General Conference--Copenhagen?

My wonderful friends and family, we hope this blog finds you all well and happy.  I know there is some sadness in my home ward right now, and certainly our prayers are with those who suffer misfortune and unhappiness.  But I know that our ward will be there for those that need comfort and help.  We love the members in the Morgan 2nd Ward and especially love and appreciate Bishop Skinner for all that he does.  No finer bishop, and bishop's wife,  in the church than Bishop and Sister Skinner.  Just think about the time, concern and attention that your own family takes, then multiply it by 135 or so families in a ward, and then you may just begin to understand what is on Bishop Skinner's "plate" each day.  Remember your bishop always in your prayers, they need all the help they can from the Lord and you as well.

Fall is here and winter is not too far behind. I know why people travel in the summer because you never know what you will run into in the fall.  It has been an unusually wet summer in Finland and in all the northern European countries, from what my limited travel experience has given me.  Lynne and I are doing very well and continue to enjoy our work in the temple.  It takes a day or two to get back in the swing of things after our two week break while the temple is being cleaned, but we are back in the groove now.

The temple was closed last Saturday for General Conference so Lynne and I decided to take one last fall weekend trip to Denmark.  The flying costs are very reasonable right now if you shop for your tickets online and also the hotels.  There are a number of low cost airlines in central and northern Europe that are very competitive with one another.  Hotels are bit pricey but if you look around, adequate lodging can be found for a reasonable price.  However, with that said, it is not cheap to visit or live in Scandinavian countries if you are used to the prices in the states.  Food is 50 to 100 percent more for many items, cars are more, gasoline is about twice as much, rent is probably like rent in the larger cities, and just in general things cost more.  Norway was especially expensive.  These countries have exceptionally high taxes on goods and services.  However, you must remember that the government provides many benefits to their citizens in the form of inexpensive health care and day-care.  If you are a good student (and pass the tests), your tuition will be paid all the way through college. I am sure you have to buy books and some other fees but if you go to medical school, for example,  you don't have to sell your soul to the company store in order to graduate.  It is the same with all professions and trades.  They try to direct their young people at a fairly young age to decide what direction they would like to go and then start training them early on to that end.

Enough of a history and economic lesson for today.  I want to share a few pictures of Copenhagen with you. We had a wonderful time visiting there.  It is an old city with a lot of castles and churches and museums. We enjoyed walking the narrow streets and eating along the way.  The city is flooded with bicycles.  I have never seen so many bikes in all my life.  I thought there were a lot in Finland, but nothing compared to Denmark.  There are bicycles lanes right along side the main roads between the road and the sidewalks.

This is the Copenhagen Temple.  It was a conference weekend so it wasn't open but it is a nice temple on a very small lot.  I am sure that the members in Denmark are extremely proud of their temple.  It is not a very far trip at all from the center of town.

Climbing the tower in the picture below was probably the most exciting and scary thing that we did while visiting Copenhagen.  This church is called the Church of our Savior and visitors are allowed, if you pay, to walk to the top.  Well, almost 300 steps later Lynne and I are on the observation part of the tower or the part you see below that is the round part with the gold railing fence around it.  Lynne and I both made it that far in the wind.  I finished by walking up the final 100+ spiral steps to the top where it gets so narrow you have to quit.  The steps are on the outside of the tower and the wind was blowing pretty hard.  Not for the faint hearted.

Picture of Lynne and me from the platform at the bottom of the spiral stairs.  If Lynne looks a little "peaked", it is because she is definitely out of her comfort zone.

And certainly no one can visit Copenhagen without going to see the statue of the Little Mermaid in the harbor.  It is not a very big statue and only a few feet off the shore in the bay.

We went to the Thorvaldsen museum where the original plaster cast of the Christus.  This museum has hundreds of works by Thorvaldsen.  He was an amazing man.

After going to the musuem, we went to the church in town where the marble statue of the Christus is located.  It is a beautiful statue and it makes the church.  This is the same statue that is in the visitors center by the temple in Salt Lake.

 You can't go to Copenhagen without visiting the Hans Christian Anderson museum and seeing statues of him.  That was an interesting place to visit.





The picture below is the Nyhavn part of town.  It is very quaint and picturesque.  Lots of shops and places to eat.

 And no one goes to Denmark without stopping by Tivoli near the train station.  I have been there before, but it hasn't changed a lot.

We really enjoyed our weekend in Denmark.  Copenhagen is a fun town with the new and old together.  Many places to visit and see.  Food was great and with the Copenhagen Card it was easy to travel around town and gain admittance to most of the museums.  The people at the hotel were very helpful and English is a common language in town.

We were able to listen to General Conference in our room at the hotel on our I-pad.  .  We caught all the sessions late in the evening and even caught the priesthood meeting on a playback.  Now I need to listen to it in Finnish for my language lessons.

For those of you that have endured reading this far will be interestesd in knowing that Lynne and I have received a new mission call to serve in the Helsinki Finland Mission Office.  We will be released from our temple mission about 3 months early in December so we can enter the MTC on 7 Jan 2013 and return to Finland for 18 months.  Why did we do this?  The honest answer is that it we felt that this is what we are suppose to do and we went forward with those promptings.  We will certainly miss our temple experiences but looking forward to future.

Hope and pray that all is well with all of you.

Love,  Rick and Lynne

Anniversary time. Sweden also.

Well, here it is the 4th of October 2012, almost 50 years to the day exactly that I arrived in Finland as a young missionary.  Oh, how much water has gone under the bridge since then. And it was just one year ago today that Lynne and I arrived to start our temple mission in Finland and that year has gone by very fast also.      The picture below is the group that I arrived with in Finland so many years ago.  The two elders (Michie and Allgaier) on the right have served in the temple here also.  This was the largest group of elders to ever hit Finland at one time back in 1962.  We spent a week at the mission home in SLC and then we were sent off to Finland to learn the language and be missionaries.  Our formal language training consisted of one week in a hotel in Helsinki going over Finnish grammar and missionary tools.  I don't know where many of these missionaries are today, but if you happen to recognize anybody, please let me know.

Oh well, I just hope that they are all doing okay after all these years.

We have had a pretty good week in the temple this week.  It is conference this weekend so we will not have any sessions this Saturday.  We are doing well and life is good.  However, it is fall around here and winter can't be too far behind.

A couple of weeks ago we went to Stockholm for the weekend.  It was a quick trip but we had a great time just walking around the city and enjoying the sights.  We went to church in Taby, north of central
Stockholm, and enjoyed the Swedish saints.

Below is a picture of a place that the early saints in Stockholm used as a meeting house until the 70s.  I think someone said that it was dedicated in the early 1905 time frame but I am not too sure.  It is nothing now but a pretty much empty building.

 If you read Swedish you can probably read what it says.  I suspect it says something about the church's name

 They still use horse patrols in the city.  This was an interesting sight.

 Always great to view the changing of the guard wherever it might be.  This is at the king's palace in Stockhom. Impressive.

 Back side of the King's palace.

 Yes, there are 7-11 stores in Stockholm and what a beautiful corner building.  I like the way the Europeans do their corners, they are not always a straight 90 degrees.

 Water front in Stockholm.  Always beautiful.  I bet the rent in these apartments that you can see is a bit more than we would prefer to pay.

Part of our Stockholm day pass was a boat tour of the town and it turned out to be really fun.  Much to see in this town.

 If you are wondering what this is, you probably guessed right.  This is a fish display and it almost made us sick to look at it.  They love fresh fish in this country and all the other Nordic countries, something that is taking us a bit to get used to.

 Mike, here is your train station in Stockholm.  I am sure that it looks familiar.

 And of course we had to shop in the Old Town and walk the streets of Gamla Stan.  Too many stores for me, but it was fun and we a good time.

Well, we have been back for a while now.  It was a great experience to visit where Lynne's forefathers and fore-mothers came from.  We don't know what an old town is in the states, but it doesn't take long to see what is meant when they talk about something being built in the 1200's.  Food was good, easy to travel around the town, fairly expensive to buy anything, not too bad to walk around, airport is a bit away from town but it was possible to use our Stockholm Card for transportation.  Hotel room worked out and the staff was great.  Our travel days are about numbered as winter approaches, but so is our pocketbook, so things even out.

It was fun to be with Gary and Kaisa while they were here for their annual visit.  They are home now and back in the thick of things there.  Our family is doing well.

Enough for now.

Rick and Lynne

Oh, one more picture.  It is out the window of our apartment.

Hakolan Tila - Haikola Place Jyväskylä

Well, our trip to Jyväskylä went well and we had a good time.  The Williamsons went with us to share the driving responsibilities.  We both were invited to visit Heidi and Juha Hintikka at their home outside of town. They live on a farm and try to do as much as they can on the farm.  During the summer they offer week farm camps for youth 8 to 12 years old.  Heidi also is an artist and does quite of few paintings for sale.  They have five boys and no daughters, the mother is alone among her men.

It was a very enjoyable visit.  We stayed overnight one night and went to church in Jyväskylä the next day and drove home Sunday afternoon.  We were able to eat Sunday dinner with Helena before we left.  Gary and Kaisa were there also, but they didn't go to the farm like we did.

Of course every farm has to have a dog and this was a big St. Bernard dog that was friendly and lazy.  We were always walking around him to get any way.  He was certainly part of the family.

Heidi is showing us her herd of cows and calves and all the other animals.  If you want some more information on the their place, go into their web site at www.hakolantila.net and browse their site.  It is in Finnish but use Google translate if you really want to know what it says.

 Heidi's art studio.  She is one busy mom.  She does many of the chores, milks the cows by hand, paints, cooks, and takes care of her husband and 5 sons.

Later in the evening we roasted hog dogs over the fire and ate thin pancakes.  It was fun.  This building is a tepee that they use for their day school camps.  The oldest boy, Heikki is doing the cooking.

We had to go take a look at the milk cows.  They must have around 20 head of livestock, chickens, goats, horses, pigs, dog, and cats.  This a picture of Heikki and his dad, Juha.  I might mention that most of the hay is put up green in sealed plastic bags about the same size as large garbage sacks.  They are air tight and basically this is silage.  In the hay fields there are all these white bags of hay that are waiting to be picked up.. The locals call these bags "kanamunia" or "chicken eggs."  The weather is normally so wet over here that it is difficult to dry hay in the field like we do at home.  They raise most of the hay themselves for their animals.

 Also, Heidi sells raw milk to the neighbors for extra money.

End of the day at the Hintikka farm.  It was a fun time and we enjoyed ourselves very much.  They were wonderful hosts and good friends.

This is the chapel in Jyväkylä.

When we arrived home they were harvesting the wheat outside of our guest house.  We have been watching it grow all summer long and now the culmination of the season.

Well, yesterday we were back in the temple doing our missionary labors.  It was a fairly quiet day but nevertheless it went well.  It was good to be back.  I didn't realize how long it had been.  Also today is our one year anniversary, the day we entered the MTC last year on this date.  It was been a very good year and we hope the same for you at home.

Our good friends the Fullers, Roger and Janice, completed their temple missions and are now back home in Utah.  We will miss them, they were very dedicate missionaries.  Great friends.

  God bless all, Rick and Lynne

And the Norway Trip.

Well after being home for a day we left again for Norway.  This time with Gary and Kaisa as traveling companions.  We flew out of Helsinki to Oslo and then on to Kirkenes which is way up north in Norway, just a few kilometers from the Russian border.  In fact we stayed in a little cabin that was only about 1/2 km from the border.  The picture below is the area around our cabin.  Notice that all the leaves have changes colors already and winter is not too far away.l  This place is so far north that it took us at least 3days on the boat south to cross the Artic Circlee.  (And I thought that was pretty far north.)

 Of course we have to have a picture of the tour group.  We had a good time together.

Is this a beautiful place?  I doubt if they say the same thing in the middle of the winter when it is 30 below zero.

As we traveled south on the boat we stopped at all kinds of little towns and burgs.  In fact, the boat stopped at about 33 ports on the way south.  Some we got off the boat and got a look-see but after a while they all look pretty much the same.

We have got to have a picture of the boat and here it is.

The captain took this big boat into some pretty close spaces.  It was cool and fun along the way.

The day we passed the Article Circle we had a fan club waving at us from the shore.

 And what would a trip to a northern country be like with out a church.  So here it is.

So, even after all this travel we are still talking to one another.  It was a fun trip.  The food was exceptionally good and even Lynne found something to eat.  It was relaxing and interesting.

Just looking from the ship across the water to the little farms along the way.  This so typical of a nice summer cruise up the coast of Norway.  The sun may not shine all the time but they are used to it and they all press on.

Finally after almost a week we arrive in Bergen, Norway to rain and a hurried ride to the airport back to Finland.  All went well, and we made it back to Helsinki and our own beds.

Did we stay home then?  Heck no, there was a couple of days remaining in our vacation so we decided to drive up to Jyväskylä and visit the Hintikka's over the weekend.  More on that next blog.

Love to all of you.  Rick and Lynne

What to do when the temple is closed? Russia trip!

Friends, every year our temple in Finland closes for a couple of weeks for major cleaning and repairs.  So, what do temple missionaries do when their temple is closed?  Well, this couple took the opportunity to travel this September and this blog post will show some pictures from our travels.

First of all we left the same day the temple closed for St. Petersburg, Russia.  We traveled by ferry from the Helsinki harbor overnight and arrived in Petersburg the next day.  In fact we arrived in time to go directly to church and meet with many of our temple friends.  They have a really nice building in St. Petersburg.  The Sunday after we got back we heard that they were made a stake, making it the second stake in Russia.  Our tour guide was made the second counselor in the stake presidency.  Anyway, we had a great time in Petersburg and were awed by many of the sight.

Picture above is the Hermitage and the Winter Palace.  Our tour guide did an excellent job of covering both of them in less than 3 hours.  There is so much in the Hermitage that you could spend the rest of your life looking at everything.

There is so much gold and silver and just so much other stuff that it is impossible to describe it all.  You have to see it for yourself.  Peter the Great played a big role in the life of Russia and they treat him like a God.

Not only precious metals but all kinds of paintings by the masters.  Is this place for real?

 We went for a walk in the evening and as we crossed the Neva River this sunset came into view with much of St. Petersburg in the background.  It is an old town but they are trying to clean it up and make it more presentable.

Of course you don't go to St. Petersburg without traveling to Peterhof with all its gold and fountains.  A beautiful place on the banks for the sea looking out over the water.

Just two old dudes in the picture with Peterhof in the background.

From there we went to Pushkin and viewed much more Russian history in the form of gold and castles.

One place that I really like was a monument and memorial in the middle of town honoring the people of Petersburg for their gallant efforts during the Nazi seige of their town back during WW2. It is almost a sacred place to visit because of all the death and destruction that it represents.

 Back in town again we visited Peter and Paul Fortress and much inside.

Driving around town we stopped and toured the Church of the Spilt Blood which was fantastic.  Not one single painting in the entire church.  There no paintings in this church at all, but there are hundreds of mosaics depicting the Saviour's life and all the bible stories that go along with it.  One of the highlights of the trip, totally awesome.

Believe it or not.  This is a large dome in the church and this is a mosaic made inside the dome.  Unreal with all the work that it took.

 Another church, St. Isaccs's Catherdral is a famous tourist place in Petersburg.  Again, fantastic Christian artwork in every form.

 Wonderful day in Russia looking down the water canal.

We enjoyed our trip to St. Petersburg very much.  The boat trip there and back was not bad and the two nights in our hotel room there went very fast and we were able to see much.  City is about 5- 6 million inhabitants and the food was really good especially the borsch.  Driving in the city is crazy and no one in their right mind would even think of renting a car.  It was great to mingle with the church members there and just look around the town.

We left there in the evening on a cruise ferry and arrived home the next morning.  We took a day off and left for Norway the next day.  That trip will be on the next blog.