Hello!

Wow, great letters everyone. I would like to congratulate everybody on a great email week! 

Well, sounds like a pretty good week. Im super jealous about the Christmas breakfast. Thats always a highlight for me. Tell everyone I said Hello! 

Okay, we learned some pretty great stuff this week. We left for the big bad city in the south as they call it, or Helsinki on Sunday and we got to stay with Elder Durrant and his trainee in Pasila. We woke up and went down to the mission office on Neitsytpolku. We then received 8 ours of instruction for three days from President Rawlings! It was soo cool! 

Fun facts. When the church membership was 3 million, the Quorum of the Twelve made plans for how the church would operate when we had 30 million members. That is currently the system we are running on. President told us that they are currently planning for how the church would operate when we have 300 million members. Why would they be planning for that if it weren´t possible? Its happening right now! 

Another smaller fun fact is in Isreal when you go down south east where Lehi's family went, it has a name in Hebrew or something. I cant remember what the name is but translated it means wilderness. So, pretty interesting that Joseph Smith knew that Lehi's family would go into the "wilderness". Pretty cool, I also hope that makes sense! 

During the meeting President bore an Elder Holland style testimony of the Book of Mormon. He talked about how the Book of Mormon is either a book that was written by a boy with no education in 80 days and is the worlds greatest lie, or it is true and it is Gods word, it cannot be anything else. He continued to explain that the Book of Mormon is the only book that has not arrived to us through history. All other books that anyone consider sacred have all been passed down the centuries. Including the Bible. The Book of Mormon was revealed through a prophet in our day! 

After this testimony, President said, "Okay, now everybody can ask me whatever question you want about the Book of Mormon." So, we came up with the most crazy questions and President answered all of them using the Book of Mormon. One question was the question of polygamy. President told a story of how a prominent leader of a church here in Finland asked him If Joseph Smith instituted polygamy and Brigham Young took it away, one of them cant be a prophet. One cannot build and the other destroy. So presidents response was, "Abraham was a polygamist and Paul said that we can only have one wife." He continues "So, you tell me which one of them wasnt a prophet and then I will tell you which of Joseph and Brigham wasnt a prophet." It was epic! 

President Rawlings is for real one of my heros. 

Then after a riveting three days, we got to go to the temple! All the trainers went to Espoo, where the Temple is and on the trains and busses there we sang Christmas songs! It was super cool. There were about 7 of us and everybody on the trains joined in with us and it was just a beautiful experience! 

Then Elder Durrant and I completed the endowment for my great grandfathers!  Doing the temple stuff in Finnish was a real mind blower! I also got to meet a bunch of couples from my past cities ive served in in the temple! The Helsinki Temple is soo beautiful! I have officially visited 9 temples! Not bad eh? 

Friday was Finlands independence day so we couldnt really do anything so we sang Christmas songs in the center of Tampere. It was fun. Tons of people joined in with us! 

Things are going well with our investigators as well. Hopefully we can set a baptismal date with one of them tonight! 

Well that sums it all up! Im lovin it out here! Cant wait to Skype! 

Love, 

Elder Tippetts 

Elder Tippetts with his companion Elder Chapman.