Helmikuu Transfers

 I seems that February just started, and it is almost 1/2 over already! How did that happen?
We went out for a walk on Monday morning and saw them raising the flag at the school.
They only fly the flag on flag holidays. February 5th was Runebergin päivä.
The birthday of Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Finnish national poet.

We went to the store on Tuesday evening. We found some Runeberg cakes marked down.
We bought some to try them. They tasted good, but I didn't like the texture (too many almond skins?).

Wednesday evening we went to the temple. This week was transfers.

Earlier in the day, a package came for a sister who was leaving to go home early Thurs. morning.

We stopped by the mission home after the temple to deliver the package.

There were 5 sisters returning home. They were glad to see me, they had lots of questions about traveling home, going through customs, weight of luggage, etc. 
After I answered all of their questions, the Lehtinens invited us to have some icecream with them.

I forgot to get any pictures, but here is a picture of the departing sisters at the airport the next day.

The Auras stopped by on Wednesday afternoon to return the things that they borrowed to use for a multicultural event. This was the first time that 

Sister Aura telling the assistants about how these thing were used during their time.

It kept getting colder as the week went on. We went out walking on Friday morning. 

It was a beautiful, extremely COLD morning!

I'm not sure if you can see it in the previous picture, 

but in February, known as helmikuu (pearl month)in Finnish, the "pearls" sparkle on the snow.

It looked like someone had sprinkled glitter all over the fallen snow. 

It also looked like there was glitter being sprinkled across the path as well. 

It really looked rather magical! (Much more so than in the pictures.

I took a closer picture where it is a bit easier to see the "pearls".

Thursday afternoon we could see out the office window that the sun was shining. 

We went out to try to walk in the sun for a little bit.

It was nice to soak up a bit of sunshine.
We could actually feel a little bit (not much, but a little bit) of warmth from the sun!

On Friday, Elder Shurtz had two missionaries contact him because they had broken fuel cards.

Saturday was new missionary orientation. We had 4 elders and 2 sisters arrive. 

We have one elder coming next Friday and 1 sister who did not get her residency permit, 

and will probably arrive next transfer. We have the trainers come to the orientation also.

We had a yummy lunch prepared by sister Lehtinen - Salmon temptation.

This is a picture of the new missionaries.

They were not able to use the temple van, so we had to take the van with the luggage, our car, the assistants' car, and the Lehtinen's car to drive missionaries to Pasila train station.

Then we are all trying to unload quickly before we get yelled at for stopping there.

Then we went home to do some p-day type things such as finish laundry, go shopping 

and clean out washing machine and shower drains.

Gross!

When we were walking from the car to the church, we noticed that there were lots of flags flying today. I think that it is the final day of the presidential election, and that is why the flags were flying.

Because it was transfers, we have 3 missionaries new to the international ward. 

I prepared temporary tags for them until their English tags get here. 

The sisters were pretty excited to get theirs.

After church we had a pot luck. We brought a potato/onion dish and apple dapple cake.

There was a lot of food, but it was ALL gone by the end.

Sunrise/sunset times Sunday 11 February 2024

Espoo Finland 8:12am to 4:49pm for 8 hrs 47 min of daylight.
(Gain 5:18 min per day - going up)

Provo Utah 7:25am to 5:57pm for 10 hrs 32 min of daylight.

(gain 2:27 min per day - going up)