Home Stretch

Well, it is the 7th of June and we have exactly one month left on our mission and about 3 month's worth of work.  But, keeping busy is what it is all about.  Our replacements, Elder Richard and Sister Eliisa Smith, arrived last Saturday and are beginning to pick up on their duties as the new office couple.  They have been fighting jet-lag all week, but come next week they will be in full swing of duties in the office.  This week has been Interim Training for 3 days and language school on Thursday, so we have had a few missionaries around the office.  You don't realize how often you are interrupted until you try to get a simple task done and it is not done at the end of the day, whatever time that may be.

But life is good and summer is here.  Hasn't really been that hot yet but the days are certainly much longer and sleeping at night without darkness is interesting.  I will try to throw a few pictures into this blog just to show you that we are still alive and kicking.

 Couple of Sundays ago we went to church in Kerava and visited with some good friends. This is outside their church.


Below is the church in Helsinki built right into a large rock area.  It is a beautiful building and the acoustics are great.  It is a very impressive place.

This picture was taken at 11:30 PM out front of the office.  Notice the night lamps are burning but you can still see the ocean at the end of the street.

We thought of Uncle Dave Rich while we watched this parade today in Helsinki.  All the fire departments around Helsinki got together and had a big parade.  Most of the equipment is modern and very practical.

Below two young lovers standing near the harbor in Helsinki.

 

 

They still run this old trolley downtown Helsinki for the tourists I think.  It is fun to watch and people like to ride it.

Below is a picture of some friends at the Helsinki Open Market.  My hat is a gift from my good Greek friend.

One last trip to Tallinn before we go home.  This is a picture of Lynne and our guide in Tallinn.  We had a really fun time there again. 

 

 

Well, that is about the story for us from Finland.  We just got back from a fun walk around Helsinki.  The city has become very familiar to us and we enjoy the walk after sitting in the office all day.  We are going to miss the open markets and just walking the streets.  It is a very clean and safe city with thousands of shops. We are certainly going to miss our Finnish friends and members of the church.  Working with the missionaries is always fun and rewarding to our lives.   

 

Missionary work is going well in Finland.  Not a lot of baptisms but that has been the story here for years.  The members are great and work hard to keep their small wards and branches going.  The missionaries are dedicated and obedient and work hard trying to spread the gospel. 

 

President and Sister Rawlings will complete their misson the end of this month and President and Sister Watson will be on the job the first of July.  I have gained much respect for the calling of a mision president.  It is kind of like having a super large family with over a 100 children.  Just think about that for second and then think of all the expectations that missionaries have and trying to help them all achieve their expectations.  Someone told me once that being a mission president like being a bishop to about 10 wards at the same time.  Always somethings going on that needs their attention.

 

We will be back to Utah on the 7th of July and I guess we have been asked to speak in church on the 27th of July in Morgan. Hope all is well with you and your familes. God bless!

 

Love,

 

Rick and Lynne

Spring is here (almost)!

Well, my good friends it is time to update the world on the adventures of Rick and Lynne London.  But first the weather.  Today sunny and blue skies, a bit cold, but we do live in Finland.  Yesterday was a normal, dismal Helsinki day.  It rained, snowed, sunshined, and stayed pretty much typical all day.  It must be spring, however, all the street washers are out cleaning off the winter crud and getting ready for warmer weather.  It really was a very mild winter for which I am very thankful.

Well, I guess I had better add a few pictures to the blog.  The one below is the harbor this week taken in the evening.  Still pretty cold, but beautiful.

Now, this is a pair of dudes.  This is in front of a steak house downtown Helsinki. 

Typical intersection in Helsinki.  This is called Five Corners not far from us.

  Notice how they cover their buildings when they work on them.  They can work in any weather.







Yes there are barber chairs in Helsinki.  Not many, but they are here. 

 

 

 

Just a picture of the corner store.

You can clean a lot of streets with a broom like this.

 
 

Just a couple of icebreakers to help in the harbor this winter.  It was very mild winter and they didn't get much work this year.  See the ice in the water, but not too thick.

 

 This is a statue in the Helsinki Harbor, does it remind you someone you might know?

Above is another beautiful sunset.  Below is our good Greek friend at the open market in Helsinki.  Look up George if you are ever in need of a fur hat while visiting in Helsinki.

We are doing well and staying busy.  The missionaries are very busy and doing a great job.  We have enjoyed very much listening to conference live.  Wonderful talks and many things to ponder over, especially as we near the end of our 2nd mission in Finland.  We love the work and gospel.  May the good Lord bless all of you and watch over your families. 

Love,  Rick and Lynne

Into March

Well, it seems as our mission gets closer to the end, the more routine everything appears.  We are still very busy most of the time, but it is often a repeat of what we have done before.  Certainly the missionaries come up with different problems all the time but nothing much seems too unusual to us now that would have a year ago. Like last week, we put out a cookbook for all the young missionaries and it has taken quite a bit of time, but again all in a day's work. In fact, here is a picture of the front cover.

However, I had to include sample of one of the recipes for you.  Some of them are pretty amusing to read but I am sure they all taste good.  It took a bit of time getting them all into the proper form so we could print them and put them together.  All the office staff put in time on this project.

One Saturday morning we walked downtown to a Finnish military formation where the tradition of swearing allegiance to Finland was done.  Every year a large group of soldiers assemble and publicly swear and renew they allegiance to their country.  It was very impressive.  I didn't get much out of the talks that were given but very impressed with the crowd and their support for the military. This picture was taken from the steps of the large White Church downtown Helsinki and it rained the whole time we were there, but that didn't seem to stop anyone.

Earlier in February we went to church in Kouvola and then after Richard and Eliisa Smith invited us to their home in Kotka.  The Smiths have been called to replace us in the office this coming June-July.  We had a very nice dinner and visit in their home in the country.  In this picture from left to right is Sister Hunsaker, Sister Locke, Brother and Sister Smith, and Sister  Airto, our Finnish missionary in the office.  We had a very nice time and the Smiths were great hosts.  BTW, Brother Smith was my first language instructor when I arrived as a green elder some 52 years ago.

Another picture of their home with Lynne and me and the Smiths.  A really nice home.

Lynne was struck with these ice formations along the road as we drove to Kouvola.  Indeed they are really pretty and quite unusual.

The mission is going well.  We still have many things to do but I think that all the missionaries are doing well and seem to be doing what they are suppose to do.  We have great missionaries in Finland and they work hard and try to be obedient.  President Rawlings and his wife work very hard teaching, training, encouraging, and just taking care of the Elders and Sisters.  Being a mission president is an enormous calling, not only their spiritual leader but always worrying about their personal health and welfare.

Lynne and I continue in good health.  We certainly have been blessed.  We manage to walk around Helsinki a couple times a week to get some exercise, but it takes effort to get out of the office when there is still so much to do.  Winter has been very light and not much snow at all.  The temperatures have been mild and much higher than Utah earlier this year.  We are still getting a few more missionaries than are leaving but it is tapering off.  I fear by the end of the summer when the large groups start to go home, we will not have the numbers coming to replace all of them.  But, with that in mind, we all do the best we can and press on.

Our love and prayers to all at home and abroad.  Thanks for your friendship and prayers. Take care of yourselves and others.  God bless.

Rick and Lynne

Winter Time in Helsinki

Well, morning in the office and another Finnish day at work.  It is a beautiful day outside this morning.  I love to go down on the harbor when the sun is coming up and take pictures.  However, I can hardly move my fingers now because it was so cold down there.  Below are a couple of pictures from about 30 minutes ago on the waterfront which is all of two  minute walk from the office.

Really a nice looking scene for a brisk morning walk.  The weather has been wintery around here finally. We have been busy gettng ready for new missionaries again and helping a bit with the housing.  With all the new missionaries, our office duties have increased quite a bit also.  We have just about doubled the number of missionaries in Finland since this time last year, especially the sister missionaries.  From about 12 sisters last January to about 38 sister right now. 

 After being in Finland during a couple of winters, my dear wife finally got to ``walk on water´´, frozen water anyway.  For some strange reason she just wanted to do it, so here she is standing by a buoy in the middle of the bay. 

Here I am standing on about 20 cm of ice and tugging at a boat that is stuck in the ice.  I thought the ice would crush its hull, but again I am wrong.  Anway, it was a fun activity to walking on  the ice, especially being with the wife.

 

Some of our sister missionaries dressed for the winter. 

I thought that you might want to take a quick look into a store that we shop at often, but first notice the shopping carts.  Fairly normal, but they are all locked to one another and you have to put coin into the slot on the cart to get it released to use.  It is an incentive to put the cart back after you have used it.  Pretty much standard practice all through the country.

Also beer is a  big seller over here.  What do you think is in all these kegs?

Ground beef, anyone?  I don't think I have seen so much hamburger in a plastic bag like this before.  But is works out well.  There is about  $200 worth of meat there.  This store supplies many dining facilites with supplies, so selling a quantity of this size is probably a normal practice.

What would life be, without a Subway sandwich?  Well, they are all over in Finland and they taste just the same. In fact, this shop doesn't look much different than Butter's shop in Morgan.  They are a bit more expensive over here, but that is to be expected.  They just opened a Burger King in Helsinki and after month, there are still waiting in line for quite a while to order.  They like fast foods also.

When I first saw this guard standing there everyday I though it was a statue, but after several trips by his station, I noticed a different face.  So there a soldier stands everyday, guarding a military building and hardly moving at all.  I don't know how they stay warm during the winter and I don't know how long they are at their station.

One last remembrance of Christmas.  We thought this was pretty cool during the Christmas season.  It is lighted with colored lights and just stays there all through the holiday season.



Well, there you have it.  Just a few pictures to let you know what we are up to.  We still manage to stay busy in the office everyday.  I need to start documenting everything that I do for our replacements in July, but I never seem to get around it.  This past week we have had about 30+ missionaries in the office for training and language school. It is a really busy time because they like to hang around the office during their breaks.  We enjoy visiting with them and they seem to be having a great time.  Their language training seems to go very well and they have a good time.

Lynne and I are doing well.  We are in good health with the normal aches and pains.  The days scream on by and we just have a hard time going with the flow.  The world will leave us behind pretty easily if we let it.  I think that after we get home, that is exactly what we will do, let the world go on by and we will just watch it.

Anyway, hope that all of you are doing okay. 

With love,

Rick and Lynne

Christmas Time 2013

Well, Christmas is over and now we are waiting for New Years to come.  Time goes by so quickly that I cannot keep track of what is happening.  So, I will just post some pictures and you can see for yourself what life is like in Finland during the winter.

I guess the first thing that I have to report is that Helsinki does not have any snow at all on the ground.  It as been a very "black" holiday season in southern Finland. Not dry mind you, it has rained forever and ever.  I think I actually have seen the sun several times this December but not more than that.  It has been very cloudy but only for rain and not for snow.  However, I don't fear a thing because I know that there is always a big snowstorm just around the corner.

Well, one thing about Christmas, the mailman always comes through for the Elders and Sisters.  This is just a small representation of the packages that we received.  We tried to get them all forwarded without costing the missionaries anything, and we were quite successful in our endeavor.  The last of the packages were delivered today at a Zone Conference in Tampere.  We encourage parents to send their packages to the office first because of missionaries moving around so much.  Unfortunately, it costs the missionary forwarding expense if we have to use the Finnish mail to forward it. We always try pretty hard to have someone deliver it to them, if possible.

On six December it is Finland's Independence Day.  Not celebrated like we do at home but rather a quiet day with some patriotic music and speeches.  We went to the market square by the large white church in Helsinki and watched the band perform and listened to a couple of speakers before we went home.  If you look close you can see all the little Christmas shops in the background. It is really fun to go to the market place at Christmas time.  Most of the people in the crowd below are holding candles.  Another strong Finnish tradition.

Here is our Christmas tree and all the goes under the tree.  It was nice of Rachelle to liven our tree.

It wouldn't be Christmas in Helsinki if you didn't go the the big white church and see the crowning of Saint Lucia.  This is a big deal.  Lynne used to show me the hat back home that St. Lucia wears but I didn't believe it.  I don't know how they pack all those candles on top of her head at one time.

But most of the people were outside waiting for St. Lucia to walk down the stairs and into her carriage for her trip down main street.  It is fun to watch and follow the events surrounding this special time in Finland

Wouldn't be Christmas without goodies and treats.  This picture is at a ward social and the missionary is keeping track of the the little girl so she doesn't snatch all the treats.  It was a fun social and all seemed to go well for the evening.  If you look really close, you can see Lynne's brownies on the round plate right at the bottom of the picture. They went fast.

Santa came to the ward social also.  A bit young looking under the beard, but other than that, he was a great Santa Claus.  Kids are kids and it doesn't matter what part of the world they are in, St Nick gets a lot of attention.

Picture of Lynne and the Christmas booths on the open market.  Most of the people prepare all year to sell their wares at this time.  Judgement Church in the background. It is always fun to go see what the people are selling.  This year I was able to buy a hot dog "thingy" wrapped in a potato bun.  It was really good.  I went on-line to see where it came from and it looks like it came from England.






Christmas Eve nine of us went to the cemetery to see the candles on the graves.  It rained the whole time but it was still amazing to see how they respect their dead.  This is a flash picture but you can see the candles in front of the headstone.  We started the same tradition years ago at home and I think the kids continue to do it while we are away.

Below is a picture of Elder Jay and Sister Dana Thelin.  They work in the office with us.  Their primary calling is to work with the Single Young Adults in the Helsinki Stake, but they help us all the time with food preparation and furnishing new apartments.  We couldn't get along without their assistance.

Today, Saturday, we spent most of the day cleaning an apartment that is to be turned back.  It should have been our P-Day but we have had something going on everyday this week and we just haven't been able to get to it. I need to get a page from someone on how to relax and just do something different, than work, once in a while.  Oh well, we were together and doing what we came to do, so it was a good day for us.

All the kids back home seemed to have had a great Christmas.  We were able to Skype them all and talk to them.  Christmas Day was mostly spent in the office helping missionary Skype home.  We had five Skype session going at one time in the office.  The internet connections are better there and there is more rooms to accommodate the young missionaries.  The great thing about Skyping is that it doesn't cost them a dime and they get to see, and be seen, but their families.  It has been a real pleasure being in the office and working with the young missionaries.  They come in all shapes and sizes, and we love them all.

We were also able to Skype with Richard and Susan and Jeff and Rosanne.  It was super to be able to talk to them and talk about their missions.

We have over a 100 young missionaries now, almost double from what it was a year ago.  We continue to receive more missionaries than go home, so we will continue to look for new apartments in the near future.

Hope all is well with you and your families and the holiday season is treating you well.  May the good Lord continue to watch over you and bless you and your families.

Love,

Rick and Lynne

Into the Finnish Winter

Time to let you all know that we are still alive and doing our missionary thing.  Please rest assured that we are fine and our daily activities are as busy as ever.  Even with all the new help in the office, it seems like we are digging up other "stuff" that needs to be done.  I would have never guessed all the different "things" that we do in the office.  It seems like everyday a new requirement emerges or an old one needs to be updated. Thanks goodness everyone in the office does the best they can and they all just work and work to get the job done.

Right now we are getting ready for another load of missionaries the week before Christmas. Our time is taken finding new apartments.  The mission president gave us the new areas a few weeks ago and we have been looking for apartments.  I have put together a fairly comprehensive flow-type checklist to help us and the missionaries work through the process.  We have make sure that the new apartment is in a safe, secure, nice neighborhood, with close access to transportation and grocery stores. We try to avoid apartments on a ground level floor and must be an elevator if more that two levels.  The apartment itself must be clean, modest, reasonably priced, room for two single bed in the bedroom, workable kitchen, washing machine, microwave oven, stove, shower, bathroom walls totally covered with ceramic tile, two study desks, couch, kitchen table, plus anything else needed to make it a livable place.  Our missionaries have very nice apartments and are very well taken care of that way.

I do have a few pictures that I would like to share with the blog.  You may have noticed that I don't include many pictures of missionaries and Finns.  They have very particular over here about publishing anyone's picture without written permission.  Someone wanted to put our monthly newsletter, which Lynne puts together each month, on a website but we have to have everyone's written permission before it can happen. It is the law here and we have to be careful.  Just a few of the inconveniences of living in another country.

Well, it is becoming that dark time of the year, and remember that it gets darker the further north you go.  The sun comes up around 8:40 and goes down at 3:32 and we have another month to go before the shortest day and the longest night.  There is actually an illness that about 1% of the Finns get during the winter and it has to do with all the darkness and dealing with it.  We have to be careful with the missionaries also because it can cause mild depression.  There are some vitamins and phototherapy lights that help quite a bit.  We have been buying a few of them, especially for the missionaries up way north.  Nothing like that when I was a missionary years ago.

This is a clock that we found in a local store.  Since it was a Kensington clock, we thought that Kensi might want to see what her clock looks like.

Today after church we went for a rather long walk towards downtown.  There was a "starting Christmas" celebration and parade downtown and we walked in the that direction.  The weather today was unusual for Helsinki, the sun actually came out.  It was a bit below freezing but this picture of the park below is outstanding.  The grass is still very green.  I don't think that we are going to have many more days like this, but we loved it and had a great walk.  This is the park about a block from our apartment and the office.

This is a restaurant on a tiny island just off the seashore here.

This picture is part of the group that sang a few Christmas carols before the parade began.  Santa was running around somewhere in the crowd.  There was a rather large crowd for the event, but I don't think it takes much to get the Finns to go to an event like this, because they like to get out of their apartments in the winter.

This is the church where the event was held.  The parade started here.  We didn't get to see much of the parade because there were so many people lined up along the parade route.

The Red Cross sponsored a rice mush booth.  I broke down and bought a bowl.  It was delicious.  They cook the stuff in an enormous sized cooker.  The lady below is stirring the mush with a giant spoon.

Grandpa Ted would like this picture.  I thought about him when Lynne took it.  Not a lot a crime in Finland, but it is nice to have them around when you need them.

And what would Christmas be without the big stores and all their glitter and lights.  Stockmann is one of the famous stores downtown Helsinki.  They sell everything you can think of.  They have a grocery store in the bottom, and it stays very busy.  They have Christmas scenes in their show windows, just like ZCMI used to in Salt Lake.  Maybe they still do, it has been a while since I have been to SL during the holidays.

  Yesterday we went to a baptism for a Swede that was converted here.  A really nice young man and I am sure a great asset to the church.  After that we went looking for a used kitchen table and chairs for a new apartment and also found some nice book cases.  We try to buy good, used furniture when we have a chance.  It costs enough to furnish missionary apartment without having to buy everything new.  The place that we went to is just like DI.  There goal is almost the same, people helping people.  I was impressed with the whole organization and how well it seems to be run.

Well, time to close up for now.  Monday tomorrow and much to be done.  It is also the week that I have to pay all the apartment rents, which are getting close to 60 right now.  I also have to make sure all the utilities and parking are paid also. Thank goodness for electronic banking, it saves a bunch of time.

We think of all of you at this time.  Thanksgiving this coming Thursday and we will miss being with the family.  It will be another day at the office for us, there is nothing special celebrated here on Turkey Day.  Their next big holiday is December 6th which is Finland's Independence Day.

Missionary work is going well in Finland right now.  Our missionaries are doing well and continue to baptize almost weekly.  Members play a large role in the missionary efforts and their involvement is beginning to pay off.

All our love to you this time of year.

Rick and Lynne