It has steadily been getting colder and colder each day. It was rainy for a few days last week, including Sunday, so that was a party trying to stay dry while walking around. We do now have a couple of investigators! One is a former investigator that we found in the Area Book thing (it just has records of everyone in the area basically). She needs to stop smoking and then she should be ready for baptism so we'll have to see if we can't get that process rolling a bit faster. The other ''investigator'' is actually a little family we tracted to. We set up a return time and taught them the first lesson and gave them a Book of Mormon. They said they would read and pray about it so we'll see how that went next week when we go back. We're still unsure how interested they really are but if they read and/or pray about the Book of Mormon that should trigger something. We do have another appointment tomorrow with another lady. We also tracted to her and she said we could come back tomorrow (tuesday). What's interesting is that when she opened the door her countenance was totally different than all the other people we had talked to that day. She was basically ''glowing.'' Hopefully that's a good sign. It just felt good to talk to her so I'm excited for that tomorrow.
Our apartment is pretty small. Kitchen, bedroom, living room and bathroom. Pretty standard. I don't know when I'll get some boots. It's really an optional thing if I want to get them or not so we'll see if I decide that I really need them or not. My shoes have been great so far, though. I haven't heard anything from the other 3 yet. We'll see them at our zone conference in a couple of weeks though so that will be fun. Our car is fun. It's really small and a manual, like every other vehicle in Europe. We take turns driving and it's kinda fun. My US license is good for like a year so I won't need to get one for several months, luckily so in a year I'll get it, probably.
Yesterday was my first day at church in Kuopio. The ward was quite a bit bigger than in Joensuu and they were all nice. A family invited us over for dinner last night so that was nice of them. We had something similar to spaghetti, but with different noodles and different sauce. I started putting what looked like grated cheese (you know like parmesan) but it turned out to be salt. So I had a lot on my food but I couldn't just waste a whole plate of food! It was rough eating it but I made it ok. I ate a lot of bread with butter in between bites to help with eating the saltiness.
We have a super busy week this week. We have a lot of stuff to do, with District Meeting with President Brown and District Conference (it's like Stake Conference) and other appointments and stuff. I'm actually looking forward to it because last week we had no appointments or anything, just proselyting and trying to find people. We did go and help a Brother cut wood at his kesämökki (summer cottage). It was pretty fun. We're going back to help him on Friday and probably next week too.
!!HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!! Make sure everybody does what mom says and makes her do nothing that would be stressful!
This last week went by really fast which was nice. I think it's because we were so busy with meetings and scheduled appointments and stuff. We had our district meeting last wednesday and President and Sister Brown came in for that. Then on Saturday and Sunday was District Conference (like stake conference but ''district'' because we're not in a stake). President and his wife were also here for that. Conference on Saturday was pretty much all afternoon and evening. We had a couple meetings, ate dinner at the church with the wards, and then there was a ''talent show'' thing at the church in the evening. It wasn't really a talent show but some musical performances and poem reading. It was a lot of fun even though I didn't understand any of the poems, especically because they were mostly hard core ''Savo'' which is the dialect that is spoken in this part of Finland by some people. Yesterday (Sunday) was the last conference meeting and then we ate lunch with the ward again. We spent the afternoon trying to meet some people to teach. It was the birthday of a girl in the ward (from the family that we chopped wood for a couple weeks ago, which we also did last week too). So they invited us over for cake and to talk with them for a bit and then we went back out to go tracting and stuff. It was just a crazy week but it's good because it helps time pass and it helps us feel like we're actually accomplishing something.
The work in general is really starting to pick up. There's a chance we'll have a lesson every night this next week which would be awesome because we're usually teaching maybe 1-3 lessons a week. If we can get 5 or more that would be way sweet. We did get another investigator last week, the ''glowing'' lady I was telling you about. We had a good discussion with her about our purpose and the Book of Mormon and such. She did tell us that she is a strong Lutheran and doesn't want to change, but she's still interested and she said she would read the Book of Mormon and pray about it so when we meet with her again this week we'll follow up with that. If she did read and pray like she said she would then hopefully she'll have that desire to change and learn more. As long as she's interested in what we have to offer than it's worth taking time to help her out.
So last Monday I bought 3 sweet Finnish ties for a pretty good deal. I got the three of them for 25€ (depending on the exchange rate that's about 30-35 dollars I think). They're pretty awesome. I'm actually wearing one right now.
So here's the story of the week. Last night we were tracting and a nice couple let us into their house to hear our message. They were both Pentacostle and listened to our lesson without really any disputations or anything bad. They weren't very interested in the message itself but they loved the fact that two young kids were in a foreign place teaching about Christ and the Gospel and such. We were getting ready to leave and Vanhin Pettus asked the wife if she would say the closing prayer for us. This is the point of the story. So she starts praying fine (of course it's in Finnish so I can just get the vague gist of the whole thing) and it's going fine. But then her voice changes and she starts speaking something that even I know isn't Finnish. She kept repeating whatever she was saying in whatever ''language'' and she was getting quieter and quieter until she ended. We thanked them for their kind hospitality and then got out of there. Basically she started ''speaking in tongues'' during her prayer and it was...interesting. Elder Pettus said that that was only the second time he's had the experience to hear someone do that. But yeah. Creepy. That said, they were very nice people and it was just nice to be let into a home just because that does not happen often at all. So yeah, there's my experience of the week.
We spent the weekend in Joensuu so that was fun. We had a dinner appointement there and it was some chicken soup stuff. It was pretty good. Last Thursday we also had a Dinner appointment with a family in the Kuopio ward. They live like 50 kilos away so it took a little while to get there but they live in a way sweet area in the forest. There is an awesome lake right behind their house and their property is sweet. We had salmon and salad and stuff with them. It was the first time I have eaten fish here, but it was probably the best fish I've ever had in my life. It was sooo good.
We didn't get to meet with the "glowing lady" last week because she was busy but we're going to try to this week. We found another 2 investigators last week so that was exciting. So far the progress of the investigators is slow but that's basically because we've only been able to meet with them once. We keep trying to set up return appointments but they always want to do them like 2-3 weeks down the road. That's kinda how Finland works in general: slow motion. That's ok though, we find more people to teach in the meantime so we stay busy. Eventually it'll kinda roll over and then we'll have several more teaches a week. On average we're getting about 2-3 teaches a week. However, with the new mission plan that is being introduced to the stakes and districts here (and throughout Europe I think) we should be getting 20 teaches a week because the members will play a much more involved roll and we'll more or less just be the teachers. Hopefully it will catch on quickly so we can really build up Finland with the help of the good members here. They're all really awesome.
We have zone conference this week in Turku, which I am really excited for. It's the north zone so I'll get to see a lot of other missionaries including the ones in my group from the MTC. It's usually pretty cold now during the day. We wore our gloves for the first time this week and it was totally worth it.
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