A Freezing Face but a Happy Heart

HOTELissa

(Finland – Week 23)

16 June 2015

We had a fantastically full week with more lessons than usual, and we were out of our area for three days! On Tuesday we went up to Oulu for Zone Training and didn't get home until after dinner on Wednesday. On Saturday we went up to Pietarsaari for District (Stake) Conference in the afternoon, and didn't get home until dinner on Sunday. It was so fun to be so busy! Also, there are no sister missionaries in Pietarsaari (we usually stay at other Sisters' apartments when we travel) and no members in Pietarsaari were able to house us. So the three of us stayed at a hotel! Yes a hotel!! That's not too exciting, except when you think about the fact that missionaries never do that and that means I got a bed! (We don't have three beds, I'm on a mattress on the floor. It's ok, I was on the same for my last transfer too. Brings me back to all those times my family went camping, we never had mats to lie on, just sleeping bags. ("The pioneers didn't have air mattresses!") We had lots of fun using the hotel lamp, the hotel door, the hotel chair, and basically every normal thing that suddenly was exciting because it was hotel. We even had hotel breakfast! That was super delicious, much better than the standard 60-second-cereal-scarfing.

District conference was particularly awesome, one of my favorite things was comparing what we do to maintain our testimonies to medicine. Going to church, reading our scriptures, praying, and all of those things are our medicine that keeps us well. The speaker talked about how when we get sick physically, we take additional foods/medicine/measures to make sure we have a speedy and full recovery. How come when we are spiritually sick one of the first things we tend to do is stop taking our spiritual medicine? That's just counterintuitive. I like how simple it is, and that it's about medicine, two things that remind me of my dad in this Father's Day season! My Dad always taught me the importance of going to church. Whatever language or whatever country we were in, we went to church. It was never a question. Surely there are lots of times with all six of us kids that it would have been a lot easier to stay home or leave us at home, but my dad always took us to church. My dad taught me the importance of reading scriptures, every night we would read as a family. I remember having non-member friends stay at our house and we still read scriptures. I sometimes felt awkward and weird, but it didn't matter, our family read the scriptures. My dad has given me several Priesthood blessings over the years, this taught me the importance of trusting in the Lord and recognizing where our strength comes from. I'm grateful to my Dad for living in a way that made it possible for those blessings to work, and to truly help me. My dad is wise in the ways of earthly and spiritual medicine, (and I'm sure he'd have a funny comment right now, medicine of humor, perhaps humerus medicine) and really the key is to just do it. Just take the medicine, listen to the prophets/doctors, they are here to help and guide us. Doctors can't do anything if we don't take the time and energy to find them.

Here are several fabulously exciting pictures:

Reading the Book of Mormon, in our hotel!