How To Get Happier (And It's Not What You Think)

Moi!

Standing on a frozen river!

Funny Train Experience

Well, I have officially been on my mission for 5 months!  I wish I could say that it flew by but it really feels like the longest 5 months of my entire life! But I hear that time starts picking up after you make it through the first 6 months so hopefully that is all true! But this week I got to almost witness a fist fight between a drunk guy and a passenger on the train! It was so funny and kind of scary!  This extremely drunk guy ended up getting on the train but because he is really drunk he wasn't actually allowed to be on the train. The train wouldn't move until he got off and the worker was a woman just trying to get him off on her own when he started walking down the aisle to the front. A passenger jumped up and grabbed onto his shirt to stop him. but that made the drunk guy really mad and he started yelling that he wanted to go to the front of the train!  Apparently he started yelling some really mean things at the passenger who stopped him (that I didn't understand.)  The passenger just shoved him back and they got into this yelling and shoving and spitting fight that was getting close to being a fistfight.  Meanwhile, the whole train gets really loud because this NEVER really happens in Finland and so everyone is talking about it. There were a bunch of teenage boys on the train who want to get in on the action so they all start getting up and coming down to join the fight. Meanwhile, I am trying to hold my companion down because for some reason Sister Fronk had this belief that she could get up and help!  Not a good idea!  We are supposed to stay AWAY from drunk guys not go marching up to one, especially when they are in a fight with someone else! Plus, we are so entertained by the whole interaction that we are trying our hardest not to have the biggest grins on our faces while everyone else is worried, haha!  Fortunately, the lady was able to get the drunk guy to get off the train and it was finally able to start moving again. :) Then things that drunk people do.  I just don't understand why people would ever want to be drunk.

The tree that stopped my fall

The Strange Things That Can Turn a Day Around

I have to admit that it was just a pretty exciting day all around.  One day I was having a pretty rough day and I was pretty upset with everything, so as we were walking up to Hai's home (our recent convert) to meet a member and teach a lesson, I was just looking at the ground feeling a little sorry for myself and not really paying much attention to anything.  Kinda lame.  But just as I finally reached the top step of a set of stone stairs, I slipped!  My shin ended up landing on the corner of the stone step and it was right on the edge of a hill...so I started rolling down the hill until I ran into a tree!  I have to admit it was pretty exciting, even though it hurt really bad! That's what I get for being down. After that, strangely enough, I was a lot happier!  Funny how things like that work! 

The damage it did!

Seeing  the Light From Us

We also had a really interesting contacting experience this past week.  We were walking through this area in Kaukalahti saying Hi to everyone who was walking by when we started to noticed that all the people we were talking to just didn't seem to be all the way there.  The first thing I thought was "Did an addiction recovery class" just get out?  We were coming up with all sorts of explanations, haha.  It was so weird because everyone was completely out of it and they would come and get really close to us and look at our name tags and say "I'm atheist" and then they would walk away.  Or they would start telling us about their day.... It was so weird!  Once we got passed that crazy experience we continued walking all the way to a former investigator's house, who ended up not being home, but we met her neighbor who was outside and she was so cool!  She was so nice and we talked to her for about 45 minutes and even though she wasn't interested in the church she told us that we were representing our church well because we are really trying to learn Finnish, be happy, and just always willing to help anyone we can.  She said that people can just see light from us! 

We see beautiful snowflakes like this all the time!

Not a Member... YET!!

The beautiful Finnish sunshine

This week we also had our investigator who is 18, Anna, came to church again! She comes ever week and she honestly loves it!  The hard thing is that she is so busy with exams that she still has no time to meet with us but she is wanting to meet next week sometime after all her exams are finished!  We are super excited about it!  She is also going each week to the Young Adult Class with the bishop's daughter.  Two non-member boys walked into church this week for a school assignment and so they all went around telling how long they have been members and why they are a member of the church.  When it came to Anna she said that she wasn't a member YET.  :) When we talked to her on the phone later that day she talked about how two boys had come and visited OUR church and then she corrected herself and said your church.  We talked to her more about the Book of Mormon that she received that day and she told us how much she wants to read it and pray about it to know if it is true :) She seriously is amazing and we are so blessed and spoiled with her!  We love her so much and know that she is going to be baptized. It is amazing to see her come from not believing in God to believing.  We actually went back and looked at exactly what we prayed for a few weeks ago. We prayed for a 17 year old girl, who would be baptized, really love the Gospel, and be a kingdom builder and we were blessed with Anna!  It is amazing how God really answers prayers. :)

Beautiful Finland

 I love you all!
Love, Sister Knapp

The Most Dramatic & Craziest Week Ever! (But Still the Blessings Come)

Moi! 

Dramatic Sisters and Those Poor Zone Leaders!

I have to say that this has been the most dramatic and craziest week of my entire mission by far.  Sure, I have only been out for 5 months but hopefully it is the only time I have a week like this one!  So this past Sunday morning Sister West had to be rushed to the hospital by the Elders Crofts and Kaaria at 3 in the morning.  We ended up finding out the next morning that the couple missionaries were going to go to the hospital to watch over Sister West, while they figured out what was wrong, (One thing that we learned is that Finnish Hospitals are really laid back and take forever to get things figured out and taken care of.)  Sister West's companion, Sister Venz, was going to be coming to be a third companion for the next couple of days.  That started  a pretty crazy Sunday because we had an investigator, Anna, coming to church for the first time, but we also had Sister Venz coming back from being at the hospital all night who was exhausted and needed someone to stay with her! So we made the decision that I was going to stay at the church on member splits, because as a Sister Training Leader Sister Fronk really needed to be with Sister Venz, but Sister Fronk also had to give a talk in Sacrament meeting!  So we really had no idea what to do.  Fortunately the elders didn't get back with Sister Venz until right after Sister Fronk's talk and so she basically just ran out the door right after giving it and left me with the members in the ward and Anna, who spoke only Finnish and I can't really speak Finnish and I didn't have anyone to help!  Fortunately, Elder Waite could help out and it went really well and Anna loved being at church! After church Sister Fronk and Sister Venz had to walk to the church to pick me up and then we went back to the apartment and tried to start setting up member splits for the next week for members to come and watch Sister West, who did end up getting her appendix out, and to go out with Sister Venz.  Talk about really hard!  Anyway, the next day President Rawlings needed Sister Fronk to go to the hospital and be with Sister West while she recovered from her surgery.  So I was with Sister Venz for our P-day.  We were both a little frustrated because we didn't know why Sister Venz wasn't the one at the hospital with her companion, where she really wanted to be.  In addition, we were planning on going to visit her but were told that we couldn't and that the zone leaders were going to go instead.  That made both of us mad at the zone leaders and come to find out that just about everyone ended up mad at them!  Haha, those poor zone leaders having to deal with all of us dramatic sisters!!  Sister Fronk ended up being there all day and all night and most of the next day.  Somehow they managed to break the hospital rules and have her spend the night there, which they don't normally allow.  For the next couple of days we couldn't find members to be with Sister West and Sister Venz and so we had to do splits.  I have to admit that I liked it because Sister Fronk knows this area of Espoo so she went on splits with Sister Venz and I was on splits with Sister West, which meant  I got to just read my scriptures and keep her company.  Not a bad job!  :)  But then Sister Venz and Sister Fronk came back and Sister Venz was upset because she wanted to be with her companion.  Haha, long story short, more drama followed.  Meanwhile, Sister West was feeling stressed because everyone was upset with each other.  It was so bad!  But luckily we were told to just return to our normal work and Sister Venz was able to pull everything together and get members to do splits with them for the last few days of the week!  She is awesome that way!  So everything ended up working out! 

I'm Freezing Almost All the Time!

Finland is also starting to get so much colder! All of the rivers are starting to freeze over which is really cool to see but the sea hasn't frozen over yet.  I am way excited to be able to see that!  Apparently that becomes a Finnish past time where people are wanting to go out and walk on the frozen sea!  I don't blame them, I think it is pretty cool!  But really I am freezing almost all of the time. Which makes it so much harder to jaksaa (Finnish word that basically means 'to feel to' times 10) to go outside and work.  This week was a really hard one for us because we ended up having to drop, or ended up being dropped, by more than half of our investigators that weren't really progressing so we are kinda having to restart and reopen our area.  That is really hard when it is so cold outside and you don't want to be outside knocking on doors or contacting people on the street!  It is really good motivation to find people to teach, though, so that we can be inside! :)  

Glowing With the Light of the Gospel

We got to experience some really, really cool things this week too. We got to go to the temple with Hai to watch him do baptisms for the very first time!  That was such an amazing experience!  I love the temple here in Finland! I have been fortunate enough to have gone for myself 3 times already and to get to see Hai do baptisms and I get to go again next week! I have to admit that it is one of the prettiest temples that I have ever seen!  The inside of it is so beautiful!  Fun fact though:  we were looking in the book Daughters in My Kingdom and the picture of the baptismal font in that book is of the Helsinki temple!  How cool is that!?  Anyway, it was so cool to see him to baptisms for the dead!  Afterwards, he was just glowing!  So even though he loves to argue with us and give us a hard time we know that he really does love this gospel and feels good because he was seriously glowing!  Now I know what people mean when they say that they are just glowing with the light of the Gospel :) 

If We But Ask Him

We also had two of our investigators come to church this past week!  The Finnish girl, Anna, ended up coming to church again because she loves it and really enjoys learning about God and about the gospel!  Its really funny because she is really busy so she cant meet during the week.  I will admit that I never expected that I would have an investigator who would come to all three hours of church every week even though we can't seem to meet with for 30 minutes during the week! She is so amazing and she is going to come next week, plus she is coming to a family home evening that we are having tonight at the Hentunen's because she is friends with Roosa!  We also talk to her about meeting outside of church and she really wants to but she can't until after her exams.  After those are over she says that she wants to meet a lot so that she can learn!  I am so grateful for prayer!  It was through prayer that we were able to find her.  We really wanted to find an investigator who was 17 and Finnish and who would want to learn and could be baptized and the Lord provided us with this investigator!  It is amazing!  The Lord has so many blessings that He is just waiting to give to us and all we need to do is just ask Him in faith and then He will give it to us!  It doesn't always come in the exact way that you expect but He does pour out His blessings upon us if we but ask Him. :)  

It Was Such a Good Sunday!

The other investigator who came is a guy from Ghana and he is just awesome!  I think I talked about him a few weeks ago. He is great and it was so cool to see him at church (even though he could only come to the sacrament meeting) but he was loving it, and he brought his friend with him!!!  Talk about having the missionary mindset!  And now his friend is coming to the next lesson which is amazing!  We are so excited about this investigator because he really knows the power of prayer and really knows how to pray and so if he just prays with real intent and really wants to know if this is the true church then there is nothing that is going to stop him!  It was such a good Sunday!  :)

Being Spoiled

Today has also been a really fun day!  Not only did I finish the Book of Mormon this morning but we have already had a lunch appointment with some members!  I know that both of those don' really go together but those are just two things that I thought were exciting.  I love the members here!  They are so sweet and so nice to us and I will admit that members really love sisters!  I mean, don't tell the elders that (even though they already know) but they just love sisters and we are still kind of this novel thing! There weren't sisters in Espoo for a really long time (until this past year) and now there are 4 of us!  But they are so nice to me and always comment on how my Finnish is getting so much better which makes be feel so good because I really don't think that my Finnish is very good at all, but it helps when members are encouraging you to speak it.  I just love the members here in Espoo! I love Espoo!  These members that we were with are so sweet and actually live right next to us and if they don't see us at least once a week they start wondering why we haven't stopped by, haha They also like to spoil us missionaries and so they take a set of missionaries out to this buffet for lunch once a month.  They are so cute!  Let's say that I never thought I would be eating pizza with a fork and a knife.  In fact, I never thought that I would ever learn to eat with a fork and knife, haha!  Americans just aren't very proper that way.  Anyway, I just have to say that I love the members here and really I just love Finland. :)

Your Prayers Are Answered Everyday!

Also I love this gospel.  I love seeing the many blessings and miracles each and everyday as people learn and grow in the Church. The Church is true and the Book of Mormon is true and I am so grateful that I have it in my life.  I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I am eternally grateful for His atonement.  I am not the perfect missionary.  In fact, I am far far from it, but I am so grateful that through the atonement I can become better and stronger and happier!  I love each and every one of you!  Thank you for all of your love, support, and prayers in behalf of me and the people of Finland!  I promise that they are answered everyday!  I love you! 

Love, 

Sister Knapp 

Finnish Missionaries And A Chinese Spring Festival

Moi!! 

This has probably been one of the craziest weeks ever! But guess what everyone?!  There is finally SNOW in FINLAND!!!  I never thought that I would have to wait until the middle of January for it to finally snow and to not have the white Christmas that we usually have.  I mean we were walking around in short sleeves and no jackets on Christmas day! That has kinda been what the weather has been like lately here, but maybe not quite so warm, until just this past weekend!  It was crazy how fast the temperature dropped. It went from being kinda cold to down right freezing within a day!  I am about to experience the Finnish winter!  And I have talked to Finns about how cold it is here and they say it gets even colder so hopefully I don't die!  

Mission Fast

Well last week we had our mission leadership council meeting where we decided that we would to the mission fast that we are all really excited about!  Each district throughout Finland will get a week to fast for their area and the mission as a whole, so each companion will fast one day and the entire fast will last about 11 weeks!  We were all really excited about it and got to present in zone meeting this week.   So we met with the elders and planned the zone meeting which actually went really well!  I still have to admit that I don't like having to sit up front in these meetings with the zone leaders and Sister Fronk, haha.  I am the companion tag along who gets to sit through all the long meetings because my companion is sister training leader. :)  Plus, I get to enjoy all of the awkward eye contact moments that you make when sitting up front!  But at zone meeting we discovered that our district would be starting off the fast because most of the leaders are in our district and so President had us set up a last minute district meeting!  That was rough because there are people who have to take a train for an hour to get to us and others who have to drive 45 minutes. But we managed to pull it off and then found out that they had decided to switch and have a different district go first. It was the craziest few days full of meetings that I have ever had! 

Making Chinese Chicken in a Very Small Kitchen!

I also got to go on splits this week but instead of going somewhere else both of the sisters came to our area!  So I got to be the leader in what we were doing and everything! I have to admit that I actually quite enjoyed it!  It was a ton of fun at one of our lessons!  Hai invited us over because our lesson fell through again and we had a member with us and Hai needed to show us how to make some chicken for the Spring Festival that we were having at the end of the week.  But the crazy part was that Hai has this really small kitchen and there were 4 of us there trying to learn how to make the chicken, when our investigator who is his roommate decided that he would come out too!  And I am the only one who knows both of them and the member!  So I was trying to talk to all of them and learn how to make chicken.  Meanwhile we were all squished in this tiny kitchen!  It was crazy!  Luckily, my companion for the day was helping a lot and we would just switch places and take turns talking to different people and practically running around the kitchen!  It was crazy but so much fun!! 

I Love Chinese People!

After that we got to go and visit Yan an Lin again this week except only the Yan, the wife, was home this time!  She is the cutest, sweetest person that I have ever met in my life! I love Chinese people! She doesn't speak English super fluently but every time we come over her English just gets better and better!  We are also going to help her with learning English and we are really excited about that!  She always gets super excited when we come over because she doesn't have a job or school or anything and her husband works all day, so she spends most of her days at home or shopping.  We got to teach her a lesson on prayer and talk to her about her baptism this past year which was really amazing! Plus, she made us dumplings!  They were SO good!  She is really just the cutest and sweetest person and we are just really trying to get them both back to church every week :)

Picture is of our little Chinese group that helped make the food for the Spring Festival!! (With some Americans, Filipinos, and Vietnamese add ins) :) 

Spring Festival Celebration

Well this week we had our Spring Festival! So we have a lot of Chinese and Vietnamese people in our ward, so we decided that we were going to do a Spring Festival this year, but we had to do it early because a lot of people were flying home for their own spring festival.  So we got it all put together and invited anyone and everyone we could that lived in Helsinki, Maranjemi, and Espoo! We actually weren't expecting a huge success but to our surprise we had about 70 people come and most of them weren't even members!  Plus, we had a Book of Mormon table with all of the different languages and people were taking them and we were able to talk to them about it.  It was really cool!  We also had an investigator come, one of the 18 year old Finnish girls, Anna!  She is so cute and it was so perfect because she is actually friends with a member and with an investigator who came that has been investigating for awhile! It was awesome because that investigator just started teaching her everything and at the end of the day we were able to invite her to church and she came!  It was amazing and the party was a HUGE success for almost everyone!  

Sister Appendicitis

We also had an exciting last couple of days as one of the sisters, Sister West, had to be rushed to the hospital at 3:00 in the morning by the zone leaders!  Those poor elders didn't get any sleep and we had no idea about it until the next morning! Apparently she had appendicitis and so we got to go and visit her in the hospital and she had surgery last night! Crazy! The hospital doesn't allow people to be with her after 6:00 pm so we had three at our apartment for a night, which was kinda fun!  But we are really hoping that she gets out of the hospital today!  This week was crazy but we saw so many blessings this week with our investigators and it was amazing!  The Lord helps us out even with things don't go as smoothly as planned! 

Thanks for all the love and support! 

Love, 

Sister Knapp

Turn Around Week

Happy New Year!! 

Write The Blessings Yourself

This week was such a good week!  It was mine and Sister Fronk's turn around week and we are so excited about it! What is a better way then to start the new year by making it the first day of the last day of your mission!?  This week I got the flu right before New Year's Eve which was not fun at all, but since I was sick in bed, it gave us a lot of time to think and plan for the next year.  The first thing we did was write down the blessings that we want for the next year.   Sister Fronk's family has this tradition that each year they write down the blessings that they would like to receive in the coming year.  There is a quote that they use from President Heber C. Kimball that says, " I have often said, you may write the blessings for yourselves, and insert every good thing you can think of, and it will all come to pass on your heads if you do right."  I love that quote!  So we did just that, and yes we did that only 5 days ago but it is amazing to see the blessings already coming to pass for us!  So I encourage everyone to do that this year!  Instead of just writing the goals you want to reach, write the blessings that you would like to receive and have others receive, whether they be friends or family, and we have a promise that it will come to pass if we do right.  It may not be this year, but it will come to pass :) 

A Companion's Rescue

New Years Eve was also a lot of fun.  Though I was still recovering from the flu and wasn't sure if I could handle going to an appointment we had at a members' house, we decided that since my fever was gone and I was a little better that we would go.  When we got there, we discovered that they were actually feeding us dinner and we had just eaten!  I honestly was so worried that I was going to die!  The food was really good though!  They gave us tacos and I have to say that I love how alike the food is here to the food back home.  I finished the first taco even though it was pretty hard to eat anything and was honestly so proud of myself :)  But then she came around and gave us all another tortilla and I wanted to cry.   I didn't want them to know I was sick, though, and have to worry or anything so I just got the next one ready and started  to eat it.  The whole time I was praying that I wouldn't throw up and about half way through I honestly thought that I couldn't take another bite.  Then came the moment when my companion came to the rescue!  I honestly love her so much for this!  Even though she was about to die because she was so full she took the taco from my plate and ate it! Haha that is when you know that you have a really good companion!  She really is the best! They found out that I was sick anyway so it was kinda all for nothing but that's alright.  I was glad that I went though.  We got to set off some fireworks and share a message with the family so that was really good this week!

I Love Teaching the Gospel

This week we also had some really amazing things happen!  I have to say that there are moments that you just love teaching the Gospel more than anything else!  This week we got to meet with this Chinese inactive couple, Yan and Lin, in our area.  I love them so much! They are honestly the cutest couple in the world! It was so neat because the wife had just recently been baptized this year and the husband about a year or two ago. So they are both pretty new to the Chuch.  When we taught them we got to talk about the temple and I love talking about the temple to people!  They really didn't know that much about it, and so when we talked about how they could be sealed together for all eternity, it was the most amazing thing.  It made them both so happy and the wife started crying!  It was so cute and we are just so excited for them and are now helping them prepare to go to the temple this June!  And they are coming back to church!  It is so amazing to see!  

The Amazing Effects of Prayer

This week we also got to see the amazing effects of prayer.  We have really been trying to make our prayers more specific and to really get our area growing because it has been rather slow and hard to meet with some of our investigators because of their busy schedules.  We also teach a lot of investigators in English and have been really wanting to teach some Finns!  We decided that we really wanted to find a young 17 year old Finnish girl we could teach and so we decided to pray and ask for help in finding this new investigator.   The next day we were looking over our area book and happened to come across two potentials who we had met within the past month on the train and we immediately felt really good about calling them! So we did just that!  We gave them a call and were able to set up appointments with both of them! It wasn't until later that day that we realized that both of them were 17 year old Finnish girls!!  Our prayers had been answered!  It was amazing! 

Those That Are Ready

We also had another similar experience this week! So like I said, it has been really hard to meet with our investigators and really has been rather discouraging for us.  So we have been really praying that we will be able to find investigators that are really prepared and wanting to learn about the Gospel.  So just yesterday, we had an appointment with a former investigator that the elders had been teaching a few months ago.  The lesson went SO well!! The spirit was so strong and it was amazing because we didn't really have to ask any questions to get him involved.  He would just ask and ask and ask questions and really just wanted to learn!  He also has such a strong testimony in the power of prayer and prays so well!  Then at the end of the lesson we didn't even really have to ask to set up a new appointment; he just set it up for us!  It was really such a amazing experience for us and we are so excited about him!  It just goes to show that this really is the Lord's work and that we need to do our best, pray to him, and he will answer and help us find those ready and prepared!

I really am so blessed to be a missionary here in Finland and have so many blessings!  I even got to go to the temple this week for the third time since I have been to Finland and I love it!  Just another small blessing that I have been given here! The Church is True! 

Thank you for all of your support! 

Love,
Sister Knapp

p.s.  Just a funny story that I thought I would add...

Well, I must say that if you told me I would be spending 4 months with someone 24 hours a day I would have thought that was insane!  But I have the best companion in the world  and best friend in the world who I love spending every single day with!  Our funny story:  So this last week we got home from an appointment and I was STARVING! So I decided that it was lunch hour so that we could eat.  But Sister Fronk decided that it was personal study time since we had missed it that morning and that she wouldn't do it without me, haha.  But I wanted food!   So I did the one thing that I could think of.... I sat my companion on her chair and tied her to it with a sheet!  I then placed her scriptures in front of her and went into the kitchen to eat!  Haha, I thought that it wouldn't actually work and that she would get out super fast but it turns out that she really was stuck and couldn't get her arms around the chair to get out!  It was the funniest thing ever! We died laughing about it, and I got to eat my lunch!  haha  :) One point for Sister Knapp!!

Christmas Week

MOI!!!! 

The end of December at the lightest part of the day.  The days are finally getting longer!

Skyping Home & Finnish Pets

This week was such an amazing week! I love Christmas season! And I loved talking to MY FAMILY!!! That was the best Christmas present that I have ever gotten in my life.  Besides the inital shock of Landon's incredibly deeper and more grown up voice it was the best couple hours in the world! I think that is one good thing about a mission.  You really learn how much you love your family because I absolutely love them to death.  It was also quite the adventure because of the random distracting bunny that would come hopping into the room (closet) that I was skyping in every few minutes.  Have I ever told you how much Finns LOVE pets?  Well they really love them! Dogs are the normal pets of course and it feels like almost everyone has one which is often the best conversation starter by telling them how wonderful their dog is :)  Finns also often have cats and then the next most common pet that I have seen is bunnies.  And the bunny just gets to hop anywhere it wants in the house. That is just a small side comment about Finns.:)  Anyway, I loved being able to Skype home to you all and I will tell more about Christmas day in a minute.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is when Finns really celebrate Christmas and "Santa" comes to each and everyone of their houses. Whether it be a friend dressed up as Santa or a Santa that was hired out of a newspaper, he comes on Christmas Eve. Thus, the mystery of how Santa visits every nation in the world is slowly becoming more clear. Finns like to say that he just likes them more and that is why they get to actually see Santa and why he comes to the U.S while we are all just sleeping. haha. Christmas Eve was so much fun. We got to spend most of the day with a family in our ward.  They are wonderful and I honestly love them!  They also invited our recent convert, Hai, to come over as well, which I have to admit was really nice because that meant that we would all be speaking English.  It was so much fun too because the elders were there with us since it was a bishopric member's home.  So that was fun and we got to see the elders get all dressed up as Santa and an elf to go to one of the family's relatives and play Joulupukki (Santa). They really go all out with make up and costumes and everything!  Unfortunately, because we were with an family with older kids Santa didn't come and visit us. But we got to have an amazing dinner with grills on the table and meat, cheese, veggies, and bread. It was so good!  It is not their traditional Christmas dinner but I actually liked it better!  Then we had a Christmas message and opened presents.  We were not expecting anything, of course, but they got each of us 4 or 5 presents and even found out our first names and put them on the presents!  That was a suprise!  They are the sweetest family in the world!  They also spoiled us with tons of desserts too!  I was ready to pop after eating so much food!  It was such a fun Christmas!

Christmas Dinner

Elders dressed up as Santa & his elf

Christmas Morning

Christmas Day is when my Companion Sister Fronk and I decided to actually celebrate Christmas!  So we woke up and did our studies, made a big breakfast and then opened presents! After that we got to plan for the next week.  So we had our weekly planning and then headed to the Members house to go and Skype home.  The only problem was that all of the public transportation was closed for Christmas so we had to walk there.  We were way to stubborn to call the Elders and ask for a ride. haha So thats what we did.  We walked the entire way to the members house! Which was only 3.3 miles so it wasnt even that bad!  One thing that I noticed was that I had probably the warmest Christmas ever this year and I am in Finland!  It was so warm in fact, we walked in short sleeves all the way there! But everyone says even though this isnt normal, the cold will be coming soon and we will be freezing!  But when we finally got to the members house, the Elders were still there finishing up Skype and then we both got invited to eat dinner with the family.  Which we had no idea what to do because Elders and Sisters are not allowed to be at the same house together unless it is a Bishopbrick member... But we were STUCK!  So we ended up all eating together and it was fine.  We had a traditional Christmas Dinner this time with Ham and Turkey and mashed potatoes and some kind of sweet mashed something that I really dont like and rolls and all that good stuff.  It was really good and I had absolutely no idea what anyone was saying the entire time but that was ok because I just got to eat in my own little world!  After that we got to skype and that was the best part of the whole day!  

Our stalker prevention shirts from mom.  "Sorry Mister, I'm a Sister!"

The Rest of the Week

The rest of the week was pretty slow.  I got sick a couple days later and so it was really hard to do things.  It was all probably thanks to the loads of really good European chocolate that I received from everyone.  But we did manage to find two new Investigators!  One is from Ghana and has met with the missionaries before and the other is from Ethiopia!  We are still teaching people from all over the world and it is so cool! I love it!  So even though I was sick and the week was kinda crazy we were still able to find more people to teach which we were really excited about since we lost a lot of our investigators to the new elders in Lohja!  Anyway, I love you all and I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas!  Thank you for all of your love, support, and prayers! :)

Helsinki

The Finnish sunshine

Love,
Sister Knapp

HYVÄÄ JOULUA From The 'Christmas Goat'!

Moi!!! 

And I Thought People Were Nice Before Christmas!

Well, it has been a pretty good week here in Finland!  I have to admit that it is a little sad that the snow has now gone away and I will not be having a white Christmas here in Finland after all!  Who would have thought that would be the case?!  There is snow basically everywhere in Finland right now except down south! But I am sure a ton of it is coming and then I will be walking in it all day so it can take its own sweet time!  But I hope that everyone has a MERRY CHRISTMAS or HYVÄÄ JOULUA!!! I have to say that I love the Christmas season!  I mean, I thought people were nice before but now that it is Christmas season and you can talk to people about Christmas they just lighten up and are the nicest people ever to talk to!  So that has been way fun!  Plus, we got to throw a Christmas party this week for some of our investigators!  We were planning on making it really big and having both wards invited and decorating cookies and having them bring friends and then watch Joy to the World.  So that was the plan and we talked to the elders about it and they were all in on it. We talked to the other elders and they were in on it too until randomly they decided to cancel it and not do it after all without telling us!  Oh, elders!  So they cancelled it and told the Zone Leaders it was cancelled and it all went up in flames and we didn't find out until the week before that it was cancelled.  So we decided to just do a small Christmas party ourselves. :) So we kinda threw it together last minute and told the elders that we were going to do it and then once again they were all for it.  I think it was because they were worried they would have to do the work to put it together. I have no idea though.  But we ended up doing it and basically no one could come!  So that was rough. To be honest, we were scared to invite people because we thought it might flop, but it turned out really good and Hai, our recent member, brought his "hard core atheist" roommate to the activity and we got to learn a ton about him and introduce him to the gospel and it was so cool!  He now is wanting to learn more and is one of our investigators and is reading the Book of Mormon and everything!  So that was exciting for us!  We have since been able to meet with him again and teach him the Restoration and we taught him how to pray which he did for his first time.  I have to admit, it is amazing to see people exercise their faith and pray for the first time with us!  It really is amazing!

Learning To Pray

Speaking of having people pray for the first time, we had another new investigator do the same thing.  He has just recently come to Finland, and was actually living in Spain for a few months, but is really from Ghana! His name is Samuel. So yeah, we teach people from all over.  We are currently teaching someone who is Vietnamese, a few Africans (Ama,Bernard, and Victoria), and someone who is Finnish and we are working with some less active members from China!  I had no idea that Finland would be this diverse!  It is amazing!  I have met so many people from all over!  Anyway, so this investigator is actually someone that the elders met and sent to us as a referral because he lives in our area.  And it was so cool because he had actually met with missionaries in Ghana and would go to church with them and loved it!  But he hadn't prayed before (which is kinda weird) so we got to meet with him and get to know him and teach him about the book of Mormon and prayer!  It was so funny because he was really nervous to pray and so I asked him if he would feel better if I said a prayer first and then he said a prayer after me. And he said yes to that.  But I guess I should have been more clear because I started and noticed that he was just copying my words and saying what I was saying right after I said it, but he would get stuck and so I had to stop and tell him that he could say his very own prayer after I said mine.  And so he said that was good.  So when I finished and he said one and he did such a good job and was so nervous!  But he did awesome and it was so cool to see!  We also invited him to church this week and he came and had read the chapter we had given him and he was so excited when we got him a new book of Mormon in his language, Twi!  He is great and really, really wants to learn and says he wants to be a member haha!  So we are getting a date set up for him and we are so excited about him! He is awesome!

Celebrating The Finnish Way

Anyway, This week we also finally got to decorate for Christmas!  I love Christmas and I know that I am saying that a lot, but really who couldn't love Christmas?!  It was so fun!  Sister Fronk finally received her packages from home and her mom had sent her the cutest little Christmas tree so that is what we used to decorate and now all of our presents are all around this little tree on our dinning room table!  Haha, so much fun!  We are now debating if we are going to celebrate Christmas the Finnish way or not, because they open all of their Christmas presents on Christmas Eve when Joulupukki ('Christmas Goat' is the direct translation but means Santa Claus... I am still trying to figure out how that works...) so we don't know if we are going to open presents on Christmas Eve or on Christmas!  I still don't know what they do on Christmas day.  I think it is very similar to England where they have Boxing Day (like Black Friday shopping the day after Christmas.)  But they do all of the fun celebrating the day before Christmas. So that is kinda cool! 

Funny Missionary Lingo

This week we finally have our new district all put together and it is so much fun because I still have two missionaries from my MTC group, Elder Call and Elder Ahlquist, so it is fun to be able to see them!  But we also got a new Baby Finn, Elder Hunter, and he is doing so awesome!  He is in my ward and Elder Waite is training him and he is just trying so hard to speak Finnish and talk to people.  It is such a good example to me!  He is so funny because yesterday he wanted to introduce me to one of their Investigators that they have had for awhile.  So he went to introduce me and ended up telling the guy (in Finnish, of course)  that I am Sister Crofts instead of Sister Knapp.  So Elder Crofts and I, and basically everyone, died over that one but I just helped correct him and say hi to his investigator.  It was so funny.  He is going to be an awesome missionary!  Oh, but I want to explain.  So a Baby Finn is the group that you over lap with in the MTC that comes after you and the missionaries in the group just ahead of me are my Mama and Papa Finns (even though we didn't actually over lap.)  But it is kinda fun!  There are still so many missionary terms that I am getting used to.  The worst when I first got here was when Sister Fronk was talking about a missionary and I asked where they were serving in Finland and she said, " Oh no, they died" and then carried on like nothing happened! I was so confused! But it turns out that when you go home it means that you apparently "die!"  I am glad that I got that one cleared up!

Missionary Work is Friendship Work

Well I have to say that I really am grateful for this opportunity to be here in Finland this Christmas season!  It is so fun to be able to just focus on serving others and going out and just making people happy!  For awhile I thought that missionary work is all about finding people to teach the gospel, which yes, it is partially that and bringing people to Christ.  But a lot of it is just really showing people how the Gospel has affected our lives, by lifting up others and making their day just a little bit better, by serving and loving those around you. Missionary work is friendship work.:) And really that is what Christmas is all about!  It's about remembering Christ and trying to be more like Him and helping someone else feel His love for them!  Well, I love you all and I hope that you have a Merry Christmas! 

HYVÄÄ JOULUA!!!!!!

Love, 

Sister Knapp

First Transfer: I Am So Happy to Be Staying in Espoo!

Hey Family & Friends!

So this email might be a little shorter than usual.  Partly because I forgot my journal and I cant remember what really happened this week and partly because this week was a little bit slower than usual.

Ward Christmas party with Sisar Fronk, our new convert and Joulupukki 

Finnish Christmas Market

Well, last Monday I got to go to a Finnish Christmas Market which was SO cool!  But the worst part is that because we were of course in such a big hurry I forgot to take pictures of it!  Sorry!  It is nothing like the Christmas Markets that we went to in Vienna.  Vienna's markets are SO Christmasy everywhere and Finland's are more like a normal market with a ton of homemade socks and scarfs and mittens and hats and everything everywhere.  Finns love to knit!  There was a few Christmas booths but not too many.  It was still a ton of fun to see more what Finland is like and I will still admit that it is the most Americanized European country that I have been to but I do love it!  

Coming home from a service project.  Pants are the best invention EVER!

Playing Sahly with the Most Amazing Family

I also got to play Sahly for the first time!  It is one of the favorite sports here in Finland and basically everyone plays it.  It is basically floor hockey, so hockey in a gym and there aren't any rules really.  At least that was how we played anyway.  The no rules thing was a good thing for me because I had no idea what I was doing the entire time!  It is also really hard when someone explains what to do in Finnish... So basically I just watched other people do it and went for it!  I have to say that the first time I played it I was really, really bad at it!  I messed up a lot and kinda felt awkward and silly the entire time!  We went because one of the families in our ward really wanted us to meet their friends and so we did.  It had been a month in the planning since it was out in Lohja and really hard to get out there without a car so we had to work around the elders.  But it finally happened and it was so much fun!  The family that we met is amazing!  They are so nice!  And we actually found out that they were really impressed with us for trying so hard and called the family in our ward about us!  So that was so cool!  We then got to set up a time with them later that week to go and share a Christmas story.  They are an amazing family and so much fun.  They have 3 of the cutest kids!  And the parents are so nice and speak way good English so that really helped when I didn't understand what they were saying!  We also got to show them the Book of Mormon which they were really interested in and we are going to get to meet with them again to talk about it hopefully!  There are now elders in Lohja so it might be them that gets to go. We are kinda sad that we don't because they are such an awesome family!  The elders are so lucky!  But it was so funny because after meeting with them they said that they had something for me and pulled out a Sahly stick and taught me how to hold it right and everything. Haha, that was funny.  Apparently I was really doing it wrong before.  They then told me that when I play with them the next day that I got to use that stick.  So I did!  And whatever they taught me helped a ton!  I am still not very good but I scored like 5 goals so that felt good!  It is a way fun game that all of us missionaries want to bring to the states! :) 

Emailing home with Sister Fronk. So glad I get to stay with her!

Transfer Week

This week was also transfer week! So I have officially made it through one transfer and I am staying here in Espoo with Sister Fronk!  Not a huge surprise since I am not actually done with my training yet. I have decided that I don't really love transfers because things change and people leave.  But I guess that is the life of a missionary.  You never know where you are going to be or anything.  You just go and do what you are asked.  So,  my district changed a bit.  We have 2 new Elders out in Lohja!  So that is really fun! Kinda sad that we won't be going out to the "promised land" anymore.  I love Lohja.  Elder Waite is heading out there to train one of my Baby Finns (a missionary that comes out after you but overlaps with you in the MTC) that is just now coming out of the MTC!  I am really excited to see who that is!  Elder Crofts is still my zone leader, now with Elder Kääriä. So that is the change just within my ward.  There were quite a few other changes in our district though.  Now we have 4 elders in our ward and 2 sisters!  So that is way exciting!   I am super happy to be staying in Espoo though!  I would be fine not moving anywhere my whole mission! :) 

Jouloupukki (aka Santa)

Well, I also learned all about Christmas here in Finland!  Apparently Joulupukki (Santa) comes to everyone's house on Christmas Eve and passes out all of the presents and everyone opens their presents on Christmas Eve!  So they actually get to see Santa!  It is really funny because you can actually hire a santa to come to your house from the newspaper and stuff. But I think most often friends just do it for each other.  It is kinda a fun tradition!  So unlike the U.S.,  they actually get to see Santa while we are all sleeping when he comes! They also eat this rye porridge thing for a Christmas tradition.  It has an almond in it and if you are the one that gets the almond then that means you will get married within a year!  I still haven't learned all of the traditions about Christmas here in Finland but I am so excited to see what it is like!  Oh, but one fun thing is that since Santa actually lives in Finland kids everywhere will write to Santa and he will actually write you back!  It takes a couple of months to get a response but we might send him a letter just for fun haha!   I mean, how many times will we have a chance to write a letter to THE Santa!  

Other than that things are going really well here in Finland!  We are hoping for a White Christmas since all of the snow is now gone but we aren't sure if we will actually get that!  Hopefully!  I hope all of you are having a wonderful Christmas Season!  I love all of you! 

Love,
Sister Knapp

Sahly!!!