Stepping foot in Savonlinna

Hey everyone!

There are many wonderful adventures that happen to you when you serve the Lord. Wonderful as in...exhausting, stress-inducing, nerve-wracking...but wonderful nonetheless!

First things first, last week we had Zone Conference in Mikkeli with President Watson. It was so amazing, I love hearing about our mission and learning how to be a better missionary through such an inspired leader. We are really trying to use the "Because of Him" video in contacting and tracting, it has been translated into Finnish, so it's been a really powerful tool! If y'all want to see it, it's on YouTube and it's titled "Hänen ansiostaan".

Anyway, the fun started after Zone Conference.

In order to get to Mikkeli for the conference, we needed to take a 2 hour bus ride that leaves at 6:50 in the Morning, and in order to return we usually take 2 hour train ride back. But because we were rushing out the door, we forgot our train tickets. So we had to end up staying a tiny bit longer to take the bus. We catch the bus and with only about 20 minutes left on our ride we get a call from our Zone Leaders asking us if we had left our keys at the chapel. Turns out that we had forgotten our keys in Mikkeli and wouldn't be able to get into our apartment for the rest of the night.

After a lot of phone calls with President, we decided the best thing to do would be to spend the night at a member's house (who actually wasn't home the whole night) and take the 5 am bus in the morning to go to Savonlinna, where the Zone Leaders would be for the day.

Little did we know that the route that the bus took went through every back alley known to man and a trip that would have usually taken less than an hour and a half ended up being four hours.

BUT, now I can say that we were the first two sister missionaries ever to step foot in Savonlinna, an area that only has 10 members. We were still able to an older less active woman, so it wasn't a total bust.

So folks, the moral of the story is to just not be a forgetful sister missionary and always check for the keys!

I love you all, take care!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Kwok

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Say hello to Rikki Jr.

SO MUCH SUN THIS WEEK.

It's been heavenly.

Aside from the amazing weather, this week has been pretty great! I think it's funny that I say that because there are a lot of days within the week that actually make me want to curl up in a ball and stop trying to plan anything for anyone ever again...

But then the week goes by and I realize that being a missionary is actually quite awesome.

First things first, we picked up an investigator named E! E is just incredibly receptive to the Spirit and such an overall wonderful person, we've been teaching her for only a week and she's already so progressed so much! She's pretty much everything I want to be when I grow up. Which might be a problem because she's only 16 years old. But, really, she is that incredible people!

On another note, I got my first official bible bashing lesson this week, which was pretty awesome. I knew it was going to happen because right when we walked in we saw a massive bible on the kitchen table and a notebook next to it that had the words "Joseph Smith" written on it. It was painful to experience because no matter how many times we would try to pull things back to basic gospel principles she would change the subject and start talking about how we didn't believe in the same God or same Christ.

We have another appointment set up with her this week, pray for us people.

Also, because the slush in the street has cleared up, we brought our bikes out from the storage garage a couple days ago. Sisar Owen would always talk about how her bike, "Rikki" (which is the Finnish word for 'break' I think?) would always fall apart in the streets of Helsinki. Since I inherited my bike from her former companion, I've decided to name it "Rikki Jr." I can already tell that so much good work is going to come through this bike, the brakes are basically gone and it makes this strange scratching noise whenever I ride it. Haha I am so excited!

That's it for this week!

I love you all!

Make good choices in life!

Sisar Kwok

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Spring Cleaning.

Hello everyone!

*So I know that it can be sort of exhausting reading all these constant missionary emails, so I am officially going to start spring cleaning on my email list! If any of you would like to be taken off of the weekly update please let me know! I won't be offended, because I know how it feels to be bombarded with 50 different emails from 50 different missionaries each week. Love you all!*

That being said, I am now in Lappeenranta! I love it here already, our apartment is really close to the city center and the harbor is about a 5 minute walk from our aparment building. Lappeenranta is a "Kesä-Kaupunki" (summer city) which means that during the summer the population doubles and that the rest of the year it's pretty dead. The Finns here are a bit different from the ones in Lahti, a little less keen on talking to strangers, but we've been doing a lot of good work with the university students that stay here.

My new companion is Sisar Dowd and she's pretty funny. She loves Disney and loves singing, which makes sense. They sort of both go hand in hand :)

An investigator that we've been working with is A. A is the sassiest Finnish man I know, he's always crossing his arms and saying "I don't know, stop asking me questions" or "I can't remember who Joseph Smith is, how do you expect me to remember who Joseph Smith is?" But secretly I think he likes meeting with us :)

His wife is a member and has been a big help in getting A ready for baptism, we set a baptismal date with him last Wednesday which we are very excited about!

Funny story of the week:

Because LPR is so close to the Russian border, there are some people here that don't really like Russians. I didn't know the extent of this dislike until Sisar Dowd and I decided to visit a less-active in the area. We knock on her door and when she opens it the very first thing she asks is,

"Where are you from? America? Are you from America?"

After we said yes, she sighed a sigh of relief and then tells us that she can't let us in because she is going to take a nap.

haha gotta love em'

Anyway, I love you all!

Let me know how things are doing!

Take care!

Sisar Kwok

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.