Monday, April 7, 2014

Happy April 7th!

Hello everybody!

Man, pretty fun week and I've got no time! P-days are seriously the most stressful day of the week! And we have 3 appointments today! Yep, we're super busy! Well this week, for a variety of reason, I think I've gone on splits with about 6 different sisters. So that's always fun! I love meeting and learning lots of awesome things from them. Last week I mentioned that we had the goal to teach 50 lessons, and guess what? We taught 47. Pretty good eh? Don't worry, we'll keep pushing ourselves and talking with everyone! But we also didn't find any new investigators last week. Kinda a bummer... So even though we're talking with everyone, I guess it's not the right people we're talking with. So this week we're focusing a lot more on praying always and asking The Lord to place specific people in our path and not just talking to the ones who are convenient. We're prayerfully sitting by people on trams and even if they have headphones in, or a bag on the seat, or any other lame excuse like that, they still need the gospel! So yeah, I'll let y'all know how praying always goes this week.
 
Other cool things that happened:
-Interim week! We had sisters stay with us and I got to meet lots of missionaries who were in Helsinki for the week and then on Thursday I went on splits with my MTC companion Sister Howell! It was so good to serve with her again. I just love her! We got to catch up and see each other's growth these past 7 months and it was a lot of fun.
 
-GENERAL CONFERENCE! I haven't watched the Sunday afternoon session yet because of the time delay here, but I got to watch the 4 other sessions (including the General Women's broadcast) in ENGLISH! Man, I love english. And I also found out that a lot of Finns watch conference in English because they speak it really well and they'd rather hear the prophet's words in his own language. Pretty interesting if you ask me. I guess I just never thought about it. My favorite talks were basically all of them (of course) I LOVED President Monson's and Elder Scott's talk about loving everyone. And making sure that those around you, and those you're teaching, and your family and everyone knows that you love them. Such a good reminder. I also loved President Uchtdorf's about gratitude and Elder Bednar's about the Atonement. I'll definitely be studying my notes for a while and then applying it to my missionary work! I loved how Elder Anderson talked about having a family mission plan and a PMG. I sure hope you're all doing that! A family mission plan can be as simple as brainstorming ways to invite people to come in contact with the church or it could be more serious such as praying about who to give a book of mormon too. Either way, it's something we can all improve in. I just love out prophets :) 
 
-Well, P-day is super short today for 2 reasons. 1st, We (Sister Curtis and I) had President and Sister Rawlings over to our house for lunch today! We invited them a couple of weeks ago and then said yes! So they drove over and ate with us and it was so cool! As far as we've heard, no other missionaries have done that. It's pretty nerve racking to have the mission president in your home and eating the food you cook, but it was a success! We had an awesome salad, and then some sweet potato soup with bread and then passion fruit panacotta for dessert (I know, Finland is super ritzy). So that took a big chunk out of our free time, but it was so worth it! We got to talk with President Rawlings about everything going on in our areas specifically and he gave us lots of great advice and counsel.
 
Also, we're going to the FAZER CHOCOLATE FACTORY on Wednesday! Fazer is Finland's biggest chocolate company and if I've ever sent you chocolate, it's most likely from them. So yeah, we took out some P-day time and reserved it for that. And basically I'll be making Willy Wonka references all week.
 
-An investigator dropped us this week :(  Super bummer. but the text she sent to do it was just too interesting to not share. She's a Finn, but sent the text in English so that always makes it interesting too. Here it is: "Hi! I can't come to conference. Its just that if churches keep banging their own thoughts to people's heads without any belief of the holy life itself on every level, I rather be in silence. You can mention this as a reason for your bishop, why I gratefully thank you from an opportunity, but not to be baptized to the Church of Latter Saints, Mormons. Take care girls, and remember to save the whales too :)" So yeah, we had to deal with that this week and we tried calling/texting her to just see what was up, but no luck. So we'll put her on our back burner for now and get back into it when it's the Lord's timing :)
 
-We met with an awesome potential on Friday for dinner, and she invited us back tonight! She's the daughter of a member in Jyvaskyla and we're super excited her mom wants to share the gospel with her! So that was a really cool thing that happened this week too.
 
-Tonight we also have a church tour with an investigator! And hopefully she'll be coming to church this Sunday! Let me just tell you all, the work is speeding along here in Finland and I back where you all are too and I sure hope we can all keep up with the Lord's plans!
 
Well, I love and appreciate you all so much. I hope you can all feel that and realize it. You're in my prayers and I hope all is well back home. Have a most wonderful week full of sharing the gospel and I'm sure i will too! 

Rakkaudella, Sisar Crandall

p.s. pictures may come later today if I can get to a computer and not the Ipad that I'm currently on.

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