else? It's been raining a bit, and I've been ridiculously busy with my District Leader stuff. Having set some awesome and huge goals, I'm keeping track of almost all of them, which means that my evenings are quite busy. But, nonetheless, we're having such a blast!

Sorry again for the lack of pictures, but hey. Still love you all!

-Vanhin Bolingbroke

Week 53 in Rauma (I'm a mommy!)

Wow, what a week! Let's go through some of our stuff!

Disclaimer: unfortunately, my camera took some water damage from Hurricane Rauma, which I mentioned last week; thus, all of my pictures are unfortunately blurry. I won't have many pictures - at all - until I can snag meself a new camera. (Hint hint, my birthday's coming up in a month, Mom and Dad, *wink wink*)

Well, on Wednesday, we had the last district meeting of the transfer! It's been a pleasure to work with this district, and we were able to snag some awesome(blurry) pictures!

Aaand, the beautiful Elder Lawson stepped in front of my camera at just the right time...

We also found this beauty whilst contacting in Vanha Rauma... It's a neon yellow mercedes hearse. Why not?

And to be fair, I still got a wicked sunset picture!

In other news:

-we found two new investigators this week!

-The Vesterinens fed us a wonderful break-fast-breakfast on Sunday evening!

Left to right - Willie, Me, Valtteri, Elder Ames

Meet us, the Vesterinens, and Valtteri! What a wonderful bunch!

-And here - we got a few extra pics from Hurricane Rauma!

-Heh heh

But then, how about the big news - transfers!

Elder Ames will be going to Kouvola to reunite with his MTC companion!

I will be staying in Rauma, and TRAINING a new missionary! I have no idea who he is yet, and he's probably just getting on the plane to leave the MTC now! But we're gonna have a ball here in good ol' Rauma! I'll be going down to Helsinki/Espoo tomorrow to meet him! I'm ridiculously excited!

All in all, wonderful week. I'll be letting you know of the events next time! Stay tuned!

Love you all!

-Vanhin Bolingbroke