Happy Easter from Finland!

First off I would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter/April Fools Day. So Happy Easter. Happy April Fools (Huulu Paiva to the Finns). 

Finland is great. Oulu is better. Being a missionary serving here is best. It is really hard work, but really worth it. Now where to start. This week has been very good. I feel like my companionship is really getting along. It seems that Austrailia and Canada has more in common than the USA and Canada, at least language wise. Which is interesting. My other companion is pretty much super sweet and always so postive. Things between us and her get lost in translation sometimes, we all have fun trying to explain meanings of words in english to her and she also tries to teach us finnish. Also, I guess most of my group from the MTC got sick their first week here. Everyone except myself and Sister Egan, my companion from the MTC. I feel really blessed. 

I have discovered for my self that there are worse things to bike on/through than snow. It is called slush, ice with ruts, ice that looks like slush, and slush that looks like ice. It makes going to every appointment a bit of an adeventure. I now have most kinds of ice, snow, and slush rated on a scale in my head from "super easy to ride through" to "AHHH!! I don't think I'll survive". Still it is fun. My companionship has been having a hard time finding people to teach, but it leaves us time to really get to know the members well. The members up here are all really great and love the missionaries (I think I mentioned that last week, but it is very true). Yesterday in Sacrament meeting they called at least 6 or 7 new branch missionaries! And they also now have a calendar for members to sign up for days they can help us missionaries. It is mostly fantastic. 

Of course with Easter this week we have been focused on sharing the message of how the Saviour lives today. I remember in the MTC, I think it was in Elder Ballard's address to the MTC, he mentioned how the Saviour is not an absent master, that he truly is guiding and directing his Church. I feel that this is very true, and have had it confirmed in the last week. I love the New Testament's account and the bold declaration of how "He is not here, He is Risen". But I think my favourite testament of this is in the Doctrince and Covenants 76:22-24... I think. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey's testimony really stood out to me this year. I love how straight forward it is. "That He Lives" there is so much power in those three words. And from that we can say "He lives and because he lives...(Fill in whatever you want ex. we have the church, we can return to God, we can receive forgiveness, we can live with our families forever etc.), or as one of the members put it... if Christ didn't live, there would be no purpose in anything. But because he lives, we have everything! 

So Easter up here is very interesting. The Sunday before Easter all the children dresss up like witches, and go from house to house, say a spell thing, recieve candy, and give that family a pussy willow branch decorated with feathers and what not. Kinda like our Halloween. I'm not sure where it comes from, but its really cool. They also have a traditional Easter desert called Mammi. A lot of people find it disgusting actually, and will only eat it with tonnes of cream and sugar. It's really not that bad though. It looks kinda like brownie batter that has been cooked a little bit. What it really is though is some goopy stuff made from rye... and it tastes like All-Bran cereal... But stronger. I'm not going to be jumping up at each chance to have it, but it's also not bad.

Also, for this week I was able to visit the Arctic circle. We had our district meeting in Rovaniemi, which is three hours away. We usually switch up where meetings are so that not everyone has to travel to the same cities, this week it will be in Oulu. So afterwards we went to Santa's workshop place, which is not the cheery place its cracked up to be (it was actually kinda creepy for the most part), and got pictures with him (Santa was nice though, and spoke Finnish... I could understand some of what he said even). Of course his house is on the arctic circle, so we wandered around there for a bit. Mostly its a whole lot of souvenir shops selling the same things at different prices. So it was cool, but really not that exciting.

Anywho, I had better go. My one companion still needs to email, so I will talk to you all later. Love you.

Sisar Kastendieck