Luggage and Lappeenranta

 It has been another good, but busy week!

I was communicating with Sisar Smith's mom Sunday evening and I gave her all of the information that I had about the lost luggage, including her itinerary, the lost luggage report, and a picture of Sisar Smith with her luggage as they were leaving the MTC. Her mom was worried that the bags may not even have any personal luggage ID attached since they were new bags purchased for her mission. I did find out that Sisar Smith had put the little paper luggage tags provided by the airport on them and she thought that maybe she had her dad's phone number on there. We were all praying that somehow her luggage  would be located.

Monday morning we got the word from Sisar Smith's mom that her lost luggage had been located! The missionary's dad had received a message with a picture from a man in Turkey asking if this was his luggage.

Apparently, the luggage never got retagged and it was in Antayla Turkey! But those were definitely the lost bags. Now the parents just had to convince him that they were her bags even though the tags on them were someone else. We all continued to pray.

Monday evening we went home for a quick dinner and then went back over to the office. We met with Sisar Ethington (the new missionary who was delayed) and her new companion to do a little orientation with them.  

Tuesday morning as we were walking a man approached us (quite a rare thing in Finland) and asked if we could help him. He showed us on his phone where he was trying to go. He was out walking and couldn't find his way back home. We were eventually able to figure out where he needed to go and told him we would walk with him. We learned that he was Mr. Kim, from Korea. He was here visiting his daughter. We told us that he is 75 years old! We wished that we could have called Thomas to have him help us be able to communicate a bit better with him. He wanted us to come in to his home, but we had to get back to get ready for the day. He was very kind and very grateful! He allowed us to take a picture with him.

Tuesday evening we learned that the luggage had been retagged and was being put on a plane Tuesday night to Frankfurt on a Eurowings flight. We were concerned as to what would happen to it after that as when we looked up on the delayed luggage report, nothing had changed, it still said "searching for your bags". Did Lufthansa even know about the bags? We felt a little better when Elder Shurtz was finally able to speak with someone at Lufthansa in Helsinki and they could see that the bags were going from Turkey to Frankfurt. The missionary's mom forwarded the picture sent to her of the retagged bags ready to go on to Frankfurt. We continued to pray.

On Wednesday, Elder Shurtz received new MSF (Missionary Support Funds) cards for all of the missionaries in the mission! That is a lot of credit cards. The church is switching the bank they use for the young missionaries.  Now we have to get them out to all of the missionaries.

We have been at the office late each day this week. We were not able to make it to the temple. I had been having computer problems. The problem was mostly with Outlook. One problem was that messages that come to the main mission email that are bills are automatically forwarded to the financial office email, but they weren't actually making it to Elder Shurtz's financial email. We spent quite a bit of time Wed. evening with mission global support trying to fix the issue. By the end of the evening, the problem was not fixed, in fact now I couldn't even open Outlook on my computer. I just had to use the online version. They said that someone would call me from our Europe North area in the next few days.

Thursday afternoon, I got the call that we had been waiting for about the luggage. They said that it would be delivered that evening between 5:30 and 8:30. It was delivered to the mission home. We drove over to pick it up. The Lehtinens invited us to stay for ice cream and to visit. It was so nice to spend some time visiting with them.

We thought about taking a trip to Lappeenranta on Friday, but the sisters had district council in Lahti so we decided to wait until Saturday. That was good, because late in the afternoon I got a phone call from Anna Debiasi from Frankfurt to help with my computer problems. She is the sister of Sisar Debiasi who served here when we were here before. It took quite a while but she was able to get things working again. We realized that as of today, we have been here for 1 month. The time has gone quickly!

On Saturday we drove 2 1/2 hours to Lappeenranta to give the luggage to Sisar Smith. She was very happy to have her luggage back! Many prayers were answered!

We had a couple of projects to work on in their apartment while we were there. I worked on replacing the toilet paper holder.

The sisters just moved into this apartment last week. There were elders here before. There was this interesting sign on the back of the bathroom door. 🤣

Elder Shurtz worked on the oven. We knew that the little child latch on the oven door was missing the cover and we were hoping to just remove it. We also discovered that the oven glass was falling out. Elder Shurtz was able to fix the glass but was not able to remove the child latch. He was able to make it so it didn't need to be pressed to open the oven because it gets so hot and burns if you need to press it. 

We took the sisters to lunch with us. The sisters all ordered paninis, but Elder Shurtz had this yummy baked potato and smoked salmon dish.

The sisters walked with us to the sandcastles (sand sculptures). Every year in August they have these amazing sand sculptures in Lappeenranta. 

We came here in 2019, but every year the sculptures are different. This year the theme was Once Upon a Time. Look closely to see if you can notice: Tortoise and the Hare, Aladdin, The Lord of the Rings, Alice in wonderland, the Ugly Duckling, the Three Bears and the Three Little Pigs?

On the way back, we stopped in Porvoo mostly to get out and walk around, but the Brunberg chocolate store was still open so we went in to try some samples and bought some chocolate.

We went to the international ward today to deliver some nametags and Aetna card to Elder Wight. Also, we had noticed some English copies of the Book of Mormon in the apartment in Lappeenranta. We had left them a few, but we brought the rest back with us because we are out of English copies and they are currently out of stock. Sister Bridge had ordered some before we got here, but they have not come and they are still listed as out of stock. I sent an inquiry and was told that there was a printing back log and that they would send our orders in the order they are received when they get more. We are still waiting! We were able to give 4 to the Elders and 4 to the Sisters. The sisters turned around and gave one to one of their friends as soon as they got them.

After church today, there was a ward potluck/picnic at a park just down the street from the building where the church is. It was a beautiful day for a picnic!

Elder and Sister Mitchell are a senior missionary couple who are here working with the YSA and they are also here creating videos around the country of missionaries and members. Most of these the missionaries post on facebook to help them in finding people. Elder Mitchell made a video of the picnic today. I will try to put it here in the blog. I hope it works.

Sunrise/Sunset in Espoo Finland Sunday Aug. 13, 5:28am - 9:22pm for 15 hrs 53 min of daylight.

Sunrise/Sunset in Provo Utah Sunday Aug. 13, 6:35am - 8:26pm for 13 hrs 51 min of daylight. 

We are losing  5:13 minutes of daylight a day while Provo is losing 2:16 minutes a day. 

We have over 2 1/2 hours less daylight now that we did the day that we arrived in Finland!