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.

Kuopio week 2!

Rakkaat ystävät!

Long crazy week with so much strange stuff happening and so many miracles. Here are a few fun things that happened this week:

- We got 3 new investigators!! Two of them are older, and it my be difficult to have formally structured lessons with them, but we hope to bring the Spirit to them by reading the Book of Mormon with them and singing. We do a lot of singing. The third is a younger man from Nigeria who is SUPER ready and really thinks this gospel is what he is looking for. Of course we assurred him that is is :) He came to church on Sunday (the first investigator the sisters have had in church in a LONG time), and even though he could only stay for about half of Sacrament Meeting (he had his little girl with him and had obligations with the family for Father's Day) he loved it and is really excited to come next week.

- We dropped in on a less active woman to bring her muffins, and accidentally ended up staying for 2 and a half hours while she talked at us about her familiy history, her apartment, her photos, you name it. She is quite an interesting woman, but in a really cool way that makes me want to be her friend forever. We were able to set up another appointment with her, and it was so good to finally establish contact with her. She'll be reactivated in no time!

- The bishop's wife invited her friend over to have a lesson with us. The young woman is in the wife's nutrition class and is interested in the Word of Wisdom, of all things. But we taught her about the Restoration and it was such a cool lesson - she has so much potential. It seemed to really click with her. She prayed with us and agreed readily to meet again. Right now, she's only willing to arrange a meeting through the bishop's wife, but she is way cool and super prepared.

- The Young Women's president held a sleepover with the YW girls (she's 27 and way cool), and she invited us to come hold an activity with them. We played a game about the Restoration, which they loved, and taught them and invited them to read in the Book of Mormon, and they said they would. It was a great opportunity because many of the girls there are less active or on the brink, and it was a really good chance to teach them about the gospel in a fun, low-pressure environment.

Other than that, we have been doing a lot of good member and less active work. The members here LOVE the missionaries and invite us over a lot. I really love them - they are so loving and so willing to help and learn and do missionary work.

I love you all too! Have a great week and remember how much the Lord loves you!

Stay shiny!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant

We found Ikea - it's just like home!

YESSS!!! They have Swedish meatballs in Finland. 

Kuopio, the City of Dreams

This has been quite the week. Monday evenng last week was the Huhtala boy's baptism, which was great, and immediately after it ended, and we'd gotten a little food and some photos, there was a mad dash to the train station. Sisar Ross had to stay behind at the church with the other Sisters because the Restoration concert started at 6:30, and Sisar Huhtala kindly escorted me to the apartment, where we somehow managed to manhandle my bags into the car, then to the train station where I got on the train with just minutes to spare. Blessed! It was really sad to leave, but I didn't have a lot of time to mope. I got to Helsinki in one piece and stayed with the Neitsytpolku Sisters, who got me off dark and early Tuesday morning to my train. The train to Kuopio was delayed in Helsinki for an hour for technical difficulties, after which the trip lasted 4.5 hours. But finally, I made it to Kuopio, where there was another crazy couple of hours getting me settled in and getting Sisar West sent off to Helsinki.

The work in Kuopio is going wonderfully. We have a couple investigators, but right now we're mostly doing a lot of member and less-active work. The members here are so cool! By the end of this week, we will have had more DA's than we usually had over the period of a month in Turku. The members love us so much and are so willing to help us. Not to mention everyone here is musical or artistic in some way. I just got dropped into a massive pool of kindred spirits. I've even been asked already to do a musical number in church!

The Sisters' area in Kuopio is really spread out (welcome to the North!), so we have a car here to get us to areas that are farther away. One area is out in Varkaus, a little town about an hour away, and we go there once a week. We aren't allowed to proselyte there because it's so far away, but we had a really cool miracle happen on Wednesday when we were there. One of our appointments there cancelled, so we went to an ABC (a gas station/restaurant-y kind of thing) to do language study, and we had only been sitting there for a couple minutes when a man approached us and asked if we were from another church. We told him we were from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and why we were here. He plopped right down next to us, and we had a really long conversation about doctrine, gave him a Mormonin Kirja and a couple pamplets, and set up an appointment for the next time we are in Varkaus. It was a miracle to see how the Lord put us in that exact place at that time so that we could meet this man. He was very interested, and we are excited to meet with him again.

Other highlights of the week include, but are not limited to:

- Prepping for (and pretty much running) the unofficial ward Halloween party at our BML's house, and eating lots of homemade caramel.

- Cleaning the apartment of a recent convert in our ward who just moved, and spending about 5 hours deep cleaning the kitchen alone. It was quite the process.

It has been a wicked fast week packed with more things than I can account in such a short email time. And, our car is parked on a meter, so we have to get going.

But, I really love the work here. I love what I'm doing because I know it's true. This is the true church of Jesus Christ on the earth today. We have a living prophet and we have true scripture in the Book of Mormon, as well as the Bible. We have the real and functioning power of the Priesthood guiding our church. And I get to share that with the world :)

I love you all so much and hope you have a fabulous week, wherever you are!

Stay shiny!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant

Caramel apples. Yum!

Let it snow.

Can you guess who we are supposed to be?