Week 4 (Almost)

Rakas ystäviä!

I am now the proud owner of a Turkulainen kirjastokortti (Turku library card), so I am writing this email not from the church, but from a laptop at the library.

Fun fact! My middle name is Ruth, so that's why this is significant. Did you know that Ruth (like from the Bible) is in Christ's lineage through Joseph? So not technically related except by marriage, but I didn't know that until I started reading the New Testament again. A lot of people ask have asked if we use the Bible too, or just say we believe in it and I realized that I'm not well-versed (ha, get it?) in the Bible and decided to start reading the easier of the two books.  I'm trying to read at least a little everyday, because the Bible really is super important because it's the word of God too. It's important, especially as a missionary, to know the Book of Mormon really well, because that's what we use to do the bulk of our teaching. But, it is just as important to know the Bible because it teaches of Christ too and it teaches real, solid doctrine.  And, it's what most people are familiar with and we need to be on common ground with them.

I will tell you a little about my schedule because it pretty much never changes and pretty much determines what we do every day. We get up at 6:30 AM and exercise (or pretend to exercise) for around 30 minutes (or 20 depending on how much I don't want to do it that day. Don't worry, I do try), and then we get most of the way ready and eat breakfast. We don't usually put on makeup until later for the sake of time and not rubbing it all off during study time. Then, we have companionship prayer and start personal study for an hour. We have two hours of companionship study since I'm still in training, and an hour of language study. We usually take time for lunch right after that, finish getting ready and then we are out the door. Hopefully, we have lessons scheduled with investigators, but we also visit members, less active members, and recent converts, so usually we have a good amount of stuff to do. If worse comes to worst, we go out on the streets and contact people - meaning we just talk to as many people as we can. We also have a lot of travel time to schedule in usually, whether by bike or by bus, so that eats time as well, but what can you do? We take dinner at some point during the evening, sometimes around 5, and sometimes it depends on whether or not we have a dinner appointment. Sometimes we take dinner around 8 and then just stay in for the evening. In the Finnish culture, evenings are more commonly alone- or family-time, so it is often difficult to schedule stuff then, so it's a good time for us to take dinner in order to be most time-effective. We are home about 9, or 9:30 if we have an appointment or travel time, then we plan for the next day, have companionship prayer and get ready for bed. We're supposed to be in bed by 10:30 (I'll admit that's been the hardest thing for me because it's difficult to do everything that needs doing, but no one's perfect, right?). So that't a day in my life here in Finland.

So every missionary has funny stories, and I'm sure you've been waiting to hear a good one. Well I have one. This actually happened just within the first few days of being in country. We were in an area of Turku called Varissuo trying to find an address and there was this guy sitting out on his parvite (I'm not sure if that's correct spelling, but it's a little patio/porch/balcony thing that all the apartments have) smoking and we stopped and talked with him a little. We gave him a pass-along card with our phone number and started talking about how we believe in God as our heavenly father, and in Jesus Christ as our Savior, and the guy just went off. He said he believed in the great Creator, but that he did not believe in Christ at all, because according to him, Christ was just some guy who said all these things and just wanted all the attention for himself. We trying to explain otherwise, and that Christ was the son of God, and the guy then told us that Christ was actually conceived when a UFO came and took Mary up and made her pregnant, so Christ was actually an alien or a cyborg or something. Then he started talking about how he got visions and he had a direct connection with the Creator and that he had a never-ending flow of visions of the creation going in the back of his head and that he had seen the creation of the world and he saw our creation and he saw all these things as they were happening. So, by this point we had established that the guy was nuts, and we were like no thanks and just walked away. The next morning we got a phone call and Sisar Howell picked up. Her face went a little pale and she got this funny expression and she basically said "No, thanks, we have our own religion, but have a nice day, bye," and hung up and I just knew it was that guy. And she turned to me and said, "He just asked us to be his opetuksenlapset!" The crazy man had created his own religion and wanted us to be his disciples! And what made it funnier is that this is only the second time Sisar Howell has ever had someone call her back from a pass-along card. So I guess the moral of the story is that the cards do work, but maybe not always in the way we expect.

I hope all is well with you! Love life, love God, and love each other!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant