Zone Conference and new friends

Rakkaat ystävät,

Living in the North Zone is a lot different than farther south. For example, it only gets light around 9 in the morning now, and gets dark around 4 in the afternoon. Happily, it will only get worse until Christmas, and then it will get better :)

North Zone also means TRAVELING. And a lot of it. We make weekly trips to Varkaus, a smaller town an hour away, and Joensuu for District Meeting. Many of our members also live an hour away. And Zone Conferences are held in Oulu, a 4 1/2 hour long train ride, and involves about two days' worth of time. We had Zone Conference this week, and we left mid-afternoon on Wednesday and didn't get back until mid-afternoon on Friday.

Zone Conference was awesome. Elder Texiera of the Quorum of the Seventy and Europe Area President, was there as part of a mission tour. He and his wife, as well as President and Sisar Watson, presented an excellent, uplifting meeting, and I learned a lot and received a lot of inspiration on how to improve and strengthen my personal work. President Texiera shared many inspiring stories from his own mission and taught us to have a baptizing mindset, to never believe that miracles can't happen to us, and to put forth all of our effort until the very last second to do absolutely everything the Lord has in store for us. Very motivating.

As far as the work goes, we found a miracle new tutkija last night. We needed to go home for dinner and weekly call-ins, but we stayed out just a little longer and met this young man on his way to the store. We stopped him rather awkwardly, because stopping someone on the street really can't be un-awkward, and kind of elbowed our way from uncomfortable small talk to the gospel. As it turns out, his mother passed away not too long ago, and we were able to teach about eternal families, gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and set up an appointment, He readily accepted all of it, and we're excited to talk with him some more.

As the Christmas season approaches (Finns don't celebrate Thanksgiving, so I'm already in the Christmas mindset), just remember who we are really celebrating. The Savior of the world is a pretty important person, and we get to celebrate His birthday. Let's not forget that Jesus Christ really is the reason for the season :)

I wish you all a lovely week. Stay shiny!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant

Seeing old friends. 

"Lift where you stand"

The lakes are freezing over.