Week 16 in Savonlinna (I'll rest when I'm dead. Or frozen solid. Whichever comes first!)

Dear everybody,

I'll be honest, it's been a rollercoaster of a week - lots of ups, lots of downs, and a few loops that make you really dizzy. My apologies for not being so diligent in my emailing - it's difficult when your recorder breaks. Oh darn. I'll get back to making weekly updates once I have one again. In the meantime, allow me to serenade you with our adventures:

Elder Scott and I cleaned out our entire church building! It's not as impressive as it sounds - our building is smaller than my house. We installed two brand-spanking-new windows computers - they're huge and TOUCHSCREEN! I had forgotten what those were! I love them, they're so fun. We also found our Family History Center materials - 'cause we're also Savonlinna's Family History Center - the materials consisted of a ton of old projector slides, full of indexing lists - census records, war draft records, niin pois päin(and so forth). Unfortunately, all of that material is now obsolete with the advent of, you know, internet... and I think we're going to organize a family history event here soon! 'Cause, you know, we have four computers now in our tiny little church!

Let me give you an update on our investigators: First, the bad news. Our 17-year-old Russian seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. She hasn't answered our texts/calls, and she lives in Kerimäki(it's technically in our proselyting area, but we only have bikes, and we're limited to 45-minute travel time, so we have no way to get to her house). Due to lack of contact, we've dropped her baptismal date - but we're still trying to contact her. Our 38-year-old Finnish dude is progressing so well, however! Elder Scott and I fasted with him on Sunday to help him quit his coffee addiction - and it's working! On Monday, he only drank half a cup! We decided to move his baptismal date(we're thinking early January), but we don't consider this a loss. He's basically part of the branch now, all the members love him, and he's really involved! We're so happy for him!

We also had zone conference yesterday(Monday) In Mikkeli. We learned a ton of things, but it was a bit discouraging - a lot of other areas have had tons of success in some of our initiatives(tracting student housing, community involvement, etc.) and we... haven't. Savonlinna's really small, and the work is pretty slow. We do the best work we can, though! I'm not feeling really down, because I know I'm doing my best.

That's about all for this week - hopefully in the future I'll have a recorder again! Well, until next time! Love you all!

-Vanhin Bolingbroke