Rough week, splits, conference and jam

Dallin had a rough week but as always is optimistic.

Moriens

Alrighty another week down. Last week was probably the hardest week I've had since the start of my mission. We did a lot of work, went to a lot of places but our results were very limited. That's ok though because I have to remember that, especially as a missionary, we don't always see the fruits of our labors. In our book, Preach My Gospel, it talks about how no good work goes unnoticed. I guess those are just bonus points for the future or something.

This week should be pretty awesome. Last week we got the Suomen Valo, which is the newsletter that we all get with the change information and announcements and such. We are now in the Oulu district, the furthest north one. I'm with Elder Empey in the same district so I'll get to see him of Friday when we go to Oulu for a District Meeting. Our District Leader and his companion are coming down here Wednesday night to go on splits for Thursday. That'll be sweet because splits are always fun.

Church yesterday was awesome. We are really starting to click with the members so that's sweet. We've been tracting/teaching with them as much as possible. One guy is actually President Brown's secretary for this area of Finland even though he's only like 25. He actually served his mission in Denver when we lived there so he knows the area as well as the missionaries we knew (Elder Beckett...) He's a total stud so he's the best to go tracting with. I'm pretty sure he'll be the first Finnish General Authority someday.

Yeah so for Conference we got to watch all the sessions except for Sunday night because they don't show that here because of the time difference. We just watched it at the church. They had a room set up for English so we watched it and all of the youth (all 4 of them) came and watched it with us in English because they speak English pretty well. Yeah it was pretty sweet.

My Finnish is still coming along. I can more or less hold a conversation on my own, depending on the topic of discussion. I can't express myself fully by any means but it's coming along. We've been speaking Finnish much more often with each other too so that has really been helping a lot. Keep those prayers a comin'! Tell the rest of the family thanks for the spiritual boosters.

Yes in other news I now like a lot more foods I previously did not like. Let me list them: jam, bananas (just straight bananas), fruity yoghurt (not with chunks), that's about it thus far. Yeah crazy I know and my tolerance will only increase.

The Language is coming along

Letter from Sept. 28th:

Another week come and gone already. We were in Turku Wednesday night to Friday afternoon for Zone Conference. It was pretty sweet. Turku is quite a bit bigger than Kuopio and we were with the whole North Zone which was pretty sweet. There were about 20-25ish missionaries so it was cool. I got to see the Elders Ranzenberger, Empey, and Schoof. They're doing well as far is I could tell. Elder Ranzenberger is over is Vaasa, just across the water from Sweden, so everyone there speaks Swedish. He said he hasn't taught a single lesson in Finnish, only English. We had some cool meetings at conference and then we had a finding activity for a couple of hours. We were all assigned areas to go around Turku to do street contacting. The people there are totally different than in Kuopio. It was crazy. The craziest part is that I understood MUCH better what they were saying in Turku. In Kuopio I can get a vague idea of what's going on, with very few specifics. In Turku it was the total opposite. It was crazy and cool at the same time. Of course I didn't understand everything/everyone but overall my level of understanding was WAY more. They just speak differently. It's interesting. I think I mentioned it before but in Kuopio a lot of people speak ''Savo'' which is the accent spoken in the east. It's hard.

Letter from Oct. 5

We are also now part of the Oulu District, which is sweet because it's the farthest north district in the country. So for District Meeting in a couple weeks we get to travel up there to Oulu or maybe to Rovaniemi (where Santa lives). We're excited for that.

Conference was pretty sweet. We even managed to bring one of our investigators (who happens to be blind) to a session. She liked it so that was good. I'm already excited for the next Conference sessions.

Finnish is definitely getting better. We were in Jyväskylä on Friday for companion exchanges so that was really cool. Once again, I understood people WAY better there but it is coming along here as well. Thanks for the prayers, without them missionary work would not happen here.