Week 93 in Mikkeli (Make your mommas proud!)

Yes, of course - first shoutout omalle äidilleni, actually the best person in the world, the one from whom I inherited my ridiculously curly hair - I love her! She's one of my biggest supports on the mission!

Buuut, without further ado, mennään tähän viikkoon!(I actually wonder how much of this is understood, because google translate is horrible at translating finnish)

We had a contacting activity with our district, talked to many amazing people, and took a few fun pictures:

We have a really good group of missionaries here - a lot of young bucks(I can say that now because I'm an old fart in the mission timeline), and a lot of talent for the language and the missionary work, and a lot of love for the Lord, and passion for helping His children. They've been a serious strength to myself already, helping me to continue to think outside of the box. I love working with them!

Side note to comment on the beauty(both natural and man-made) of Mikkeli: Man, the finns are cool. In every city I've been in, you can see a beautiful, monolithic piece of art like this:

or the more quiet kind of beauty, like this:

and the thing is, they're five minutes by walk from each other.

In short: Finland's pretty sweet.

What other things did we do?

We had a meeting with a guy at the park, but it was raining, so he was late. We were not late, so we took some pictures:

Picture with my camera:

Picture with my companion's camera:

Food stuffs:

Kale chips! Courtesy of my Aunt Lexie for the recipe.

Our goal to only go shopping 4 times this transfer(it gets more intense when you realize that transfers are 9 weeks around here, not 6) continues swimmingly...

Morning run pics:(yes, these are four different mornings.)

Land of a thousand lakes: Beautiful morning weather and a few laps around the lake, anyone?

Overlook of the bay of our city: The same large cathedral-style church can be seen in the background.

Different lake: You have no idea how much I wanted to do a backflip off of this diving board into the water...

Deserted highway: Man, our city's pretty gorgeous.

Fun stuff:

We're making a garden! We're planting radishes, kale, peas, and a sunflower. One of the sisters in our district is a botanist, so she's been freaking out that we're making an actual garden. The radishes have already sprouted!

And we bought some flowers to beautify everything!

And last but not least on the picture montage, we went fishing today during our P-day time! Our branch president is pretty awesome and loaned us some gear, as well as a favorite fishing spot of his in Mikkeli, so we headed over. No fish were gotten, but I had a few bites, and we got a few nice photos:

It was quite relaxing.

Well, enough with the pictures: We've had a lot of miracles this week: we were happy to bring three friends to church this week! The ward members were amazing in being friends to them, and we were able to teach, right after church, a lesson to one of them, with Jyri, a young man who just got his call to Sweden! We also spent a lot of time finding yesterday, and we made some ambitious goals to find some people, and we found plenty of them! We didn't hit our goals, but we found three people in ways that we didn't at all expect! We also have been planning and studying for a training meeting coming up on Saturday, and I've felt a lot of inspiration already coming as we prepare. 

Kind of like Mormon says, "I cannot write the hundredth part" or all that's in my heart. I've grown, even more in this past week, a true love for this work, and rain or shine, we give our all to the Lord. 

As for a short spiritual thought: We've been studying 1 Nephi 8 and 11 a lot this week - the vision of the Tree of Life. I took specific notes in my Book of Mormon as to the things that Lehi sees, the things that the people do, and where the objects are in relation to each other. It's opened my eyes on the subject. My big question has been, right now, what does the Tree of Life represent? Well, Nephi begins to tell us when he says in 1Ne11:22:"Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things." But why is that? What does it mean? I've started on a few thoughts - but I invite you, dear reader, to figure out more by study and by faith. 

Well, I think that's just about all for this week. I love this work! And I hope to keep doing it, and to keep succeeding to the best of my ability! 

Love,

Vanhin Bolingbroke