No More Drunk Italian Men Please 🧀

HAUKKUMINEN 👑

Sooooo I have a cold. Fun fact about Finland, you can't get cold medicine unless it is prescribed to you by a doctor. I have not been to a doctor and I don't think it's that severe so I have been "thugging" it out with no meds. Definitely made the week a bit of rougher one for me but I honestly just feel sorta bad being a dead-weight to my companion this week. BUT I've been feeling better and God is a God of miracles so I know He can heal me up to go out and do His work!

PÄIVITYKSET 🌸

🤍 PITSIVIIKKO! Rauma, the city I'm in, is known for its lace aaaand this past week was Lace Week so there was an international food market, pop up shops, more people in Vanha Rauma than I could count or comprehend. Like an actual CRAZY amount of people for Rauma I was taken aback. (in a good way)

🤍 As part of Pitsiviikko or Lace Week we went to a knitting picnic, which was just a whole bunch of older ladies gathered together to knit and chat. We met some really kind ladies and got to knit/crochet (I can't knit) which was super nice. We actually met someone in our ward's mom who isn't a member!

🤍 SPLITS! The STLs came from Tampere and we had a switch of pace and companion for a day or so. AND we had an absolute miracle! We have friends who are super kind but they aren't good at keeping in contact with us so last transfer we just showed up at their door and got warmly welcomed in BUT ever since it had been the same story UNTIL we decided we should go check in, so we knocked and low and behold they had JUST arrived back home and we were again warmly welcomed and we got to sing a song we had prepared for them too!

🤍 Every week we have a mission wide zoom call with all the missionaries in Finland and this week Sisar Dickens and I were in charge of a big portion of the meeting which was SCARY but hey people said we did a good job so hopefully the spirit was able to uplift and edify them through some things we said

🤍 SERVICE! We got to help an older lady in our ward who was living far out in Eura move into her apartment here in Rauma! (I think I mentioned she was moving in a previous email?) I love her! She even bought us lunch to eat with her afterwards. BUT gaaalllyyy it's so embarrasing trying to help someone with things when you don't understand what they're asking you to do...as you can probably imagine

🤍 Our most progressing friend randomly told us he needed to meet with us which had us pretty worried because it seemed urgent. It turns out he was just needing some peace in his life and when he's with us he feels it because we have God's spirit with us!

HENGELLINEN HETKI 🙏

Remember Lot's Wife 》Holland

"Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the 'high priest of good things to come'". (Hebrews 9:11)

I love this talk by Elder Holland. He speaks about living in the present. He says not to hold onto past mistakes, to remember the lesson from it but to move past it. Allow yourself to be healed and forgiven through Jesus Christ's Atonement on your behalf! And most of all to look to the future with enthusiasm! Although the future is uncertain when we think of Christ the future is filled with hope, excitment even, and things we can look forward to! I'm going to try to live more in the present this week, and look to the future with optimism and I want to invite yall to do the same! Remember the best things are coming because Christ is coming again! Better things than we've experienced or can even imagine!

SIVUTEHTÄVÄT

⛔ Soooo Sister Hansen and I went into the crowds of Pitsiviikko with a whiteboard asking "Kuka on sun sarkarisi?" "Who is your hero?" and it was hands down one of the funniest things I've done on the mission. Finns are so awkward haha I love them. But hey! We had super wholesome moments too where a daughter would write "Äiti" or "Mom" with her mom there with her. HOWEVER since we were carrying a Book of Mormon and we have missionary tags on security kindly but firmly to leave as preaching is not allowed-awkward BUT I can't complain it was SOOOO fun while it lasted.

🖍️ Shoutout Sister Schofield for making District Council super entertaining...for a little fun moment before we got down to the nitty gritty. Everybody had a piece of paper with their name on it and we each had 20 seconds to add to someone's portrait and they turned out SO funny by the time they got back to us-I'll add a photo at the bottom of this email of how my drawing turned out :)

📦 I GOT MY PACKAGES RAAAHH I ordered some essentials and some not so essentials haha and I thought they would take forever to get here (because I gots to send them to the mission office in Espoo which is far away from Rauma) BUT the office senior mission couple came in Rauma randomly and I GOT THEM YAY

🐈 It might not seem like much BUT during tracting we met a super friendly cat just like my Romeo and it made my day! Kiitos Jumalalle (I'll put a picture too)

👕 Went to a kirppis!! (Thrift store) and I got this super cool Rauma shirt for cheap. Basically living the dream

🇮🇹 Okay about these drunk Italian men. There were multiple Italian cheese stands in in this international food market and these guys knew who missionaries were...so they called us out in almost a jeering way but then we talked with them more (awkward) and as we talked with them they became more friendly? I don't know how to describe it but they were interesting men and I'll be totally okay if I don't run into them again haha. They were almost passive aggressive towards us you could say.

Yall know by know but I love ya, I love hearing from ya so send those emails my way! I'm praying for yall too :)

Kaikki hyvin!

Sisar Dickson

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