The Kuopio Gazette

Hi

We got a change call and Elder Helistö left and I am with Elder Oberhansley. I will probably stay here in Kuopio with him for the rest of my mission. Wild.  Vanhin Oberhansley is a lot of fun and we get a long super well. His personality is very relaxed and goofy (He sings Michael Jackson, like Michael Jackson with all the EEE and AAW´s you can imagine haha), but we still get down to business and have been doing a lot of finding this week. By finding, I mean looking for investigators, but also we found a very suitable tree for the apartments Christmas tree. We were taking a break and went out to the woods to.... uh.... look around at stuff.... and we saw a bunch of branches cut of from a pine tree. We found one that looked exactly like a mini pine tree so we hauled it to the car and eventually to the apartment and are now trying to find a way to make it stand up straight. But what a good find! We were pretty pumped.

Also, we had this idea to make a weekly newsletter and send it out to the district to let them know what is going on in the district. We are calling it the "Kuopio Gazette" and we made the first one today. It has details about what is going on in each city, the numbers for the week, a few quotes and even a comic strip. We were pretty proud of it and think that it will be a hit. Every week will be a challenge but it was quite fun to make and did not take that much time.

This week there was a baptism in Kajaani and we went and I gave a talk. I had a joke prepared at first but chickened out and didn’t say it. Isn’t that the worst? The service went really good, and the guy seemed very happy. While there we met with this really great family who are all recent converts and very happy people. They were talking about how great of an impact the gospel has been in their life. They had a really great feeling in their home and it made me think a lot about how living good principles can create so much happiness.

What I meant about the good feeling felt in the home of people who have good standards is that you can tell a difference from the homes where the priorities are in order from the homes where they perhaps are not in the right order. When people are not looking to just satisfy their needs but are instead focusing on others, the people around them are happier and they themselves are happier. It is interesting how it works. When we help others, it helps ourselves. The gospel teaches very good standards and really helps people keep their priorities straight.

That’s about all for this week. Thanks for everything you all do. I love you all.  Have a good week.

Vanhin Merkley