Shurtz Start Two Finnish: Mission Tour and Tim and Alora arrive

At our Monday morning office meeting, we had a little farewell party for Sister Kakkinen.
Sister Lehtinen brought pulla, flowers and a card. Sister Kakkinen brought all sorts of food to share.

This was her last week at the mission office. We will miss working with her.

Elder Shurtz and President Lehtinen working together on something in the mission office.

Tuesday was Mission Tour in Helsinki. I was asked by Sister Engle to bring a salad for 30. We got up a little bit early to get the salad made before we went to the Marjaniemi building for the conference.

Sister Kite also brought salad. Sister Engle and Sister Woodland brought chili and cornbread.

Elder Flores wanted to make pulla for everyone. He did a fantastic job!

Elder Alan T. Phillips was our visiting authority.

Here is the picture with the Helsinki and Kuopio zones.

We had to drive the mission van to the conference with sister Leavitt because the Engles had our car as theirs was still in the shop. Elder Shurtz had to make a made dash to the train with the mission van full of missionaries who barely made it there in time to catch their trains. Then we had to hurry to the mission office so the Kites could take the mission van as they were heading to Oulu to open an apartment. They had just purchased a new trailer for the mission.

We took a picture of Elder Shurtz and Elder Kite by the mission van. We had to laugh because depending on which way they stood, their height difference appeared greatly exaggerated.

We got a frantic phone call from the Espoo 2 sisters. They were locked out of their apartment.

We were all grateful that we had a key and could let them into their apartment. They thought that they only had one key, but when I tried to figure out just which key they had, they discovered that they actually had two keys, they were both just on the same key ring.

It was a busy day!

Wednesday was Mission Tour in Tampere. We left shortly after 7 to drive there.

It was a beautiful morning with some interesting cloud formations.

A cute little flower I spotted outside when Elder Phillips had us walk around the building

and discuss what we had learned so far in the meeting.

There are lots of sisters in these two zones.

They wanted a picture with all the sisters including the seniors.

Here is the group picture with Tampere and Oulu zones.

We stopped at Iittala glass on the drive back. As we were leaving,

we saw this funny balloon guy who was waving his hand like he was saying come in this way.

On Thursday it was foggy as we went on our morning walk.

It seemed even more dense as we got to the field.

We couldn't really even see the forest on the other side.

There was a big piece of equipment about half way across the field.

There was new soil around all of the light poles and we thought it must have been used for that.

We noticed that the ferns were turning even more brown.

The fog was even denser as we walked out of the forest.

And even more so when we got to the school where I had taken the first picture,

but now going the other direction.

I noticed that my forehead and hair were wet. The fog seemed to be condensing on us.

Some of the plants looked like they had frost on them, but it was just the fog condensing on the plants.

By the time we got home, the toes of our shoes were wet like we had walked through wet grass,

but we had not walked through grass at all.

There was a bike with a double child seat on the back.

I wondered if it was the same bike that I had seen before that was also pulling a trailer.

I have now seen a bike like this two other times in other places not near the office.

It was Sister Kakkinen's last day serving in the mission office.

I had made a departure book for her and she was very touched by that.

Tim and Alora were supposed to arrive in Finland around 10:30, but they had a challenge getting here.

First their flight from SLC to DFW got delayed. They were not going to make their connection there, so they rerouted them to Seattle to catch a flight to Helsinki there instead.

When they got to Seattle, all of the screens were blank and they had a hard time finding their gate. Things were being handwritten on white boards,

but it seemed to be a challenge to keep things up to date.

Their flight leaving Seattle left a bit late as well,

and was scheduled to arrive in Helsinki shortly before 2:00.

That meant that we had time to go to lunch with Sister Kakkinen and Sister Leavitt.

We drove to the airport and met Tim and Alora about 2:20.

We drove to Seurasaari and went to the open air museum there.

Steve checking out the thatched roof.

It was a warm day. We were happy to find that the icecream shop was open.

5 euros for one scoop seemed a little pricey until we saw the size of the scoops!

While we were sitting eating our icecream, this little dog kept whining for icecream.

Finally his owner let him lick the cone. He sure seems to love icecream!

Picture of Tim and Alora.

We got a picture of the 4 of us on the bridge.

After dinner, we went over to the grocery store. Tim and Alora bought a pickle to try.

Tim took apart our broken fan to see if he could get it working for us.

It was supposed to rain on Friday, so we thought that going to Hameenlinna might be a good idea because we would mostly be inside touring through the castle.

By the time we came out of the castle, it had pretty much stopped raining.

We found a bench to sit on to eat our lunch. We were glad to have some "picnic blanket" type things that the Mitchells had given to us to us to sit on since the benches were a bit wet.

We walked around the castle and got a great picture.

We drove to Aulanko and went to find the tower.

We stopped at the look out. then went down the steps to the look out that we could see below us.

There was lots of moss on the side of the cement,

and on the stairs.

Tim and Alora went down even more stairs. I think there were about 300 steps!

We climbed the steps of the tower for even better views.

We were glad that the sun was mostly behind the clouds. It was hot if it came out at all.

It is such a lovely view.

We stopped at the grocery store again. Tim figured out how the carts "stick" to the escalator ramps.

We went to the International Ward on Sunday.

If you look closely, you can see Steve and I in the reflection.

After Church, I went for a walk with Tim and Alora while Steve went to choir practice.

We saw some ducks ..... bottoms up!

Such a beautiful day!

Look at how many leaves are falling in the park!

We drove to the big cemetery in Helsinki to kill some time.

We saw some beautiful flowers there.

We took Tim and Alora to the ship so they could go to Tallin.

Saturday was Sister Airto's 85th birthday. She had invited us to come to a little birthday celebration at her apartment, we were not able to be there on Saturday, so we told her we would stop by on Sunday.