Shurtz Start Two Finnish: How Low Can It Go?

On Monday, the Lehtinen's invited us to come to the mission home for pizza and a chat. It was so nice to visit with them, especially since we had not had a Monday office meeting with them for a while.
We totally forgot to take a picture until we got out to the car - so we just got a selfie.
We took some papers to be signed and some apple cake for dessert.

We have been on our mission for over 6 months now! We are 1/3 of the way through our mission!

On Wednesday, Steve went to the dentist. He has had a tooth that has been bothering him.

It had a crown in it and has had a root canal with a metal post in it. The tooth had a cracked root and they ended up having to extract it.

The Kites came by the office to pick up some packages to take to some missionaries as they travel. Sometime after they had gone, we had someone buzzing our office door. I opened it to find another tenant asking if we had problems with water in our office, or in our varasto, because there was a broken pipe or some other problem with water pouring in at the entrance to the building.

It has been so cold, I am guessing the cold is related to the problem with the water.

Luckily, there was no water in either our office or the varasto. Also, luckily we have another exit from our office that we were able to go out so we didn't have to exit under the waterfall.

We ate at the office since we were going to the temple.

As I went to eat my bread, I noticed that it looked like a little bunny.

It was nice to make it to the temple again.

We didn't make it last week because Steve had such a bad cold.

The car said it was -17 C on the way to the temple!

Steve ended up losing his watch somewhere at the temple. We still have not found it.

The temperature gauge on our car on the way home said it was -18 C. BRRRR!

(That is like 0 F.)

On Thursday, when we got to the office, there was a note on the door.

Steve just went inside, but I was trying to use google translate to see what the note said.

It said to please avoid using this entrance and instead enter through the garage.

We also got an email saying the same thing.

We didn't know how to enter through the garage, so we went exploring to see what we could figure out.

We found the bomb shelter.

We also found the garage.

It was not at all convenient for us to go to basement and through the garage since the door to our office is just around the corner from the entrance, so we just continued to use the entrance door when we needed just making sure that the outside door got shut completely (as per the email instructions).

We have a missionary who arrived in December who lost his passport somewhere/sometime between when I took a picture of it at orientation and when he needed it for his appointment with the DVV.

We have had a terrible time trying to figure out just what he needed to do about getting it replaced.

The website has much information on it, but we still had questions.

Basically you cannot talk to anyone at the embassy unless it is an emergency.

They consider a lost passport an inconvenience, but not an emergency.

We concluded that he needed to fill out a form reporting his passport as lost and he needed to fill out a new application and appear in person at the embassy to get a new passport. Of course this is complicated by the fact that he is currently serving in Rovaniemi, as far away from Helsinki as you can get as a missionary.

He would need a certified birth certificate in order to do get the new passport.

We talked to his mom and she was shipped the birth certificate by FedEx on Tuesday.

We made him an appointment at the embassy for the day before return and report. He and his companion would be coming down for that and so they would just need to come a day earlier.

I wanted so badly to just go to his apartment and look for it.

I knew that he and his companion had torn their apartment looking for it, but I really thought it might be there somewhere. His mom agreed that having a mom help look for it would be a good idea.

I also thought that maybe it could have been left in the Marjaniemi chapel after orientation.

On Thursday, I talked to the Marjaniemi elders and asked if they could go to the church and look anywhere that members might leave something that had been found.

They also offered to talk to the bishop and see if anyone may have turned something in.

I also talked to Sister Williams (senior couple serving in Rovaniemi) and asked if she would

go over to the Elders apartment and help look with "mom eyes".

Later in the day, we got the following picture.

It is too bad that his mom had already spent lots of money to get the birth certificate sent quickly, but we were able to cancel his appointment with the embassy and he will not have the big expense of paying for a new passport. (He has not even had this one for a year yet.)

We called to get the story. It turns out that while Sister Williams was there looking, he was also looking, he found it in a place he had looked at least 3 times already - in the pocket of his suit coat! We think his finding it was an answer to many prayers.

With the cold, Elder Shurtz has been extra busy this week

with dead car batteries and check engine lights.

The Elders in Hyvinkää were not able to get their car started even with a jump.

Elder Shurtz had sent them to motonet to get a battery

(he checked before sending them and it said they had one),

but when they got there, they said they didn't have a battery that would fit their car.

We could get one near us and it is a 45 minute drive to Hyvinkää,

so we decided to buy a battery and take it to them on Saturday.

It was a beautiful day for a drive!

They were able to eventually get the battery out even though they didn't have the type wrenches that would have made it much simpler. In comparing the old and new batteries, it was pretty obvious that the new one was too big and was not going to work.

So, they put the old battery back in the car.

Missionaries are not the only ones in Finland having car problems. While they were working, a tow truck came and towed the car that was in the next occupied spot over from them.

Elder Shurtz had also bought some jumper cables when he got the battery. After trying several times to get a good connection, they were able to jump the battery and get the car started. Yay!

We went to a museum in Hyvinkää while the missionaries drove around to charge the batttery and then went to a lesson.

There was this funny little bear on a bike in front of the museum.

After checking with the missionaries to make sure their car still started, we headed back home.

We stopped at motonet to return the battery that didn't fit. Elder Shurtz ended up buying one that would fit and the Elders drove to motonet to pick it up there so we could get back on the highway quickly.