Week 92 in Mikkeli (Out of the stone age and into the age of my phone being smarter than me)

Welcome, folks, to... Smartphones in the Finland, Helsinki Mission. 

What does that mean? 

It means that now, the only pictures you'll see from me will be selfies. (I may or may not be joking)

It means that my phone will be smarter than me(Pish posh. The phone doesn't have the gift of the Holy Ghost, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, we may know the truth of all things. Therefore, I am smarter than my phone.)

It means that we have another great tool for the use of the missionaries here!

Yes indeedily, we have put into application(ba dum pshh) a network(haha haa...) of new smartphones, and they're rolled out! But let it not be said that such an event should be without its share of miracles. As we had it, I wasn't intending on buying a phone - anyone who knows me knows that I'm a miser who doesn't like to spend money - but Elder Jordan and I decided that it would be best for our companionship and for the missionary work here in Mikkeli if I got a phone. But then, at church, our Elder's Quorum President offered me an old phone of his! We picked it up(with a great amount of gratefulness in my heart) and checked, and turns out that it just fits the requirements for our missionary-use phones! Little miracles are pretty awesome - and I intend to keep using this one, not just for selfies, but for the good of the missionary work in Finland!

Speaking of all those selfies that I've been referring to, I concur that we defer to the camera for looking at my pretty face this past week. 

Here we haveth... our morning runs. We've got a beautiful area around here, and we seem to get lost in a different section of forest every single morning.

Here we haveth... wait, another castle? We stumbled(not literally) upon this one driving from a little city called Ristiina - we had a lesson there, during which we had a friend commit to considering baptism, and we found the castle after that! So, we had to take pictures.

This last one looks way cool, but what you don't see is that right after taking this picture, I put my hands down on the mossy rock floor... right into a large patch of stinging nettle(which I didn't know existed in Finland until I got shanked by it). Ah well, I don't need the use of my right hand, right?

Here we haveth... a nice picture of our church! Mikkeli is really a beautiful city!

P-day activities... Lokki Viestikeskus. An old transmission station during World-War-2-era Finland - and the source of a lot of cool history(as well as a bunch of creepy mannequins)!

Aaand finally, we're making a garden! Behold:

Results will be seen in the coming months.

Well, I think that's all of my pictures/ranting/scrapbooking for the week. We've had a ton of miracles here, and I'm so glad to be able to give this time and myself to the Lord. Have a great week, love you!

-Vanhin Bolingbroke