"elder, that is NOT the language they taught me in the mtc"

HALLELUJAH I finally made it to the land of the midnight sun!! 

Holy cow has this week been crazy, first off i want to apologize for the lack of capitilization in this email, the shift button is really tiny on this keyboard and i figured it would be easier if i stopped trying to correct every other word. 

my new companion is sisar owens! she is great and so enthusiastic about getting to work, the area i am in is called lahti. it's pretty big area and there are only two companionships covering it, us and the elders. the funny thing is that out of the four missionaries in the area, two are being trained, sometimes it's a struggle! 

The language is crazy, you know that one scene of "the best two years" when elder calhoun goes to buy bread and when he realizes that he doesn't understand the cashier his face just drops? That was my face. For the whole week. I don't understand a single word that people are saying. It's really humbling! 

I got to bear my testimony on sunday at the lahti ward, they are amazing people with great faith. there's only about a hundred or so members and it's awesome! 

the rumors about it being really cold here are true, we were finding a contact last night and my eyelashes froze over. I could see the ice crystals and they kept sticking to my face whenever i blinked. last night it was probably around -15 degrees celsius. YAY missionary work! 

the sun also sets really fast! probably around 3:30ish to 4 and it doesn't come back up until 9 in the morning, it definitely has made me more grateful for the sun back at home! 

Anyways, i have lots to say but not a lot of time so I'll just share a really funny story, one night when were knocking on  a couple of doors, this old man opens up and gives us the weirdest look, so Sisar Owens explains that because it's Sunday, we were hoping to sing him a church hymn. He answers by saying,

"I'm on a lot of drugs right now and I have a really weird "olo"(sensation or feeling?) i'm just going to go to bed now"  

And then he just closes the door on us, it was so funny, we were laughing so hard haha. 

This week was new and wonderful but also pretty hard, every single appointment that we had planned fell through, either by us getting dropped or people not answering the door. It was easy to get a little discouraged, but I am excited to get to know the people of lahti better.

I'll send some pictures soon! 

Rakkaduella 

SIsar Kwok