No pictures this week

Hey.

So, anyways.

Some dirtbag stole my camera this week.

We were doing service at the church and I set my backpack down on the grass where we were raking. We continue raking and for 90% of the time I am within sight of my bag. But then I go back and it was not there. We check everywhere and can’t find it. We finally decide to check the near bus stop where we found my backpack opened, map and pamphlets on the ground, and camera gone. I felt like karma was saying: Oh, thank you so much for doing service and helping other people, by the way..... some idiot jacked your camera. But I feel pretty lucky that I found my backpack and the map and I lost only about 2 months of pics instead of my whole missions worth. It is interesting because I had 2 Book of Mormons in my bag, but only found one. So he took the Book of Mormon. I told my companion that when I become an apostle I’m going to hopefully have a sweet conference story about the time someone stole my camera and Book of Mormon and then totally got converted by reading it. Ya never know...

I’m still struggling with the language day by day, but I am seeing some progress. I can understand almost everything in a regular conversation but it is still hard to speak. Finnish is mind blowing with all the possibilities you can throw on words and how it changes the whole sentence. I have really been humbled by it. And am also starting to see the beauty of the complexity. It all fits together like a crazy math problem.

We had a baptism this week. It was an African lady from Tanzania. She is very humble and willing to learn. The baptism went well. I gave a talk about the Holy Ghost. I used my mom as an example. I talked about how sometimes she shows up late for a movie and she don’t know where we were sitting. So we needed to whisper to her and she needed to listen for us over the loud movie. It is the same in life, there are so many loud sounds, but we need to listen to the quiet familiar voice that is telling us where to go. I’m pretty sure it made sense.

This week I got a sweet bike from the ward. We have been trying to find people and our teaching has slowed down a little bit. The bike has been really fun though. It’s also getting really dark really early (still quite warm though). We changed the clocks and ever since than the night just seems to be coming earlier and earlier. The only problem I have noticed is that it tricks me into thinking its about time to go to sleep so I am a little bit more tired. There is still no snow on the ground and people are saying they think it will be a warmer winter. Lets hope, I would love having a mild winter and then when I come back and people ask me about the winters I can say "Pssh... I coulda worn a short sleeve if I wanted" And then they will think I’m tough.

Thanks for everything. I miss and love you all.

Have good weeks.

Heart, Vanhin Merkley