Breakthroughs with the Members

Family and Friends!

Well, not a too eventful week so this letter may be shorter but here goes!

Well, so far, today has been a wonderful week! I know it's only Monday, but this is going to be a great week! Why? Well, first off, THE SUN IS SHINING! I didn't have to wear a jacket or even a cardigan or tights or anything! And we got ice cream from the ice cream carts that we see all over the town and hung out at the park and watched the waves and the boats on the water and just enjoyed ourselves for once. It's nice to just sit down and talk with your companion and have some fun before getting to work! So yes, today has been an AMAZING day so far and I can't wait for the rest of the week!

Well, this past week went pretty well! Nothing too exciting, but we did go on splits on Wednesday! I had Sister Egan come join me from Espoo and Sisar Johnston went to be with Sisar Cribbs. We had a wonderful faith building day full of talking with everyone and teaching 8 lessons! Yep, sometimes you just need a new outlook on things to get back into it and I'm grateful Sisar Egan was able to help me out with that this week.

On Thursday we went to Suomenlinna! That's the island that we get to take a ferry to visit our less actives so that was a blast! It was Sisar Johnston's first time so we took lots of pictures. Also on Thursday, we had a Relief Society activity this week and our investigator came! It was so awesome! It was all about family history work and writing down our own stories for our posterity. And we also had a guessing game where everyone guessed who's baby picture was who's. Thanks to my mom, I had my baby picture up there as well and our investigator V also brought hers! It was a blast. Funny how these things are now fun to me. I guess that's just missionary life!

One other thing that has happened recently is that our missionary-member relationship has really improved which is awesome! We were really struggling with having one church of the missionaries and one church of the members and we weren't super unified here in our ward. But the Bishop's been awesome at helping us our with that and also I think a big part of it was Sisar Johnston. She has such a way with clicking and getting along with people. some members I've been trying to get to know for months now are our best friends! Just because Sisar Johnston goes up and talks to them and really knows how to relate to them. And it's in Finnish! So yes, She's awesome and is a huge blessing to us here. We're actually getting members to invite their friends to activities now and have us meet their friends and things are looking up in that category! 

So yesterday we were at church and ended up attending the "YSA" Sunday School. So there were about 18 of us in there and then we realized that there wasn't a teacher... So guess who gets volunteered to teach? Us! So Sisar Johnston and I get up there and end up teaching the class and doing some missionary role plays with all of them. It worked out surprisingly well. We played the "word game" where they practice mentioning things about church or the gospel with their friends and have to relate it to a certain topic. They had lots of fun and were all laughing and coming up with the most creative ways to talk about sports and the church in the same sentence. So yes, missionary work is both fun and creative and I think all these YSA are finally getting that.

So lots of fun things going on here in Finland. We're still trying to get our investigators to have solid baptismal dates and do the simple things like come to church and normal missionary struggles like that, but life is good! Favorite quote of the week; "We can learn, grow, and become like Him one consistent step at a time" I'm super grateful for my companion and all the miracles we're seeing here and I just love it. Have a wonderful week everyone :) I love and miss you all!

Sisar Crandall