October 8, 2015 ~ Week 4!

Oh boy it's hard to believe that i will have already been here for a month tomorrow! it sure doesn't feel like it but at the same time it feels longer than a month too! 

I think it is appropriate to address to elephant in the room which is General Conference! What a fantastic experience! this was the first conference that i have come to with questions and praying to find answers through the talks and what a miraculous event that was! During our district meeting on Saturday night we discussed conference and the talks there. It was real interesting to see how all of us listened to the same talks but each of us got something different out of them depending on our questions! i could feel the spirit working in me! But the real miracle is what happens when you ponder on the thoughts in your mind about conference and the even further personal revelation that comes from it! i learned so much from the spirit these past few days! And of course the calling of three new apostles! Was I the only one who felt a confirmation that they were God's chosen when they spoke? They gave such strong testimonies and bore it with such conviction! They are called of God! His church is on the earth now!

Now for the more fun things. Our district is great! It's cool because we are all so much different from each other! Given the choice I wouldn't want to hang out with any of them but I have to and i love them all! Our first cool night was fiesta night. Someones mom had sent him a lot of chips and salsa so we sat in the hall and had a fiesta with our district (minus the sisters because this was at our residence). The next night was sardine night... Someone else's parents sent them sardines and everyone took turns eating them, except for me. I sat in the lobby and wrote in my journal so i avoided the sardines, except for the smell because that filled the whole floor! Then someone got spray cheese and the Elders in my district wanted to have spray cheese night. So they decided to put spray cheese on every possible thing and eat it. Here are some examples, they put it on pretzels, mint chewing gum, twix, licorice, m&ms, fruit roll ups, rice crispies and more disgusting things. Then they had "sisu" night. 'Sisu" is something that the Finns have. It's like their Finnish pride i think? i'm not sure what it is but it's special to the Finns. So in order to obtain "sisu" they asked a Finn here how do you get 'sisu'? He said you stand outside all day in the dead of winter butt naked. He was obviously joking and good thing cause I'd never get sisu then. But our district decided the next best thing was to take cold cold showers for as long as they could! I didnt not participate in this one as well because i was already warm so why would I want to be cold? Anyways they did it and our residence hall sounded like a 5 year old girls birthday party, just screaming and screaming. It's safe to say that missionaries standards for fun drop a lot in the mission field, and it hasn't even been a month yet.. haha! but all good fun nonetheless! 

I was enlightened this week on how the spirit works, particularly in our lessons. I had become frustrated because we would teach a lesson and he would always come out and say the spirit was so strong in there, but i would come out feeling the same as before, just normal. So i was wondering how the spirit works with me and how come i wasn't feeling the spirit when we where in the same lesson! Anyways it took some studying and a lot of pondering and even more prayer but i found my answer! I had had the spirit all along and i had actually felt it's prompting and acted on it without noticing! We were teaching Karina and she wanted to know if the Book of Mormon was worth more than the Bible, if it was the other way around or if they were worth the same. i started to bumble on about how they testify of each other and then a thought came to my mind to share Article of Faith #8. This was a weird thought because I hadn't read the articles of faith in forever but I was now thinking about them. I had completely forgotten them all but somehow managed to find them in the Finnish Book of Mormon. It answered her question and we moved on. I thought nothing about that until the other day, yesterday to be exact. It was the spirit that had put that thought into my mind and I acted on it. It was able to bring it to my mind because i had at one point studied it, even memorized it and the spirit was able to fulfill its promise and bring it back to my remembrance! Such a cool experience and now that I have learned how the spirit works with me I have begun to notice more and more promptings in lessons that i thought were just my thoughts but turns out to be the spirit. And since i act on them the spirit gives me more and more promptings! Such ad answer to prayer! God is there, he listens and he answers! All in all it has been a super wonderful week! The church is true and i love you all!

October 1, 2015 ~ Week 3!

Well what do you know, you blink and three weeks have passed! At least that's what it feels like looking back! Lucky for us they have hired two new Finnish teachers! Veli Ryan and Sisar Ross! Both have gotten back within the past 6 months! 

My language has improved and to prove it I will tell you a story. My companion and I are teaching a lady named Karina (Sisar Ross). We are teaching her that God is our loving Heavenly Father, but she doesn't think he is. So we wanted her to pray and find out if he does or not. She said she will but later, but being the persistent missionaries we are we kept asking her to pray with us. She wanted to know why so I say "Rukoiletko meitä? Se on tarkea että sinua rukoilet oikea." Well she just started laughing so hard and I was confused! After our lesson she apologizes but tells us why she was laughing. Apparently "Rukoiletko meitä" means will you pray to us. So I should have said "Rukoiletko meaidän kansaa" (will you pray with us) My bad but we all got a good laugh out of it! Luckily I am not the only one with language blunders. Vanhimat Vennerholm and Bowden said that Jesus was born in America. Vanhin Buhler was asked how his weekend was. He just looked at her blankly trying to figure out what she said and then her said "Well may we pray?" And in the same lesson Vanhin Minson kept speaking Spanish not Finnish! We never have dull moments her! Sisar Ross told me that when she was teaching a lesson in the MTC she told the investigator he could be Jesus Christ haha! The Finnish is taking over my brain! I can't spell in English anymore. I was writing in my journal trying to spell prophet but i kept spelling it profeet (that's how it is in Finnish and also the only Finnish word that look similar to English). 

That's really all I have to say this week because everything is the same everyday except for on Monday we watched Elder Scotts Funeral services and this week is General Conference which I'm super pumped for! That's all! Sorry it's so short! I love you!

September 24, 2015 ~ Week 2

Boy oh boy it's already week two! Time is starting to pick up it's pace at the MTC. Yestersday when all the new missionaries where being dropped off I felt like I had been dropped off yesterday! We do some much in one day that I can't remember everything that has happened! So our investigator Anna who was really our teacher quit this week which was super sad because she was way awesome and possibly my favorite teacher (maybe because she spoke some english to us) and now she is gone but still at BYU. The good thing is we get to teach her for TRC tonight hopefully! 

But everyday is basically the same here, we wake up and eat breakfast, go to class and teach a lesson in our broken Finnish and then try to learn more Finnish. Then we get lunch and go back to class for perosnal, companion and language study. Then we have gym and then dinner. After dinner, you guessed it more class but this time we learn about the gospel, but it's still in Finnish so I don't know what's going on anyways.Then we go back to our residence and go to bed and wake up to do it all over again. Fun huh?

Gym is pretty fun we have 9 elders in our district so we all play spike ball (look it up, it's my new favorite game!) and we have gotten so good! We have three teams of three so we rotate and play eachother. At first our team was really bad and we only scored 2 points the whole day, then the next day we scored 5 and then yesterday something happened and we won! We play to 10 and we won! I was so happy! Sothe winner stays so we played right after and got down 7-1 early but came back and only lost by 1 (10-9)! It was a good day! But umm we don't actually keep score cause it's not allowed but if someone did keep score by accident those were the scores... Just sayin'...

Funny story, since we are in the MTC we are really cut off from the world and I'm really curious to see how my spartans are doing,, hint, hint. Anyways we were in our devotional waiting for it to start and one of the staff got up before it started and was telling us to take our seats and he also announced the Elder Scott has passed away. Well it was pretty noisy and hard to understand and my companion miss understood what he said. He turns and looks at me and says well it's a good thing I've got my good suit on, my favorite tie and a notebook today. I was a little confused then realized what he was talking about. I said "Hey Vanhin, Elder Scott isn't speaking today, he passed away today." And he was suddenly deflated after that. But it gave me a good laugh nonetheless!

So the only thing I can really think of to say is how difficult this language is. At first I didn't think it was hard but it actually is. There are 33 official cases in Finnish but we only learn 16 here at the MTC cool huh? No not cool it's super challenging but that's good for me! Our teacher told us this joke about Finnish (but she said it in Finnish so I had a delayed laugh because I had to internally translate it which takes a while) anyways it goes something like this. Before we all came to earth God called all the countries into a big meeting where they were giving out the language assignments, so which country would speak which language, but the Finland had to go to the bathroom really bad so he quickly ran to the bathroom. but the lines were long so he took a while but when he finally made it back he went up to God to get his assignment and God goes "Oh Finland I was wondering where you went. I am sorry but all the languages have already been handed out so I guess you'll have to make up your own." 

Hahah! whew that joke gets me every time! Especially now that i have heard it in English! But yes the language is challenging but I was called to this country and according to 1 Nephi 3:7 there is a way and I'll find it! I love you all! Remember to pray and read your scriptures!

Zone and our Investigator in the middle. Her name is
Rakastan teitä! Tehkää hyvää työtä :) (Rachel Egan)

Books in the MTC

September 17, 2015 ~ Week 1

Well this is my first group email! And first things first HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO GRANDPA WALKER! Let me start by asking for your forgivness in advance because I am a slow typer adn even worse speller/grammarer.....

This week has been super long but super fast at the same time! This is now our 8th day here, i say our because there are 9 Elders going to Finland and 2 Sisters going as well. My companion is Vanhin Reeder from Riverton but wen to Herriman High School. He graduated early adn has already been to a year at BYU, come to find out he is younger than me... Not mention he isfar smarter than me and a better singer. He likes to sing opera so everywhere we go he sings HYmns and Les Mis in an opera showtunes type of voice. It's a good thing that he is a good singer. When he was at BYU he was majoring in Philosophy so everything I say he always has a twist with some big philisophical meaning. 

The language is way hard not to mention that fact that we never have a teacher! We have three 4 hour class time blocks. One of them the teacher isnt supposed to come so we are to do our personal, companion and language study there which is good. And then the teacher is supposed to be there for the next to classroom times but she never is! We have been her 8 days and only had a teacher 4 or 5 times. Learning a new language is hard enough let alone Finnish, and then the fact that we don't have teacher most the time is super difficult. Apparetnly we had tons of teachers but they all quit when the old Finns left and right be fore we came. So there are two teachers (one is our investigator) but rumor is she's quitting. 

So now to my investigator. We had been here two days and we get our first "investigator" to teach and it has to all be in Finnish. Luckily we get this neat little blue book that has all these common phjrases for everything including all of the lessons. So we basically go in there ask how she is doing in our broken Finnish, she says something but we dont know what it is, so we just ask another question. For all we know she could be saying I want to get baptized but we just keep asking questions haha. The first lesson was horrible. We got in there my comp asked her a question and then she responded. She answered in Finnish but since I can't understand her I started to laugh a little whioch was super disrespectful but it's just so funny because I can't understnad her. Lesson two went amazingly well! We taught her how to pray adn I understood almost everything she was saying! But then lessons three and four were just like lesson one, I couldnt undersatnd her! It was amazing though in lesson 3 we talked about Joseph Smith's first vision, and even though i didnt know a word that was being said I couls still feel the spirit! 

Yesterday was quite the adventure! Four of us Vanhimat went to California for the day! Yep that's right we went to LA! The MTC is doing a new thing where they send missions who will be here for a long time (aka the Finns) and send them to the mission field adn let them teach in english an actual lesson and leran how to proselyte. It is actually really cool and not true at all. 

So no the MTC does not let us do that but we did actually go to California for the day. We flew put at 7 and flew back at 1900hrs. That means we woke up at 2:50 and then today we woke up at 5 something to get to the temple so I'm sleep deprived haha. Anyways we went to California because we had to go to the Finnish Consoluate and get interviewed by them. Good thing it was all in english or else i would have failed. We were only there for like 20 minutes adn then we were done. The church hired a company to pick us up and drive us which was good. Our drivers name was Salvador and he was way chill. When we got off at the airport I just gave him the Restoration pamphlet adn the Gospel of Jesus Christ one

Elder Robison and Elder Reeder

September 10, 2015 ~ I'm Alive!

Hello Mom,

I am alive and well! I am loving every minute here! It's awesome and I love you guys so much and miss you as well! Although I try not to think about that! MY P-day is Thursday so next Thursday I will be emailing home a more lengthy email with detail! Until then hei hei! The church is true!

Love, 

Vanhin Robison