Signs of Christmas 2012

Dear friends,

Time for a bit of an update to our mission.  November is about over and December is almost upon us. We went out to eat on Thanksgiving and the food was great and we didn't have to do the dishes this year as we have in the past.  We enjoyed Skyping with all the kids later that day or during  the week.  We worked in the temple during the day and so it was business as usual.  We did have a good time with our friends.  As we leave for Utah on the 15th of December, our time on our temple mission is very short.  However, we will be back in the mission office on about January 22nd to start our new mission for the next 18 months.  We are doing well and everything seems to be moving right along.  We would love to have more sunshine in Finland but I guess it is just a typical late fall, early winter day.  This fall has certainly been different than last fall.  Much more dreary and dark.  One good thing about the temple is that everyday is great there and the environment is always friendly.  We have been busy in the temple and also at the mission office in Helsinki while learning the ropes on the new job.  We still have to attend the MTC in Provo to start our next mission but that will be fun and we can use the office training.


We have had some fun times.  On our last P-day we went to the Fazer Chocolate Factory and had a tour of the place.  They treated us really well and allowed us to eat all the chocolate we wanted at the end of the tour.  The picture below is our tour guide.

Yesterday we went to Turku and visited a Christmas market.  It was a blast.  This picture is the fog on the countryside as were driving to Turku.

The market place is really festive as you can see.  All kinds of booths, most selling hand work that people have been doing in their homes all year long.  Christmas is the big time for selling all the handicraft "stuff.  This Christmas market was right down town, across from the main Lutheran Church in Turku.

Finns do a lot of knitting and yarn work in general.  The guy below is carding wool below on a simple carding machine.  It takes the raw wool and makes it fluffy so the lady below can make yarn from the fluffy stuff.

I had never seen anyone make yarn before and it was really interesting to see it done.



This sweet Finnish person is dying some of the hand-made yarn in a big pot.  The dye came from some type of plant that grows over here.  All the yarn colours below are naturally hand dyed.

Of course they have to make leather goods from animal skins.  This folks below are softening and stretching leather before making the final products.  Much work but very interesting.

 In another place at the market someone was using an old spinning wheel and getting the yarn ready to weave or knit.  It was most interesting to see how these things were done years ago and how they are still doing it today.

 Of course what is Christmas without Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus.  They were fun to watch.

I wasn't all the interested in many of the exhibits and booths but I really like to see what they offer to eat.  Below is a large wok filled with a great Finnish delicacy.  They are small fish called "muikku".  They cook them whole, floured and in this wok.  They really love them and eat them like crazy.  Lynne doesn't care to eat the eyes and insides so she usually doesn't eat them.  I don't mind them, especially when you can find them in the market place.

Another of course is all the sausage they like to eat.  This may have been made locally, I didn't ask.

This was a boy scout booth and the man is stirring rice cereal (mush) that was wonderful to eat.  I eat mine with cinnamon and sugar.  This cooker was cooking 150 litres of rice mush and the way it was selling, I am sure that they ran out during the day.

This picture below is a sausage cooker with an open grill.  It was great sausage and it cost 3 eruos.  Not worth the price but it tasted great.  The only problem was that the booth didn't have any Finnish mustard and that is always great with their sausage. 

We bought a few kitchen wares made from wood.  This gentleman was from Estonia and comes to Finland in the winter to sell his handmade goods.  Almost everyone at the market place speaks some English.

 




Well, here we are and that is about it.  We had a great time and enjoyed our mini-vacation with the
Williamsons to Turku.






Time to say goodbye for now.  We are well and healthy.  We are fairly busy right now with both assignments, The new temple presidency is doing really good and it is enjoyable to work with them.  It is amazing how simple and transparent the "change of command" took place.  As far as the missionaries are concerned, business as usual and we continue to do our job.

Love all of you and hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas is looking great.

Please have a wonderful holiday season and maybe we will see many of you at Christmas time in the states.

Rick and Lynne

Changing of the guard.

Today, October 30, 2012 the new temple presidency started their duties.  Last evening the unofficial passing of the "keys" took place and we had a wonderful going away celebration for the previous presidency. This is a picture of the "old" presidency.  Rotos on left in front of the door, Haikkolas in the middle, and Vorimos on the right.  The Haikkolas and the Vorimos will be missed greatly and I am sure they will have a busy time after this calling also.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

This is a picture of the whole gang at the party last night.  The presidency on the front sitting and all the missionaries standing in the back.  It was a fun time and we all enjoyed eating and visiting.  It is truly the relationships in the life that mean so much and never the things that we own or possess.  Our worldly possessions should be expended in helping others enjoy life and doing what we can for them.

This is a picture of the new temple presidency.  Lehtimäkis on the left, Rotos in the middle, and Marjanens on the right.

And to finish things up I have put in a fall picture of the temple.  Folks, it really is a beautiful temple.  The Finnish members are, and should be very proud to have this building in their country.

Oh, and by the way.  We have a new grandson, Ammon, born to Ryan and Micaela yesterday.  Both are doing fine.  Hope that all of you are doing well.  We love our mission, the temple, and the people.

Rick and Lynne

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