Mother's Day in Finland

We talked to Trevor on Mother's Day. He sounded great and was very excited to talk to everyone in the family. Grandparents from both sides were here for Garrett's baby blessing, so they were able to talk to Trevor as well. He mostly wanted to talk to Nathan and get ideas about finding people to teach and how to gain trust with the Finns. He was very sweet and sang a Mother's Day song to Linda in Finnish (I tried not to cry...but wow!) He seemed a little homesick, but not sad....and didn't want to hang up...so we talked for almost 2 hours (unplanned on our part) What a fun day! Missionary Calls and Baby Blessings!!!!

Hey Fam,
We wrote to Trev: "Looks like we ran out of minutes on the phone card and that is what cut us off." His response: "So that's why the phone call got cut off. lol. I was wondering if I hit a button....or something."

Well here is the weeks update…this week I went over to a less active’s house out in the booneys and did some service work. It was pretty good to have a change up in the rougtine (sp?) but all in all, not a whole lot happened. Yeah, we taught her at the end but she still gave us some excuses as to why she couldn't come.... anyways not important. Um, other than that, my time was filled with knocking doors and hitting the streets. In our mission, it doesn't seem like we have a problem finding investigators. As of right now, we don't really have anyone to work with, but I think we will be able to find someone this next week to start teaching.I'm glad to hear that the baby blessing went well. (Garrett was blessed on Mother’s Day) Too bad I couldn’t'be there for it.

Thanks for the great advice and also the encouragement. I'll try to remember it and use it throughout the mission. By the way, I would still like some of those stories you told about me and Jason when we were younger. If you have time, make a tape of some of them in the coming months. No rush. Thank you also for the pictures I enjoy getting those...well, tell me how next week goes for everyone.

Love, Trevor

From Elder May: “So yes here in Finland, it was truly Mothers Day - Finnish flags out and everything, no stores were open so it was really nice. (I asked in our email if it was also a Finnish holiday or just one in the US - since I didn't ask that during our phone call. We found out Father's Day isn't until November in Finland.) Church was really nice and a good spirit was there. Elder Christensen and I sang in Finnish ''Army of Helaman'' and all the members loved it. The spirit was really strong, I love being with Elder Christensen, he has a great voice, and we sound really good together, since he can cover the high stuff for me and I got the lower notes - we cover each other's backs. We are really focusing on working and strengthening the members, by teaching them from preach my gospel and helping them understand how they can bring up the gospel with their friends.

They have these activities every now and then where it's a movie night usually or something like an informational about the church, and they have refreshments. So they had one last Friday where they were watching the movie the Ten Commandments, which is super old, and they invited us to it. So Elder Christensen and I went hoping the members had invited some friends which we could talk to, but they didn't show up and we were watching the movie, and into the beginning I decided ''oh boy, this is not missionary appropriate,'' but I didn't want to offend the members. The spirit was like ''you need to go now'' and so I talked to our bishop and he said '' oh yeah that will be fine'' so we left and went tracting.

And last Monday was Elder Christensen's birthday and I made a banana cream pie and oh, it was so good, and we sang to him and it was a fun little small thing to do as missionaries. So this week we have a ton going on - We have district meeting in Pietarsaari which is where Elder Karlsson (MTC companion) serves and then on Wednesday we have a thing in the center of our city were we will set up a booth with our members and try to advertise the church, almost like a convention that dad goes to, but an all around one - pretty much anyone can have a table, so hopefully it works for our favor and we can find some new investigators through it.

Then on Friday Elder Karlsson and his companion are coming down for splits and that should be really good. I love Elder Karlsson, we are both excited that Elder Quinn (the other MTC companion) is our new Assistant to the President.” Vanhin May