Hello my great family and friends!What a crazy week we found ourselves in! We had exchanges with the elders from Rovaniemi and had a great day! We found a new investigator while on exchanges which was great. it was fun to be with those elders, one was a newer missionary and is doing great in the language and being a missionary in general and the other is a missionary who is just younger than me and he has really sky rocketed on his mission! We also had a pineapple on exchanges and that was fun, I have forgotten how to cut a pineapple, but it still tasted pretty good.
Monday, August 24, 2020
May 9, 2017 ~ Week 81
Also on Friday during personal study President Watson called us and said that we would be going to Kemi for the next few days to be with one missionary while his companion was in the hospital due to pneumonia. That was a shock! So we spent the Saturday Sunday and half of Monday in the hospital with the two missionaries, went to church there and did work at nights when we were not allowed to be at the hospital anymore. It was pretty crazy! The missionary was released today a few hours after we left to go home. President and Sister Watson even drove up to pay him a visit (keep in mind that Kemi is in the clear north while they live in the south). We got interviews from him while he was here and it was good. The two elders are doing fine now though, the one is happy to be out of the hospital since he was there for 4 days.
That was our crazy week! My companion and I are doing great, enjoying every aspect of missions, even when we sit in a hospital all day reading the scriptures and Preach My Gospel!
I hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Vanhin Robison
Sunday, August 23, 2020
May 2, 2017 ~ Week 80
Hey Family! This week was one hectic week, we traveled a ton, saw all 4
seasons in one day basically and found new people to teach while
teaching older investigators too! This week we traveled to Seinöjoki,
Helsinki and Espoo and then back to Oulu. All of these train rides and
plane rides have put us through the wringer and made us super sleepy.
unfortunately from what I see from parents, older siblings and friends,
it appears that life doesn't slow down after the mission. I have even
heard my mission president say "just get used to being tired, you'll be
tired the rest of your life", I hope he is lying about that. But amongst
all of this travel and whatnot we have been with great missionaries and
met awesome people so that was a blessing in itself let alone seeing
the beautiful country side.
We saw all four seasons
of weather I believe on Sunday when we woke up to a good amount of snow
on the ground, came out of church and it was raining a cold fall like
rain, then the sun came out and warmed us up feeling like summer was
here and then later the flood gates of spring rain hit, it was quite the
day.
Today in Finland, the 1st of May is
actually a holiday called Vappu. I asked a Finn today what the holiday
was for, and he said "ahh, it's just a day for us to have work and
school off and for everyone to party haha". That is a very true
statement. Due to unusual high amounts of alcohol consumption during
this holiday we as missionaries are not allowed to proselyte, just teach
investigators and members and then make our time productive around the
apartment if we have nothing else to do. We were safe today and even had
a great productive day in teaching people. Super sad though because we
taught a less active member who hasn't been to church in years and
realized that he basically knew nothing about the church or God for that
matter. It was pretty sad.
But it was a good productive week, so we are happy about that! Have a great week, I love you!
April 25, 2017 ~ Week 79
Train Rides get boring |
Hey family and friends! This week we did a
lot of fun things like going up to North of Finland into Lapland (the
really far north) and spending a few hours there at their district
meeting, teaching a lesson in Swahili and also getting let in while tracking!
While we were in Rovaniemi we spent time with
some of the elders up there and attended their district meeting which
was great, we talked about what a successful missionary is. Since the
key indicator numbers have been reduced to 4 it is seeming like a lot of
missionaries are having a difficult time feeling successful especially
since weeks were we get all 0äs are being more and more frequent, we
thought that this was a great district meeting topic! While there in
Rovaniemi we stuffed our faces! A senior couple from the mission office
was up there for the day and they took us out to lunch at a buffet type
deal and it was really good! However we had already planned on eating
the legendary hamburger of Rovaniemi called the Tosi Miehen Burgeri or
in English the real man's burger! The thing was huge (probably self explanatory by it's name) but we had it for the experience! It was
painful but we got it all down, basically eating two lunch that day in a
row!lesson, so basically our recent convert of a month taught her. He would translate to us what she said and then we would tell him what to say back and teach through him. It was cool because at one point he turns back to us and said "let me testify to her" and he did. It was so fun! I don't however thing that we will be going back there too often seeing the language barrier is thick and even with the Swahili translation it would leave her dependent on the only member who speaks Swahili in our ward. It was a great lesson though, really fun!
Contacting |
Tosi Miehen Burger |
April 18, 2017 ~ Week 78
Hey family and friends! Happy Easter! We are blessed with this great
opportunity to ponder and reflect the world altering events that
happened not too long ago. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the
completion of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is the single most important
event to have ever happen on the face of the earth and for that I am
tremendously grateful!Leading up to this day for the previous few months
I have been studying Jesus Christ more intently and the thing that
stands out to me more and more is His Character, His ability to turn
outward when the natural man would turn inward. It is truly incredible
and something I love to ponder about.
This week in
and of itself leading up to Easter was great! I learned a few more
things about Easter this year her in Finland in terms of traditions. The
major thing I learned is that they don't believe in the Easter bunny,
rather in an Easter chicken. I mean it makes a little more sense when it
comes to laying eggs everywhere, but bunnies are much cool. I learned
this while we were at some members houses spending time with them and
building their faith in Jesus Christ and in his Gospel.
This
week we also went on exchanges in a small town called Kajaani. It's two
hours away by train and actually Elder Henry's first city. He was so
excited to go back there and see the city again and happen to bump into
to people that he had met there. The Elders currently serving there are
great missionaries, working very hard. One goes home this transfer while
the other one just came to the country this transfer, interesting to
see the differences.
A cool experience that
happened this week actually happened yesterday. Usually at 8 o'clock we
go inside to make phone calls because we can't tract after 8 and walking
on the street isn't very effective because no one is out there. But
today we felt that we should stop doing that and go on the streets
anyways and the Lord will bless us with people, so that's what we did.
We walked the whole hour and then in the last 10 minutes we met a super
prepared person. It was awesome, she was excited about the answers that
the Book of Mormon can give to her along with prayer. We were very
excited to teach her and then found out that she was just visiting here
but lives in Denmark. That was a little disappointing, but shows that
the Lord blesses us for putting in the extra effort and doing all that
we can do.
Have a great week!
Love,
Vanhin Robison
April 11, 2017 ~ Week 77
Hello hello this week was a good one. Now
that all the messages from conference have statrted to settle in and I
have been able to review my notes and listen to some again I am so
impressed by the love that Heavenly Father has for us. I left conference
with the desire of wanting to know the Father better by coming to know
Jesus Christ even more. This past week we decided the mission scripture
for the transfer and it echoed my desires coming out of General
Conference. As a mission we chose John 17Ö3 "And this is life eternal,
that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou
hast sent."
Over the past week we found a new investigator
who is so awesome. She is a young mother who has recently divorced and
has such a sincere desire to strengthen her faith in Jesus Christ. It
has been an absolute privilege to teach her as she is one of the nicest
people I have ever met. She accepted everything we have taught thus
far, except a solid baptismal date, but that won't take long until she
accepts.A bear carving in a tree stump on the path |
Elder Henry and I in Espoo |
The ice on the ground is super thick |
Our Avacado tree that we are growing |
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
April 3, 2017 ~ Week 76
Hey there family and friends! This week I got my new companion, Elder Henry, from Highland, Utah. He is a funny man with great work ethics. We have already seen a lot of success and are excited for this transfer.
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