A little while ago, I found this cute Moomin puzzle at the second hand store. I started putting it together. It is going to take a while. I have almost completed all of the colored (easy) parts.
The seasonal cactus at the office was almost in full bloom when we got there on Monday. So pretty!
Monday night, Elder Shurtz had a webinar with all of the missionaries
who are currently driving cars to talk about winter driving.
We have a wide range of experience when it comes to winter driving, and he wanted to make sure
that everyone is prepared and ready for the challenges that the cold, snow and ice can bring.
One of the challenges of serving a senior mission is not having all of the kitchen appliances that we are used to having. We don't have a electric food processor, but we found this little hand operated one in our apartment. We tried using it to make some falafel. It took a while, but it did OK. (It worked a lot better than the immersion blender that we tried first.)
One of the things that we love about being in the mission office is that we get to see the missionaries periodically. These Elders came in with the assistants, they were here to do splits with them.
Elder Larsen brought us some yummy cookies.
Then we got to talk to Nathan and Charlotte. I totally forgot to take a picture,
We stopped by the mission home on Thursday night to drop off a couple of packages for the
Lehtinens to take with them as they were going to do interviews. Then we went to game night.
Jazz loves to play SkyJo with us. She wanted to take a selfie with us and her and her son. She likes to bring popcorn to share for game night. The first time I went to game night was her first time making microwave popcorn by herself. It was burned. Now she does a great job and pops several bags.
We had invited the assistants to come to our apartment for dinner on Friday night. We enjoyed being able to visit with them while we ate. We forgot to take a picture until they had already walked out the door. We had them come back it so we could take a quick picture.
She also took a picture or her cards laid down, ready to play. Later she sent this to me in FB messenger.
She said, "sister I posted us, is that OK with you and elder Shurtz."
Now I could see what she did with the picture that she took of her cards.
Elder Shurtz has been trying to get rubber car mats for the cars in the mission that don't have them. He has had Sister Saarinen helping him. They were able to order a couple and then had problems. They were able to order another one on a different day. We decided that he could only order one a day. But then the next time they weren't able to order any! On Thursday, they decided to try again. We thought that it might work if they used a different email address. We also found out that Sister Saarinen has a Motonet account. She was able to reserve one set using her account at a Motonet in Espoo, that we would have to go with her to pick up and pay for. They were also able to order and pay for one using Elder Shurt'z personal email address to be picked up in Vantaa, and then using my email address they were able to order and pay for a third one from a different store to also be picked up on Vantaa.
Friday morning, the one in Espoo was ready to be picked up. One of the things that had come up at the winter driving webinar was that it would be good if the cars had little collapsible shovels in them in.
We drove to Motonet to pick up the car mats and we found some shovels there as well.
We ended up buying 8 shovels in addition to the mats. (I am carrying two shovels under my arm.)
It is important to wear some sort of reflectors when you are out walking and it is dark. The people make sure that the children and pets have reflectors so they can be easily seen. This isn't a very good picture, and it is light enough that the walking path lights had just turned off, but the lady is wearing some reflector straps and her dog has a reflective "coat" and a blinking light on his collar and leash.
Saturday was the Helsinki 3rd (international) ward temple day. We went to the temple along with many other ward members. When we got there, we also saw a bus. It had brought many people from the Tampere stake to the temple. I have never seen so many people in the Helsinki temple at one time!
I was grateful that we had made a reservation.
Afterward we went to the temple housing where there was a nice lunch that had been prepared.
I enjoy seeing the different plants that they have on the temple grounds for the different seasons.
I had a package for a missionary that was delivered by Budbee box to a locker. This was a new type of pick up for me. We knew that it was at Galleria and it looked like it was in the K-supermarket there. We went there and saw some posti lockers and then another set of lockers with several different labels. I tried it, but it didn't seem to be the right lockers. 
We kept looking. We saw a security guy and tried asking him. He was having a hard time understanding, but I showed him on my phone and he told us (in Finnish that it was upstairs). Once we had the correct lockers, it was quite simple to put in the code and the locker popped open. One more missionary package successfully picked up.
Today is Father's day in Finland.
It was also the primary program in Sacrament meeting.. That is always a favorite.
It is so fun to see all of the children from different backgrounds and nationalities.
The last song was I am a Child of God. They first sang the verse in English and the chorus in Finnish, then they sang in Chinese and we think the chorus was in a different language and then in French
and we think another language for the chorus.
It was so fun to watch the children just beam when they were singing
in the language that they are most familiar with.
We enjoyed watching some of Stephanie's kids participate in their primary program by zoom.
We got to talk to Amy's family for a while.
It was also Melissa's primary Sacrament meeting. This was Melissa's last day as primary president. She was released during the meeting (to take affect at the end of the meeting).
She got to sit next to Hyrum (Bishop Carroll) for the meeting.
but we enjoyed talking to them.
We sure enjoy being able to see our kids via zoom, or by MarcoPolo so we can feel like we are able to participate in many things even though we are so far away. Thank for including us, and for taking time to arrange your schedules to talk to us when it is convenient for you!
Sunrise/sunset Sunday 12 November 2023
Espoo Finland 8:11am to 3:58pm for 7 hrs 46 min of daylight
Provo Utah 7:08 to 5:12 for 10 hrs 4 min of daylight
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