Busy Week Boring Blog

 There are only a few of photos from this past week.
We have been busy, but haven't thought about taking pictures I guess. 

I have several pictures of the fog in the mornings. It is quite fascinating to me. 

On Monday, as we came out of the forest, we could see the sun peaking out between the buildings in addition to the fog. We thought that this might be the last time we see the sun on our morning walks.

We are getting ready for transfers and for the missionaries who are going home 

and those who are coming. Transfers are this week.

I have been preparing departure books for those returning home, and arrival packets for those who are coming. We have 11 missionaries leaving, plus 1 going to the mission he was called to next week.

 and 13 missionaries coming from the MTC this week. So these are fairly large groups.

On one of our walks, I saw some flowers that had now developed seed pods. 

They were especially interesting to look at with the morning dew.

This week Lidl had some green grapes on sale. Some of them are quite large. When I held this one, 

I thought that it was about the same size as our mini peaches that we got on our tree last year.

Elder Shurtz got a phone call from an Elder about a lost apartment key. 

We learned that this type of key has a code on it that will identify it. Interesting.

On our walk on Friday, the fog was just concentrated it one big strip across the walking path. 

For breakfast on Saturday, Elder Shurtz made a german apple pancake. 

Basically a german pancake with apples, sugar and cinnamon.

It was really good!

We spent a good part of the day on Saturday cleaning our apartment and doing the laundry. 

We had invited some sisters to join us to watch General Conference. 

We also invited them to have dinner with us beforehand, 

so we were also fixing the dinner and I made monster cookies.

We enjoyed the Saturday night version of the Saturday morning session of General Conference, 

which we watched live at 7:00pm Finland time.

Today we have enjoyed watching the Saturday afternoon and the Saturday evening sessions. 

We did not to watch those ones live since they were at 11:00pm and 3:00am and we were asleep.

We will watch the Sunday morning session live at 7:00pm tonight, 

and will have to watch the afternoon session sometime tomorrow.

We have enjoyed listening to General Conference. 

It has made me feel good for being here as a missionary. 

But at the same time, it has brought me feelings of being somewhat homesick. 

We have noticed each day as we come home from the mission office that it is getting darker each day. When we drove the sisters home Saturday night just after 9:00, we noticed how dark it was and commented how it was not too long ago that it was still very light at 9:00.

How did it get to be October already!

At the store last night, we noticed big displays of the cardboard Christmas countdown calendars 

with candy in them. Also a display with Fazer holiday candy. 

Sunday 1 Oct 2023

Sunrise/sunset Espoo Finland 7:26am to 6:54pm for 11 hrs 29 min of daylight

Sunrise/sunset Provo Utah 7:22am to 7:09pm for 11 hrs 46 min of daylight

We now have less daylight than in Utah and we are continuing to loose it quite rapidly.