This week has been the best of my mission by far. I love it. Yes, Finland is way cold, yes, Finns are really quiet, yes, Finnish is ridiculously hard and sometimes I feel really inadequate, but this is amazing. I've already fallen in love with Helsinki and the people here.
We had a baptismal commitment when I got here but it fell through the morning of. It was sad, but I have faith that our investigator will continue to progress and eventually reach that point of his conversion.
I have officially seen the sun a total of two times here! It's pretty much always cloudy or nighttime. Haha it's like I'm living in a snowglobe. I love it!
My Finnish is getting better daily. I can typically talk to people on my own, although sometimes I have to ask them to repeat what they said in simpler terms or get my trainer to help me but I'm getting better (and humbler :) ) every day.
At Church on Sunday I got to give the opening prayer, pass the sacrament, and play the piano in priesthood! That was so exciting. I met a around 23 year old man named Saul and he's super cool, but when he said his name at first I thought he said Sauna. The two sound way similar in a Finnish accent and man it was funny.
One time I got two people on the bus to talk to us at the same time! My companion and I were trying to figure out the best word for water bottle (whether or not we had to put the word water in partitive and what that would do to the word bottle) and they saw us struggling and helped us out! That was fun.
Yesterday, our district caroled at a train station and this one older lady came to watch us, and at the end I went to go talk to her and she was so nice. She had seen our temple in Espoo and thought it was so pretty. Her name was Helena and we talk for a good ten minutes. It was great and I especially liked it because almost the whole discussion was in Finnish and my trainer wasn't with me! At one point she said she was a bad lady because she smokes and drinks alcohol and I was like YEEESSS TESTIFYING TIIIIMMMEEE and started talking about how Christ's healing power and atonement had helped me change so much in my life and how He could help her! When I get excited about something I start speaking pretty quickly for some reason and I was doing it in Finnish and so I was like oh boy, I'm speaking so fast, what if I mess up and get thrown off and forget what I'm saying, but I just had faith that the gift of tongues would activate in me and it totally did! It was a wonderful little miracle to me that I could talk to her and my District Leader came up to me after that and told me that after Helena and I had parted ways she had started to cry. I love her and the Finnish people and this beautiful language.
On a different note, last night I gave myself my first haircut and it was awful. Suffice to say I got a nice knitted hat from Flying Tiger Copenhagen and I keep that thing on. Oh boy, we have a dinner appointment tonight! Well, that'll make for a good story.
I love Helsinki, I love Finland, I love this Gospel and Christ and the Church and the ward I'm serving in and the little Finnish kids and the super kind older ladies and the newly married couples in our ward and my companion and my district and everyone here in this blessed land. I love Christmastime as well. I hope we can all remember that Christmas is not about getting presents or Santa or elves, but about He who was born to redeem of us our sins. I love Jesus Christ. I know that He lives.
I love you all as well! Have a wonderful week!
--
Elder Hancock
From Mom:
I got the following email today from one of the Senior sisters working in the Mission Office. It's amazing how a simple email from someone can mean so much. I told her that it made it feel like Sam wasn't that far away after all. I love it!
She wrote:
These are some pictures of the ward party held on Sat. The missionaries did a skit "A Day in the Life of a Missionary". It was very funny and so typical. You may have seen the video that Sister Gamett put on the Missionary Moms, but I thought I would send you a couple of pictures. We love being where the young missionaries are. The build our testimonies and we are amazed with their knowledge of the gospel. Your sons are working very hard to share "The Light of the World" with many people. We love them and know they love the people of Finland. They did a fantastic job of serving the riisi puuro (porridge) to all who attended. They helped with the decorating and cleaned up after.
I know one of the pictures is not very clear, but the smiles are better.
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