Angel Harp Music

Good week. We had a very nice member friend buy us tickets to the 19 year old world lacrosse here in Turku.  So we went and watched the USA play in the finals against Canada. It was really fun to watch. They were pretty dang good. Lacrosse is a really fast game and if you blink you might miss a goal, but if you’re watching carefully you can see some amazing goals. There was this one dude who ran in, dove past and over everybody and chucked it in. It was crazy athletic. US ended up winning 10-8.

We had District meeting in Pori and splits in Turku. I had splits with Elder Orr. He is the Army Ranger who was in the MTC with me. He is a really funny guy and we had some pretty great conversations. And at night, he had his guitar and we jammed together. It was pretty funny to see this big army man eating the vegetarian dinner I made. Haha he kept saying things like "Man, this is good but without meat I don’t feel full at all" but I think he liked it nonetheless.

We also had a meeting with the Mission President. The older I have gotten as a missionary, the shorter my interviews have been. This last one was basically "Hey, Elder Merkley, how ya been? Any questions for me? No. Ok, lets say a prayer." Haha they understand that at this point in a missionaries life, the main hurdle is just trying to not get trunky. Which, by the way, has not been very hard lately. I think it has somewhat to do with me not knowing exactly when I will be coming home. Which actually is something we quickly talked about and he said that getting me home for the semester should be doable, but he will know the details better a little later.

We found 3 new investigators this week, which was cool. They seem to have a lot of potential. The other day one of them texted us and said "I read the chapter you gave me, where else can I read?" It was angel harp music to our ears.

I learned a pretty good lesson this week. We were in the bus and I was just thinking about the mysteries of life (because I’m so deep and cool like that) And I thought "If this bus flipped and I died right now, would I be satisfied with who I am and what direction I was going (and I don’t mean the direction as in "back to the apartment")" Being a young person, I have the mentality that I will live forever, but I realized that if I did die right then, I would have regretted not pushing myself as much as I could have. There is much room for improvement in my life and a lot of the things I sort of put off and say I will do later. But I realized that putting things off only leads to being less than what you could be. I have hopes for me becoming a certain type of person but if I just wait for it to happen, it won’t. I feel like a cliche high school motivational speaker, but we need to do our best to reach our full potential. There is the saying that the sky is the limit, but I disagree, I say there is no limit. BOOM. Ya, you can quote that one.

Well that’s about all there is for this week. Let me know what you’re all up to.

Love you all.

Vanhin Merkley