November 23, 2009
Hi Family,
First off I did shake Santa's hand. It was after the picture and stuff and we didn't even know they were filming us until after the whole thing was over. I have no idea what the word was that he said. If you notice though, his English was very good but he had an accent. That's what the Finnish accent sounds like when they speak English. It's just kinda broken sounding and isn't one that would be cool to have, unlike Scottish or English or something. Yes I've been told that I'm the tallest in the mission and Elder Pettus happens to be the shortest in the mission. Kinda weird.
We did take pictures at the Arctic Circle line, but there was snow so you can't really see it...I sent pictures last week so you should have them hopefully this week or something.
Right now we don't have any Finnish missionaries. We did have one when I got here but it was his last transfer so he's done. We do have missionaries from Sweden, Russia, England, and one from Latvia. We had one from Canada but he's done as well. Everyone else is American.
For Thanksgiving, we don't have any plans to do anything. The further north you go the more ''Finnish'' the people get. We don't have the money or the time to do anything special on our own. Apparently Friday night a family will be doing a ''Thanksgiving'' dinner or something at the church I think. The daughters and their son speak English alright but the parents don't. We'll be in Oulu for our District Meeting Thursday night and Friday so we might not be back in time for the dinner thing anyway. We'll see.
I'll give you the instructions for how to call and stuff when Elder Pettus and I figure out what times we'll be available to do the calls. Basically you will be calling to us. The rate number thing they give us to give to you is supposed to be less expensive or something so I'll give that to you when we know what we're doing.
I think I had to apply for some of the Utah scholarships but I don't really remember. That was like 2 years ago! Which is more time than I have left here! I honestly don't remember when I heard back from BYU either. If Danika can get her application in by the early deadline that'll be very smart. Yeah I had to get a Bishop AND Stake Presidency interview. Mine was with President Jones.
Our apartment is pretty simple. Ours happens to be very old. The apartment itself isn't too bad but the bathroom is the worst bathroom I've ever seen in my life. Dad remember my bathroom when I had to live in Heritage Halls? Times that by like 7 and then you have our bathroom. The problem is there isn't really any way to clean it. Stuff is just stained and cleaner doesn't do anything. However, other missionary apartments have some sweet bathrooms. That's just part of living in Kuopio. It's different to because the showers in Europe, or at least in Finland, are different. It's hard to explain so you might have to wait until I can get pictures sent or just when I come back.
We switch off eating together or just whatever we want individually. We usually do a 2-3 meals a week together, like meatballs and rice or chicken or something like that. This week we're going to make some Taco soup out of the recipe book that Sister Brown gave to all the missionaries at my first Zone Conference.
Oh yeah we got the change information so I can tell you how everything is now. There weren't a whole lot of changes/transfers made. Only 3 new missionaries came in and like 4 went home. Next change, however, there are 8 coming in and none going home so there will be changes like crazy! Everyone in my group is still in their greenie city but I'm the only one that is still with my trainer. I'm not sure what that means. Maybe I need the extra training. Probably. They did switch up the Zones and districts as well. There are now 3 zones instead of just 2. We are in the ''North Zone'' (go figure) and are in the Oulu District. Elder Empey and Elder Ranzenberger are in my Zone still but Elder Schoof is now in the Tampere Zone. Elder Empey is also in the Oulu District with us so I get to see him on Friday too. Other than that President had to call a new AP (assistant to the President) because his old one's mission is over. It's crazy to see some of these people going home because when I got here they still had like 3 months left, but I've been in the country for 3 months already. It's going pretty fast. With Christmas coming up it'll go even faster!
I'm sure whatever is in my package will be sweet. There's not really anything that we need here we can't get with our MSF so anything from home just makes life more fun. I did finally get a couple letters at the end of last week. One was from Seth and he sent me some pictures so that was cool.
My license will be a European Union license but will be marked as being from Finland. They look pretty awesome.
The basement is looking good. I'm excited to check it out.
It's ridiculous. We had a pretty good amount of snow and then it all melted away last week because it was and is so warm. It's ok I guess because the members tell us that they'll have a meter of snow come January/February. I guess we'll have to wait and see where I'll be when that time comes.
Well my time is running short because I read both emails so I hope I didn't forget anything. I probably did so just ask them again next week and I'll remember. Sorry siblings I didn't respond individually. Next week! It sounds like you're all having fun and doing well in school. Keep it up. Don't fight either. The last thing I'll need when I get back is stress because of tensions. Start now and be happy and nice!!
Love you all lots!
Elder GRimm
ps We're mailing our Christmas packages today so they should get there within a month (hopefully)!
Hi family,
So I'm not really sure what the deal is but I must not have received the email you all sent to me. I got the one from Lars and the one that asked about my journal/photo album (by the way yes I am keeping a journal and right now I think I'm set with the album I have, I haven't added any pictures to it yet because I don't have any to add).
Hmm ok so I guess I'll just tell about what's going on here. So we had change calls on Saturday and, much to our surprise, neither of us are getting transferred. We won't find out who else is going where until Thursday when we receive the change information in the newsletter. It's kinda nice because we don't have to worry about packing or moving or anything and the members here are cool. Three different families have already offered to have us over for Christmas so we'll have to figure that out somehow. Since I'll be here for Christmas I'll give you our address so you can send the package straight here:
They'll put a notice slip through our mail slot and then we just go to the post office and pick it up there.
So we have a bit of snow here now. It makes the city look really cool and when we drive through the forests it's way cool because everything is covered with snow. We're going to Joensuu this weekend so I'm looking forward to that drive.
Last week we met Joulupukki! Hopefully you were forwarded the picture we took with him. If you notice we gave him a Book of Mormon and he's holding it on his lap. Rovaniemi was a sweet city. It was a lot of fun staying up there for a couple of nights. I managed to get pretty much all of my Christmas shopping done when we were at Santa's Village. It was so sweet. This morning we went to a picture print store so I can get you some pictures finally. I'll mail them out today or tomorrow. Next Monday we're planning on sending our Christmas packages home so be ready to get it in like a month or so.
So the one investigator who was about to join the Lutheran Church turned out to be not as interested as he seemed to be. But, we did meet another guy from Africa from the same neighborhood who came to church for the whole 3 hours, is coming to play volleyball with the members tomorrow and said we could teach him again. We'll see where he goes. He's lived in Kuopio for 6 years and speaks Finnish better than I do. Hopefully he'll be a good one.
We have an appointment with our blind investigator tomorrow. We decided it's going to be the ''do or die'' lesson. If she isn't willing to act on what we teach her and try and find answers to these things we can't really do anything. The sad thing is is that she loves it when we come over. Maybe if we drop her for a while and then in the future some missionaries make contact again she'll be ready. We'll see what happens tomorrow!
I've got a great streak of not getting mail going. If it continues through tomorrow it will have been one month. Maybe I'll set a new mission record!
Hey how did that activity the sister missionaries did with you turn out? The one that had you pick a few people and then after 21 days one of them would be ready? I'm curious because that's something we've been trying to get better at is encouraging the members to do missionary work. It's hard though because it's scary asking for referrals and trying to help them do the work. We basically tried the same thing that the sisters did with you on Sunday and then yesterday we tried a similar thing as well. Luckily the members here are cool so they were pretty willing to try some stuff. The hard thing is to help the members realize that we're not there just asking for names and friends, but we're there to offer them any help they think they need. We have this really good little DVD called ''Finding Happiness'' that we show them. It's only 5 minutes long and we use it sometimes to show to people who may be interested in the Gospel. It basically gets people thinking about life's purpose, family, and where they can find those answers (from us). Maybe you've seen the DVD before but yeah. That's something we've been doing lately.
Yesterday we had 2 Dinner appointments. One was in a town called Leppävirta, about 50 kilometers away. We were there to help a member do a school presentation to a class of students. That's part of the curriculum in schools here: to learn about Christian religions. The presentation basically covered everything we believe and such in a nutshell. It was fine. Afterwards we ate at the member's house with his family. It was pretty good. Then, only an hour after we left there, we had another dinner appointment. I thought I was going to throw up I ate so much food. The problem is that a)the food is good and b) they say (this is the translation) ''if it tastes good take more.'' So if you don't take more you are implying that it doesn't taste good. We survived though.
Well that's more or less all that's going on right now. I bought a sweet backpack when we were in Rovaniemi and I'm glad I did. The one I brought was great, it was just really big. This one is much narrower and designed for walking and stuff. It's a really nice one too (the brand is called ''Haglöfs'') so it'll last through the mission and it's sweet looking so I'll be using it at college as well (it's red and black so it will match well at the U).
Yup so I guess I'll hear from you all next week. Love you all lots!
Love,
ELDER GRIMM
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