Our Last Month in Finland

During January the Helsinki Temple was closed for two weeks for maintenance and cleaning. So we were serving in the temple only two weeks. Puje, our wonderful missionary from Mongolia, returned to her home. Her knowledge of Russian and English languages was a great help to us in communicating with all our Russian patrons and we were sorry to have to say good-bye. She now lives in Ulaanbaatar where she works as a translator for the LDS Church. We were happy to see some snow. One of my big disappointments while in Finland was that there was very little snowfall where we were living. I had fantasies of stopping by woods on a snowy evening. In fact, it was colder in Washington, DC than it was in Espoo most of the time we were there. I came with lots of silk thermal underwear and bought a heavy coat, and used the coat perhaps twice and the thermals once or twice only. I left all that stuff in Finland so hope someone is getting good use out of it.

We made one last trip to Porvoo to load up on Brunberg candy for ourselves, friends and family. I know Fazer is the most well-known Finnish candy, but Brunberg is really fine. The city was quite beautiful with a thin dusting of snow. There were no tourists to be seen. The cathedral that burned in May 2006 was mostly repaired which was good to see. An odd side note: The 18 year old man who was found guilty of arson in that fire was first sentenced to 3 years and 3 months in prison. But the Court of Appeals later increased the sentence to six years and six months. Also, I had to include my favorite Finnish sign. It certainly gets the message across of dire consequences for those who ignore it!

What little snow we had in Espoo was melted quickly but it was beautiful for a moment and we ran out to get a picture while we could. The picture below was taken in the late morning. Even when we went to the Arctic circle one last time the temperatures were just above freezing. I am writing about that trip separately.