May 23, 2017 ~ Week 83

 Hey hey, spring has finally fully sprung in Finland! We worked this week so far without jackets because its so nice outside! Although I can tell that i have acclimatized to Finland because it hasn't even broken 60 degrees Fahrenheit all year but it still feels so hot! If I were back in Utah I would be one roasted kid that is for sure! But the weather has been absolutely unreal these past few days, blue skies, nice cool breeze. You could close your eyes and you'd feel like you were on the beaches in Hawaii.

Along with the great weather we have had some great work done in the mission here! The mission has had 2 big weeks having 5 baptisms on each of those weeks, that's 10 for month with more lined up and that is incredible. We haven't had success like that in a long long time! The mission is doing well. The work in Oulu is doing great! We found some new investigators that came to church this week for which we are so grateful and excited! Also one of our investigators who hasn't been doing so well recently just accepted a baptismal date today so that is super awesome! We are pumped about that!

We also had zone conference this week, so President and the assistants came up to give us some training. Their flight was an hour late though so we got a call from President telling us that we would need to run the meeting until he got there. It wouldn't have been so bad except for the fact that we didn't have the meeting agenda so we didn't know what was going to be covered. So we gave some training on the doctrine of finding trying to kill time until the big guns showed up. I'd say it went pretty well though. President and his assistants gave some great training )two of which are my former companions=. Unfortunately we had to leave during the meeting to run home and grab our winter tires for our car, so that we could give them back the car and all it's parts. Once we got we switched keys and they gave us a new car. We were pretty excited about that one! It's nothing special just a new version of our old car, the Toyota Yaris.

It was a great week! We had a lot of success this week and are seeing the blessings of the Lord in our life! I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Vanhin Robison 

We found the biggest bike known to man

Our cool new car named LNX pronounced Lynx 

Super cool foggy morning

Walking the streets of Finland 

May 16, 2017 ~ Week 82

 Hello everyone. First allow me to start off with a shout out to all of the Mother's day to all of those who are or will be mothers in the future. Especially to my own personal mother who has and continues to sacrifice so much for me! I am eternally grateful for her and her goodness! Also for my two grandmothers, they are tremendous examples of perseverance and hard work. It was great to be able to Skype with my family this week and see that all is well, not just hear about it. I have defiantly forgotten how awesome my family is too, getting off the call sure wasn't easy but it made me want to serve even harder to make them proud.

This week has come and gone in the blink of an eyes with many lessons learned. Over the course of my mission I have noticed that there are just times where you need to take a step back and reanalyze what should be getting done and is getting done and then reset goals and make new plans. I don't know if it is a good or bad thing but that moment where a step back is required seems to been happening more and more frequently. This week I experienced another one and saw some tremendous resulted from it today. Over the past few weeks, even transfer I have had kind of a mission low in finding which is weird because this is one place where there are so many prepared people. So I took a step back and reanalyzed and moved forward that night with my new plans. One thing that wasn't getting done that should have been was sincere prayer, seeking for those that are prepared to receive the restored gospel, and the other lacking matter was diligent actions to follow through with the prayer. So last night was a heart filled prayer along with this morning and through out the day, coupled with the determination to be exactly obedient and diligent outside and inside. In return we got a ton of new potential investigators that are really solid which we are super happy about and have lessons scheduled for the next few days. It was great to see that hand of the Lord in the work today!

Also this week we were in Vaasa for exchanges, it's Finland's sunniest city, and while we were there I was with one of the Elders and we visited a potential investigator and set up a return appointment with her for the next day. I heard the lesson went well, she came to church and then yesterday they set a baptismal date with her. That was really fun to hear, even though I did almost nothing in her conversion.

Great things are happening here in Finland and great things are being learned! I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Vanhin Robison