Shurtz Start Two Finnish: Zone Conferences and Pulla Lesson

Our elevator was not working for several days.
We actually have 2 elevators in the building. One is more like a service elevator that you can use when moving things in and out of apartments. It is the closest to our apartment. It does not stop on the first floor, so we usually only use it when we are going to the garage which is like the basement of the building, or if we are going up to the varasto (storage room).
The other elevator is nicer and has one wall of glass and it is the one we usually take because it stops on the first floor where we have a nice lobby and it is where the front doors are.
The nicer elevator was the one not working. Sometimes we walk down, but the stairs are a circular staircase and you get a bit dizzy walking down from the 5th floor.
We don't like walking up all the stairs especially at the end of the day, so we would walk up one flight of stairs and then go to the other elevator and take it to the 5th floor.
On Monday, when we were on the 2nd floor to go to the other elevator, I noticed a fun wreath on one of the doors. Of course, I had to get a picture of it.

The temperatures this week have mostly hovered right near freezing.

Just above during the day and sometimes just under at night.

That means that things are beginning to thaw, but can also be very slippery.

They keep putting the gravel down so it is not so slippery, but there are many places where it is still quite slippery so we often wear our spikes when we go walking in the mornings.

I had to take a picture of the gravel on the icey walkways.

There are also lots of big piles of very dirty, gravely snow and ice all over the place.
They keep moving the piles periodically so they can keep the roads and walking paths clear.

This week was zone conferences.

This is the first time since we have been here that they have held 4 zone conferences.

Our first one was actually mission tour and there were only 2 conferences.

Then we only had 3 zones, so there were 3 conferences. In December, we were back to 4 zones, but there were only 2 conferences held for the Christmas conferences.

The Lehtinen's asked us to come to the Helsinki and Tampere zone conferences (held on Thursday and Friday), so we did not attend the ones held in Kuopio and Oulu (on Monday and Tuesday).

I am including the pictures from those conferences just for my records.

Kuopio Zone

Oulu Zone

In Tampere, Elder Shurtz had to help a Sister set up a new phone. Her phone had stopped working.

Tampere Zone

It was nice that much of our drive to Tampere was actually in the light.

There is a section where there are lots of frozen "waterfalls" on the rock cliffs at the side of the road. Some of them are a beautiful blue color and some are amore ugly brown.

This picture doesn't capture that very well, but it is the only one that wasn't super blurry.

Helsinki Zone

We tried to make a carrot cake breakfast bar, but it said to us a food processor. We have a little "food processor" that is powered by a pull string. We knew that it would not work for this, so we tried using the blender. It was somewhat successful.

On Saturday we went to the Kite's so Sister Kite could teach me to make pulla.

It was so fun to spend some time with them

and it was nice to learn how to make some different types of pulla.

Yummy!

Sister Kite had this cute little stained glass candle holder that was hanging in her window.

This morning before Church started, a sister came and asked Elder Shurtz for some help. She had a map on the wall and the tape was starting to pull off a bit and she could not reach it to fix it. We were asking about all the dots on the map and she had us put a dot on there, showing where we were from. This map represents where various members of the ward are from. There are many more who haven't put a dot on the map yet, but if you zoom in on this picture it gives an idea of just how international the ward really is.