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!

We got let in tracking to these 2 college kids, but it was pretty awkward because they weren't interested and whatnot but let us in anyways. We tried our best to teach them to their needs and in a way the spirit would touch their hearts, but they were pretty non receptive. It is interesting how you can see more and more when someone is prepared and when they are not. It was still cool that we got let in, it doesn't happen often.

We had our lesson in Swahili today, that was exciting! About a month ago I met a lady on the street who knew almost no Finnish and no English but she showed me her door and made it very clear at what time she wanted us to come back. We showed up at the prescribed time but no answer. Since then we have tried back a few times and set up an appointment for today. We brought a recent convert in our ward of a few months who is from Kenya, who speaks Swahili, heäs the best! When we got in the lesson we realized that her Finnish was not at the place where we could hold a coherent

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!

In a nut shell that was my week! I hope your week was great! It is so nice to hear from you all each week! Have a great week!

Love,

Vanhin Robison

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.

This week we also have been able to visit a lot of members homes )some for the first time sharing the #Prince of Peace video or in Finnish #RauhanRuhtinas. It was great as we shared just a brief thought about one of the principles of peace after watching the video with them. One of the members loved it so much that during priesthood meeting he stood up and testified about the spirit that came to his home when we came. It was great, super awesome to see that we actually do have the spirit and that people notice it! If members notice it when we come over I can only imagine how investigators feel.

The work is moving on here and it is going great! Spring is here, it has started to rain a lot here today but all the drains in the street are frozen so things are pretty flooded haha, luckily we have a car!

Have a great week!

Love,

Vanhin Robison

 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

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.

On the transfer day I spent time with a lot of other different missionaries as they were waiting for their new companions and I was a waiting for mine. We bounced around a lot between my area doing work and the train station. Amidst all of that we were able to get some good work done.

We have one investigator in particular who we are working with who is super awesome, we actually have 3 that are progressing really well at the moment. One of them is going through the Book of Mormon really fast and praying about it everyday. I imagine that within a few days they will have a baptismal date. Our other really awesome investigator has already received an answer that the Book of Mormon is true but now we are just kind of waiting for that to sink into to his heart. He keeps keeping commitments so one day he will make the connection between the Book of Mormon and the rest of our message and when he does he will be baptized in the future soon there after!And finally our other investigator is doing well. We intended on just teaching a very simple overview of the Plan of Salvation but it kind of got more intense than we were planning on. He was just very curious as to why this life is so important and what we become after this life, haha we got some questions where we just didn't have the answers haha. But we said we'd study it out and get back to him.It was an interesting lesson haha.

We also this week had a cool experience, similar to one that I had back in September when I was in Kokkola. We had stopped by this family's home to see if we could share the new Easter video with them #PrinceofPeace. Unfortunately the husband was at work so we were not able to come inside that time, so we resumed to our finding efforts. Not even an hour later we get a text from one of the family members explaining how they had become in active and are experiencing a crisis of faith and would like to take the missionary lessons. My companion and I were filled with joy that he had humbled himself enough to seek for help and that he entrusted in us to do so. We met with him immediately and found that his crisis of faith was not something that I had the capacity on my own to fix, but the spirit filled the room as we testified of the Book of Mormon. I just hope that I said the right things but from what i heard from General Conference I think that we told them the right things. I guess you can never go wrong when you invite someone to read the Book of Mormon. But yeah that was our cool experience of the week.

General conference was awesome, it is honestly one of my favorite times of the year. As President Monson spoke to us this year I could really feel that he is Godäs chosen man to lead His church. I love any time that we get to hear the voices of reassurance and upliftement from the prophets and apostles of God, and we also got to hear voices of warning, telling us what we need to do to keep ourself safe. i love the counsel from Elder Clayton in doing the small and simple acts of obedience everyday.

Have a great week!:)

Love,

Vanhin Robison

---

March 27, 2017 ~ Week 75

Hey family and friends, this week was a good one. We got transfer calls and I will be staying here and in Oulu and Elder Henry is going to becoming to serve with me and Elder Bekmezian is going down to Espoo. I am pretty bummed to see Elder Bekmezian leave but I am excited for Elder Henry to come. I have been in a the same district as Elder Henry before and even have had an exchange or two with him so it will be a good transfer next transfer.

The work here in Oulu is going great! We haven't really found a ton new investigators but the ones we have found have been prepared and are progressing towards baptism quickly. We have a lot of potential in our pool of investigators and the branch is loving the ones that have come thus far.

We also had zone conference this past week so President and Sister Watson came up to train us and it was great. We talked a lot about Jesus Christ due to Easter quickly approaching. President Watson gave us a challenge to intently study Christ every day and to ponder his words at least until Easter. We were promised a greater Easter season with a better sense of who Jesus Christ is and a deeper meaning of his Atonement in our lives. To give us an example of what it means to ponder and study about Christ he took us to Matthew 11:30 where Christ says "For my yoke is easy and burden is light". We looked at it as a zone and pulled some thoughts out about it and then President has us look at the word light in a different way. He told us to look at it, not having to do with weight, but rather illumination. Thus we did and it was cool to see the new meaning this short verse has, a burden can give us light, or in other words knowledge, understanding, enlightenment. It was a cool insight that we had and now it's the quest to recreate that kinds of experience and realization in my own studies.

For a cool experience we had this week we noticed how the Lord changes our plans and puts us in certain places to find his prepared children. I was on exchanges with our district leader in our area and I had some names for us to follow up with up, although I quickly realized that we did not have enough names for the amount of time that we would be spending outside. I did remember however that we had some names on the opposite side of the area that we could follow up wit but we didn't have much time because we had to come back for a lesson which was where we were originally. Anyways we walk a long ways, talk to a lot of people on the way and then follow up with our potentials and then walk back. It was all seeming pretty fruitless until we got right in front our investigators building and met some lady walking her dog who had seen missionaries many time but never actually talked to them but has wanted to. We got her address and phone number set up an appointment and then met with her. She is a very impressive investigator thus far keeping commitments and being very interested in the message we have to share. So that was a cool thing that happened too us this week! 

The work is going oh so well, I love you all and hope that all is well back home! Have a great week!

Love,

Vanhin Robison

p.s. P-day is next Monday as well

This is us on exchanges  

April 3, 2017 ~ Week 74

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 about this transfer.

On the transfer day, I spent time with a lot o fother different missionaries as they were waiting for their new companions and I was waiting for mine. We bounced around a lot between my area doing work and the train station. Amidst all of that, we were able to get some good work done.

We have one investigator in particular who we are working with who is super awesome, we actually have 3 that are progressing really well at the moment. One of them is going through the Book of Mormon really fast and praying about it every day. I imagine that within a few days they will have a baptismal date. Our other really awesome investigator has already received an answer that the Book of Mormon is true but now we are just kind of waiting for that to sink into to his heart. He keeps keeping commitments so one day he will make the connection between the Book of Mormon and the rest of our message and when he does he will be baptized in the future soon there after! And finally, our other investigator is doing well. We intended on just teaching a very simple overview of the Plan of Salvation but it kind of got more intense than we were planning on. He was just very curious as to why this life is so important and what we become after this life, haha we got some questions where we just didn't have the answers haha. But we said we'd study it out and get back to him. It was an interesting lesson haha.

We also this week had a cool experience, similar to one that I had back in September when I was in Kokkola. We had stopped by this family's home to see if we could share the new Easter video with them #PrinceofPeace. Unfortunately, the husband was at work so we were not able to come inside that time, so we resumed our finding efforts. Not even an hour later we get a text from one of the family members explaining how they had become active and are experiencing a crisis of faith and would like to take the missionary lessons. My companion and I were filled with joy that he had humbled himself enough to seek help and that he entrusted in us to do so. We met with him immediately and found that his crisis of faith was not something that I had the capacity on my own to fix, but the spirit filled the room as we testified of the Book of Mormon. I just hope that I said the right things but from what I heard from General Conference I think that we told them the right things. I guess you can never go wrong when you invite someone to read the Book of Mormon. But yeah that was our cool experience of the week.

General conference was awesome, it is honestly one of my favorite times of the year. As President Monson spoke to us this year I could really feel that he is Godäs chosen man to lead His church. I love any time that we get to hear the voices of reassurance and upliftment from the prophets and apostles of God, and we also got to hear voices of warning, telling us what we need to do to keep ourselves safe. I love the counsel from Elder Clayton in doing the small and simple acts of obedience every day.

Have a great week!:)

Love,
Vanhin Robison 




The bike store was open in our apartment last week we tried to fix old missionary bikes haha



We had the biggest grapefruit ever this week. That is next to an orange by the way.

March 27, 2017 ~ Week 74

Hey family and friends, this week was a good one. We got transfer calls and I will be staying here and in Oulu and Elder Henry is going to be coming to serve with me and Elder Bekmezian is going down to Espoo. I am pretty bummed to see Elder Bekmezian leave but I am excited for Elder Henry to come. I have been in the same district as Elder Henry before and even have had an exchange or two with him so it will be a good transfer next transfer.


The work here in Oulu is going great! We haven't really found a ton new investigators but the ones we have found have been prepared and are progressing towards baptism quickly. We have a lot of potential in our pool of investigators and the branch is loving the ones that have come thus far.


We also had zone conference this past week so President and Sister Watson came up to train us and it was great. We talked a lot about Jesus Christ due to Easter quickly approaching. President Watson gave us a challenge to intently study Christ every day and to ponder his words at least until Easter. We were promised a greater Easter season with a better sense of who Jesus Christ is and a deeper meaning of his Atonement in our lives. To give us an example of what it means to ponder and study about Christ he took us to Matthew 11:30 where Christ says "For my yoke is easy and a burden is light". We looked at it as a zone and pulled some thoughts out about it and then President has us look at the word light in a different way. He told us to look at it, not having to do with weight, but rather illumination. Thus we did and it was cool to see the new meaning this short verse has, a burden can give us light, or in other words knowledge, understanding, enlightenment. It was a cool insight that we had and now it's the quest to recreate that kind of experience and realization in my own studies.
For a cool experience we had this week we noticed how the Lord changes our plans and puts us in certain places to find his prepared children. I was on exchanges with our district leader in our area and I had some names for us to follow up with up, although I quickly realized that we did not have enough names for the amount of time that we would be spending outside. I did remember however that we had some names on the opposite side of the area that we could follow up with but we didn't have much time because we had to come back for a lesson which was where we were original. Anyways we walk a long way, talk to a lot of people on the way and then follow up with our potentials and then walk back. It was all seeming pretty fruitless until we got right in front of our investigator's building and met some lady walking her dog who had seen missionaries much time but never actually talked to them but has wanted to. We got her address and phone number set up an appointment and then met with her. She is a very impressive investigator thus far keeping commitments and being very interested in the message we have to share. So that was a cool thing that happened too us this week! 


The work is going oh so well, I love you all and hope that all is well back home! Have a great week!
Love,
Vanhin Robison


p.s. P-day is next Monday as well
 

This is us on exchanges