Life in general

May 20, 2013 and all is well. Weather is really nice, a bit cold this evening but great on our walk. Lynne was in charge of feeding 38 elders and sisters today and did a mighty fine job.  It takes a lot of planning and work to feed that many.  She only has to repeat herself 3 more times this week.  Elder and Sister Walsh from the temple were there to help, along with Sister Locke, so everything went quite well.  We try to find as much help as we can for the large groups.

Leadership training week always occurs 6 weeks after the new missionaries arrive in Finland.  It is 3 full days of pretty intensive training given by the mission president and his assistants.  The 6 week-in-the-field missionaries and their current companions attend the training.  Lynne is in charge of preparing lunch for them.  The 4th day of the training is language school for the new missionaries.  Their older companions go to the temple while their junior companions attend language school.  This being the case, the number she feeds on Thursday is usually a third less.  It is always fun to visit with the missionaries and see how they are doing.  We have a great bunch of young men and women serving in Finland.

Thought I would include a couple of pictures along our walk today.  It just seemed to turn green all at once here.  This first picture is look out over the Helsinki Bay from our park.

The next one is a glance at the birds that inhabit the park.  Lynne doesn't venture very close

to the birds. In that respect, she hasn't change much since she was a young girl.  One last picture of an old tree that we found in the park.  Lynne thought it was pretty and clicked a shot.

We hope and pray that all of you at home are doing well and life is moving on in your life.  We are doing very well and beginning already to realize how quickly time passes.  We thank for your support and looking after our family.

Well, it is late in the East side of the world and I must go to bed.  God bless all of you.

Love,

Rick and Lynne

May Day 2013

Well friends and family it is time to let you know that we are still alive and well in the heart of Helsinki, Finland.  I think we told you earlier that we have moved from our commute each day to an apartment that is a 5 minute walk to the office.  That is really nice, except now we are too close and convenient for many missionaries to "need" something at all hours of the day.  We really don't  mind too much, we enjoy working with them.
As far as the mission goes, everything continues to move on.  Last week was another busy week for Lynne and the rest of us as she had to fix lunch four days in a row for about 26 missionaries and office staff.  Fortunately we were able to recruit some of our temple friends to come and help.  Brother and Sister Ojala came Monday and Sister Ojala prepared salmon soup which was outstanding. It was a big hit with the missionaries and it was fun to have the Ojalas around to help and visit.  Also all week Elder and Sister Thornock from the temple came and helped in the morning, but they had to leave by noon to get to their temple shift. They were a great help.  Lynne and Sister Locke ended up doing the lion's share of the preparation, cooking, and cleaning.  Lynne does a great job, but for almost an entire week it takes her away from her other duties and then she has to play catch-up.  The next round of meals is the end of the month when the same thing happens again.

This past week in Finland was Vappu Day or May Day and it is big, big holiday here.  At 6 pm the evening of May Day a large crowd assembles in downtown Helsinki and a high school graduation cap is placed on a statue of an unclad marble lady.  As you can see from the pictures below, it is quite a celebration.  Also it is also the time when everyone, and I mean almost everyone, has to drink.  This goes on for a couple of days.  To the left is a picture of the crew that puts the hat on the statue.  There are cranes all over as you can see in the second picture.

 

Finally the students place the white hat on the statue and May Day is officially started in Helsinki.  I think that the same event is carried out in many of the cities in Finland the same way.  Partying and drinking continues all night after that and the next day (May 1) giant crowds assemble themselves in a large park down by the sea, right next to where we live.








Finally a picture of the statue with the white hat on the stone lady's head.  Everyone wears the while hat as you will see later in some pictures. Notice the Swedish flag to the right in the picture.  I think their embassy is in the background.









This picture shows the picnic crowds in Kaivopuisto Park.  We live about 2 blocks from the park now.

Even the young kids come out and celebrate the day.  It was really a fun time to see so many families out enjoying the weather.  It was a bit cold but a beautiful day. They dress their kids very warmly as you can see in this picture.

Another picture of the park and folks on May Day.

Well, it is Sunday morning and we are off to church.  We are still very busy and haven't had a lot of play time.  We did have stop by and visit some old friends from the temple yesterday and had a great time eating and talking with the Vorimos.  They are always so kind and caring.

 I think that the storm has finally settled after the last group of missionaries arrived and have arrived in their assigned locations.  We ended up finding and furnishing about 10 new apartments during the last month or so, and closed about 4 apartments.  The next group of missionaries comes in June, so we get to go through the same process again.  Also we have started to receive some of the younger missionaries and also missionaries that are in the MTC for only 9 weeks compared to the longer 12 weeks before.  We receive new missionaries every 9 weeks now, so now in the MTC there is only one group of Finnish missionaries being trained at the same time.  Before, when we received missionaries every 6 weeks, and they were there for 12 weeks, there were always two separate groups at the MTC at the same time.

Hope all is well with each of you.  We are busy but we are happy to be here and involved with missionary work.  It is a good feeling to know that you are needed.

Love, Rick and Lynne

The Missionaries are coming, the missionaries are coming.

Well, we received 14 brand new missionaries today and none went home for a total of 7 new companionships.  It was a very busy day, but it went well and it was so great to see all the new young Elders and Sisters come to Finland.  This is the first group of 9 week MTC missionaries and they seemed to speak pretty good Finnish.

Last Sunday we went to Kerava to church and visit with some good friends.  It was a fun day and we enjoyed dinner with our friends.  We are enjoying living right in the heart of Helsinki, except we miss shopping for groceries at our favorite supermarket.  However, it is nice not to have to drive so far to work.

We are happy with our next stake presidency.  President Skinner and his counselors will do a great job.  Bishop Payne will make a great bishop in our ward along with David Rich and Blaine Freestone.  Really not much more to report as we are usually so busy at the office there is not a lot of time to do much more.  Tomorrow we are taking some Elders shopping to pick up the items that we missed when we got their apartment ready before they came.  Costs the church much money to rent and furnish all these apartments.  And since I pay the bills in this mission, I know exactly how much it is.

Hope all is well with all of you.  God bless and keep you.

Love,

Rick and Lynne

Easter and mämmi

Well it is Easter afternoon in Finland and all is well.  We had the sister missionaries over for dinner this evening.  We attended church in Haaga Ward today and came home and got ready for dinner .  Pretty much sounds the same as when we were home. Easter is a very big holiday around here.  Friday on Good Friday nobody moves.  Everything is closed and it was a good day to go to work as it was quiet in the office. Saturday was a regular day, Sunday is a holiday and so is Monday.  Tuesday before we can get anything done at all.  The traffic was non-existent and so the trip there and back went very good.  It was Fast Sunday in Finland today so we had testimony meeting that was really nice and spiritual.

Below is a picture of the sister today as I was very outnumbered at the dinner table.  From left to right is Sister London from Morgan, Sister Kunz from Lake Town Bear Lake area, Sister Glasser from Bountiful, and Sister Locke from California.  Lynne fixed a very nice dinner and the dessert was outstanding.

In fact, here is a picture of the dessert.  One is a blueberry cheesecake, which was out of this world, and the other is a traditional Finnish Easter dessert called "mämmi".  It is pronounced with a short "a" up front like "mam" short for "madam" and the mi is pronounced like "me."  It is basically a rye type cereal with a a whole lot of molasses and other stuff.  It is eaten with cream and people like it or hate it.  At first I didn't like it but it   isn't as bad now.  Certainly the blueberry cheesecake was more popular but we all tasted the mämmi and I hope no one has to go to the hospital this evening.  The freezers  in the supper markets are loaded with this stuff just before Easter, so I guess many folks eat it.

Anyway, we had a great meal and all were happy.  

Work is as busy as ever.  Biggest task right now is to find enough apartments for the new missionaries coming in a couple of weeks.  Finding them is just the beginning as we need furnishings for every apartment.  I can't imagine how much money the church has to be spending on the influx of new missionaries.  But there

 is plenty of room here for more missionaries as I sure there is room all over the world.  I keep forgetting that my job is not to find more apartments, it is to spread the gospel and finding apartments is secondary to that.  We appreciate Sister Locke here with us now.  She is a big help. She found an apartment in Helsinki near the office, so she will be moving this week.  We will be moving in a couple of weeks, after we get the new set of missionaries in place.

I hope all of you are doing well and spring is in the air there.  Still pretty cold here but the days are longer, so spring can't be too far behind.  Our kids seem to all be doing pretty good, so not too much to report there.

President Porter made it possible for us to watch stake conference a couple of weeks ago.  It was so fun to hear the folks from home and especially to see our wonderful Bishop sustained as stake president.  It was not a big surprise for Lynne and me as we almost know for sure who it would be.  I think many times the spirit gives us the inside track on certain things in that occur in our lives.    

It is wonderful to be here, especially as spring is starting to burst forth.  We are doing okay.  Love to all of you.

Lynne and Rick

Spring may be coming????

Hello friends and neighbors from the northland.  It is March 24, 2013 in Finland and the sun has been shinning all day even though the temperature hasn't been above 0 degrees centigrade.  Church went very well today and we had a good time visiting with the members in Marjaniemi Ward in eastern Helsinki. Everything in the office is as busy as ever but I think we are learning a few things and getting a little faster at it.  We do have some more help, Sister Jill Locke from California has been here a couple of weeks already and she is a big help.  We keep thinking that maybe we will have some free time one of these days but not true so far.

But before we get too involved with the details, look at the owl below.  We saw it today coming back from church just outside our apartment.  Pretty cool isn't it.  A Finnish gentleman pointed it out to us as we were walking by it.  I just about missed it because I wasn't familiar with the finnish word for owl (pöllö).  Now I know it and will probably not forget it.

Anyway we have been really busy but again it is fun to work with the young elders and sisters and enjoy their spirit and youth.  I had forgotten what it was like to have teenagers around to work with , but with the new age reductions, we will be getting them young.  This last week we had 7 missionaries go home and 7 new ones arrive.  It is a continual process and just keeps going.  The world of missionary work is one continual round.

I thought you might want to see a picture of one of the hardest working missionaries in Finland.  Well, here she is.  No one works any harder than Sister London each day at the office.

Our good Russian friends gave us a cookie the other day.  It was really cute of them to think of us.

We managed to get back to the temple yesterday and was it ever busy.  Both sessions were completely full and then some.  There were baptisms and sealings and everything else going on at the same time.  It was a wonderful day to be there and still be a temple worker.

We finally found a new apartment downtown Helsinki.  It is right near the office and we allow us to get there fairly fast and won't have to worry about the winter driving and the 45 minutes to an hour it takes us to get to work each morning.  The new apartment isn't nearly as nice and new as this one but it is okay and we are happy with it.  We just have to move and that is always a royal pain.

Hope you are doing well at home.  We are fine and getting along great.  There are many blessings that come from serving on a mission.  It really is a wonderful time of our lives.

Love to all,  Rick and Lynne

Finland again

Well, we have just left the town of Oulu in Northern Finland and I am writing this blog session while on the train heading south to Helsinki.  We arrived in Oulu yesterday coming north with a new couple that has been assigned here.  Lynne and Sister Johnson rode the train north yesterday and Brother Johnson and I drove their car.  It was about a 7-8 hours drive and it went very well.  The roads were clear but we saw little of the sunshine.  However today in church the sun came out and it was a beautiful day.  We enjoyed our visit to the Oulu branch today, especially meeting many of the members that had been to the temple.  We will get home this evening about midnight and start another day tomorrow.  The train is really a nice way to travel and allows me some time to write this blog and Lynne to do some crocheting.

Anyway, back to catch up on our lives since we came back to Finland.  The MTC was a great experience again and we enjoyed being their again.  We met another new set of missionary friends and we hear from them all over the world.  The MTC was really crowded with all the new missionaries and the lunch room was a zoo.  We managed to meet a number of people that we knew previously.  We met some of our friends from Finland that were in the MTC and some of our other friends.  The young missionaries were again outstanding in teaching us and working with us.  The week of office training went well.  We stayed at the Provo Marriott while there, which is really hard to deal with. All in all, the MTC went much more relaxed than the first time.

We left for Finland on the 21st of January and arrived the 22nd of January.  The plane trip was as long this time as the first time, but we made it just fine.  I don't know why it happens to me but I am always sitting behind someone that likes to recline their seat.  And if you know how little room British Airways has between seats, you will understand what I am talking about.   We arrived a couple of hours late in Helsinki, but the mission president and his wife were there to greet us and all went well.  We had a nice dinner with them that evening and then we went to our apartment, tried to sleep off the jet lag and then Elder Larsen and Elder Edwards picked us up the next morning at noon and we went to work learning our duties.  Since then it has been a madhouse of activity.

The week after we arrived Lynne and I and the office missionaries cooked lunch for 23 people the next 4 days.  I guess this is one of the "other duties as assigned" part of our calling.  It went well and we were able to meet and greet many missionaries.  The week after that were transfers, new missionaries arriving and old missionaries going home.  Lynne must have printed a thousand pages of written material for the president to give to the missionaries.  I have been busy learning all the financial in and outs, plus fleet management and apartments for the missionaries.  Never a dull moment at our house.  We have had the missionaries to dinners and  is a full time job just keeping them filled up.  Also we have been to dinner several times and had senior couples over a few times.  Our apartment is really nice but a bit far from the office.  Some days it takes us almost an hour to drive to work and other days maybe 20 minutes.  But we are doing fine in the office and looking forward to having a new sister arrive in a couple of weeks to help us.  Elder Larsen and Elder Edwards have been outstanding in helping us at the office.  They are wonderful young men and Lynne has adopted them as two new sons.  I think that we will have many new sons and daughters before we get home.  I just hope the food budget can hold up.  Below is a picture of the elders after Lynne fed them on Elder Larsen's birthday.  There was actually a bit of food left on the table when they got through but she sent it home with them.

We love being back "in-country" with the missionaries and the Finns.  The transition from a temple mission to an office mission has been pretty routine except that we have been so busy learning our new tasks we haven't had much time to "smell the roses."  However we did get to the temple on one Saturday do our temple worker duties.  We hope to do that more often after we get our office duties down.

Sorry this blog was interrupted with a discussion on the train with a passenger and his son.  He is a talk show writer and host and we had a wonderful talk about the church and other interesting subject.  Finns are very quiet but once you break the ice, they usually will talk to you.  But the "ice" can be very thick at times.

Here we are in front of the church in Oulu last Sunday with Brother and Sister Johnson.  They are the senior couple now in Oulu and will be working with the young adults.  Great people.

It is now a week later, Sunday morning.  Weeks just fly by with all the activity in the office.  This week was the end of the month so I had many apartments to pay for and many other duties.  All the missions in the church are replacing the debit cards that the missionaries use, and we starting replacing ours about a week ago.  They have not been loaded yet with funds from the church, that will happen the 1st of April.  But their old cards will be closed the middle of March and they will have to cash them to pay for their expenses the rest of the month.  It is going to prove to be a very interesting month in the debit card business.

Yesterday we went with our friends the Williamsons to Lappeenranta, Savonlinna, and Mikkeli.  It was quick trip as the Williamsons are tying to catch a few trips to places they haven't been.  Their mission is ending the 29th of this month and they will be heading home.

 This is a picture of our good friends the Ojalas from Mikkeli.  We stopped by in the afternoon and they served us a wonderful dinner.  Sister Ojala is such a wonderful cook and they always make us feel so at-home.  They worked in the temple with us before and we became really good friends.

Can't go to Savonlinna without taking a picture of the castle there.  This is what it looks like in the winter and believe me, it was winter there yesterday.  It was cold the entire time on the road yesterday but it was a really nice day and Finland is beautiful, even in the winter, if the sun comes out.

 Thought you might like to see what they do around here when there is too much snow. They are shovelling off the roof of the building across from our office.  The second picture gives you a bit more perspective of the operation.  The have a spotter on the ground that watches for people walking by so they don't get injured with the falling snow.  Big business here in Helsinki removing excess snow.

The blue truck is hauling snow out of the city to the sea.  Can you imagine the cost.





Well, I had better quit now and go to church. It looks like we had another 4-6 inches of snow last night outside the apartment.  Believe me they do have spring and summer here, it is just hard to think about it now.

We love being here with our new assigment and duties.

We hope that all of you are doing well and healthy.  Mark and Jessica had their baby boy this past week and they are doing really well. The pictures are on their blog.  We were very saddened when told of the death of Jeanine London, our cousin Terry's wife.

One thing in life is for sure.  Life goes on when you are on a mission, just as it does when you are home.  Message is still the same, if there is something that you have been wanting to do in life, best get started right now because the beginning of any journey in life has to be a step in that direction.

Love you all.  God bless you all.   Rick and Lynne

Home for the Holidays

We are still behind the eight ball but at least I am trying to catch up.  We left Finland on the 15th of December and arrived in Atlanta on the evening of that day.  We drove to Athens and visited with Heather, Mike and Anders for a couple of days.  The flight across the ocean was a "butt buster" but what else is new. I will never appreciate that flight.  Anyway after a long layover in London we arrived in Atlanta, picked up a rental car and drove to Athens.  We arrived at Heather's about 11 pm that evening.  It was fun to be with them for a couple of days.  Anders and I got to ride on the train at the mall for free.  I think that they man thought we were destitute so he just let us ride.

Poor little kid, he just couldn't last any longer.

We left Athens the evening of the 17th arrived in Utah about 9 pm that evening.  Phill and Becca were there to pick us up.  It was wonderful experience to visit with the kids again.  Thanks to Skype they recognized us and we attached very quickly.  It was a hectic 5 weeks at home with all the appointments and visits and shopping and whatever it took to get ready to come back.  However, we did manage to get together with family and friends and had a great time.

We had a fun dinner with Lynne's family.  Much laughter and merriment that evening.  Just good to be together.  We also had dinner with the Hopkins and the Bohmans and our Air Force friends, Evans and Shepards.  We visited many people and just had a great time.

 Ryan go some tickets to the Jazz game so I went with him, Mark, Jessica, and Parker and we watched from the AT&T suite-really it is the only way to watch a professional basketball game.  We had a fun time watching the Jazz loose again and eating a bunch of food prepared for the the suite.   Parker and Ryan had to go down on the front row and watch a little closer.

 One of the days there we went to the shooting range and fired a round or two.  Most of the pop cans on the hill were "murdered" many times.  As you can see from the photo there is a sun in the heavens above, which we see very little of in Finland.  It has been a very long winter here.

Of course Christmas Eve was at our house.  Lynne said that there were 21 people staying overnight at the house in Morgan.  I believe it, hardly standing room, let alone a place to sit down.  It was a super time to be home and watch the kids come down the stairs into the famly room and receive their Christmas presents.  As usual the living room was a mess but that is what it is for anyway.   Lynne and I received a very nice camera from the kids which were are now using in the office.  All in all, Christmas was a very satisfying time to be with the family again.

Of course we couldn't have Christmas without our annual dinner at the ABC Mandarin and listening to Jonathan play his "instruments."  He is always so nice and friendly.  I think that I ate my favorite Hawaiian chicken dinner and had an opportunity to visit quite a while with Jonathan.  He is doing well and was surprised with the candy bar we took him from Finland.

We did find time to see a couple of movies while we were home, Lincoln and Les Miserables were both enjoyable movies and it was good to get out for a while.

We had the opportunity to speak in church while were home and thank goodness that is over.  We didn't have to speak again when we left so that was great.  President Mark Walker released us from our first mission and did a wonderful job.  It was a memorable occasion.  A couple of weeks later President Porter and the Bishop stopped by and we were set apart for our second mission to Finland.  As usual, President Porter always does such a great job of setting missionaries apart.

One of the exciting events that took place during our visit was the blessing of Ryan's and Micaela's new son, Ammon.  We did it in Ryan's ward and had a wonderful dinner afterwards at Ryan's.  Later on we celebrated Parker's birthday a few days early so we could be there.  He turned 14 on the 24th of January and is now a teacher.  With the new missionary age, he will be able to go a mission in 4 years if all goes well.

All in all, it was a good time to go home and visit with the family.  We had to fix a few things around the house but it was in good condition and Bec and Phill have done a great job of keeping it up.  Since it was winter I didn't have a lot of opportunities to get out and do much but I did manage to start up the Model A and drive around town a bit.  We did go look at a potential new home for Bec and Phill, really nice if that is what they want.

Morgan was about the same.  Not much has happened except we have quite a few new members in our ward, which is a blessing.  The ward seemed to be doing very well.  Bishop Skinner is a great leader and all the members seemed to be doing well.  

We are needed much more here than at home.