Wives in Arabia

Terve Kaikille! 

I hope everyone's week has been going well! 

This week was pretty ordinary, BUT it's the last week of the transfer. Pretty crazy to think that two months have already passed in this area, I'm not sure if I'll stay or go, but I look forward to the adventure of change calls! 

That being said, we bumped into a former investigator in the street the other day and guess what? He came to church!!! He's very interesting... has a lot of theories about love and equality and science, but it's a fun experience every time we teach him. We hope he'll continue to progress and learn more about the gospel! 

Sadly, our beloved investigator E is having issues with her parents giving her permission to be baptized. We are continuing to pray for her, but as of this moment it seems like she will have to wait until she is 18 until she can finally be baptized. Pray for her please! 

Funny story of the week: We'd been teaching a man from Syria for a couple weeks, and every single lesson would always end up with him talking about how he wanted to find a wife in Finland. It didn't help that he spoke neither English or Finnish very well, and that we communicated mainly through online translation...

Anyway, Sisar Dowd and I are walking down the main road where all the buses get off and we see our Syrian friend on the street, talking on the phone. After he hangs up, we go over and say hi and he simply tells us "Now I have wife, she is in Arabia." Before we get the chance to say anything else he waves us off and walks away.  And then Sisar Dowd whispers to me, "Well. can we teach you the gospel now??" haha I love people. 

That's about it for this week, take good care of yourselves! 

At the Helsinki Temple last week

Rakkaudellani! 

Sisar Kwok 

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Funny quotes and spiritual things (of course)

Terve minun rakas! 

The following email is an excerpt from several pages of Sister Kwok's quote page in her daily planner.

While tracting:

(In a building that smells like really good food.)

"Come on people, invite the missionaries in, we're just 2 poor young women who don't have any muscle on this meat."

(When we get door-checked) 

"Well. He obviously wasn't ready for eternal life!"

While walking toward an appointment:

(After a man on a bicycle passes us)

"You know he's a professional biker when there are two of those reflective shiny things on his butt." 

(This is a true thing people, this man had actually reflective thingies SEWN onto his rear end.) 

Interesting things seen this week:

-A man on the bus who looks EXACTLY like Ron Swanson off of Parks and Rec.

-2 Russian women, one with Cruella De Vil hair and the other with the hair of Cinderella's step-sister.

- The Saipa cross dresser. This man wears Saipa hockey gear every single time we see him, along with high heels and blue eye-shadow. He's a very nice man, we've actually had some really great conversations.

-A St. Bernard the size of a large child or small adult. Either way, it was massive.

-A man selling balloons in the city market asking me to marry him.

Kuitenkin...on a more spiritual note, we've had some great miracles this week, especially with investigators popping up through mysterious places. It amazes me how the Lord knows who is ready and how he works through us to find them. 

I also want to thank you all for your prayers and kind words! 

I know Christ is the Son of God, and that he atoned for our sins.

He loves us!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Kwok 

Spring weather!

​we love getting lost in the middle of nowhere! 

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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

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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

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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

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Well...It happens sometimes.

Terve minun rakkaus perhe ja ystävä, Suomen kieli on vaikea, mutta, olen yritamassa oppia lissa joka päivä. 

Ok, enough of that, my head is starting to hurt. 

So you know how in my email last week, things were picking up with J? Well...things didn't go as well this week. After a lot of cancelling and unanswered phone calls, Sisar Owen and I were just about to call the police out of fear that J was dead. We don't usually react this crazily to all of our investigators, it's just that J is a lot different when it comes to responding and it scared us a little. 

Fortunately, J is not dead, he just has a girlfriend now. (This totally shocked us, I mean relationships with others? I had no idea those things still existed ) -- So we are trying to get him back on track with everything, it might just take a little bit longer. 

Other than that, our district has been working on finding investigators out of a more direct approach, rather than the whole awkward "The weather is so nice today, oh that is a nice scarf, hey want to talk about religion too?". It can be scary at times because we only have about 10-15 seconds to make a lasting impression upon people, and sometimes I feel like people automatically shut themselves off whenever we try and be so direct. 

But I trust that when we implement this into our finding habits we really will find those who are searching for this gospel. 

Have a great week everyone! Happy Chinese New Years, eat some Chinese food and do fun things! 

Rakkaudella 

Sisar Kwok 

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Going and Going and Going!

Another week gone by! 

So this week has been a little slow for some reason, it's really strange because almost all of our investigators can never make it to church because they say they'll be in Helsinki for the weekend...right.

But!

We are still finding elect people here, it's just sad to have to let some go.

J, however is still progressing really well! The ward is just swallowing him up!  It's amazing to see how the gospel can change someone inside and out and it's miraculous to see how it can help people really understand their purpose in life.

Valentine's day was pretty amazing too!

There was a baptism in the ward (for one of the primary children), a wedding and so many baked goods!  There is a traditional pastry here called "pulla". T
​he Finns make it for all kinds of special occasions, it's basically just dough with cardamum in it, but they make a lot of different variations from it. I guess it's traditional to make pulla for Valentine's day because all people would feed us was pulla! 

Anyway, we met a Baha'i couple who invited us back for a discussion last week, it was so...interesting. The man was very nice and kept asking us if it was ok to eat cake, or to eat crackers or drink herbal tea. The "discussion" actually just turned out to be him and his wife wanting to talk to us about their faith, but it was fun while it lasted! 

We also have been getting SO much more sun! Which is such a blessing, because I am getting way too pale! 

That's about it for this week, I hope you all had a fun Valentine weekend!

Make sure to tell people you love them :)

Rakkaudella, 

Sisar Kwok 

Sunset view from our balcony. 

 

Sadly, I don't know who Mannerheim is... but he has a pretty awesome statue in the city. 

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