SPENCER TIPPETTS: Wow! Great Week!

PROGRESSION LINE UPON LINE

Thoughts after arriving at the MTC: "It's been super awesome hearing about all the mission calls everyone is getting! The work is moving faster and faster every day! It becomes more and more apparent when you see 1,000 missionaries come in every Wednesday!"

Thoughts after leaving the MTC: "It’s a testimony just knowing that the church is right. The things that we’ve learned are true and real. The way I talk about the gospel now is different. The gospel is something that requires action and action is what God wants. It is real. This is what the world needs and I am engaged in the Lord’s work!"

Thoughts after 18 months: “I feel like I can handle anything now! I've learned how I will have a burning witness of the restored church until the day I die. That will be done by constantly seeking out answers to my questions.”

Thoughts after 24 months: "..."

Monday, August 18, 2014

Wow! Great Week!

Love to get our emails on Sunday nights. Spencer is busy as ever and loving it! Enjoy!

Dear Family & Friends,

Well I happy to report that the church is still true over here! We have been working hard. Good to hear about all the happenings at home. I'll pretend like I didn't sense my family getting a little truncky for me to get home! ;)

This week has been another week full of stuff and empty of sleep!

The week starts last Sunday. We had to help transport all kinds of people for the big interim training at the mission home this week. So, we did that from 5-10 on Sunday and then did the mission numbers. Needless to say, We got in late... ThenMonday morning started interim. We had to be up extra early to help President set up the mission home for the meeting so it was 5 oclock for us! Then the meeting started at 10. Oh man this was the best interim I have ever been to! It was soo much fun doing it with President Watson for the first time. Normally we just sit in front and make comments throughout the meeting but this time we actually taught role plays and other missionary skill things. It was amazing! The meeting was held in the living room of the mission home so everyone was sitting on couches until we had a role play, then they broke off into seperate groups. It was super cool.

Well Monday night I went on exchanges with Elder Hatch. He is actually serving in the same ward in Tampere that I trained Elder Chapman and Elder Parker. One of my favorite wards in Finland! We had a ton of success! Which helped us out later in the week because we were out of the area.

Tuesday meeting festivities continued and it was great. Then Wednesday we had the language training day. We had the three language coordinators at the mission home teaching different groups. There was also a sister from Finland who is leaving for England but is with us for a few months that doesn't speak English very well. So Elder Kiuttu and I were made the honorary English language coordinators! We taught a class on English for her. I taught her lots of idioms like "Its just a drop in the bucket!" haha I taught the real one don't worry!

Well then Thursday we went on exchanges with the Tampere Zone leaders and it was a blast as usual.

We returned on Saturday morning at an extremely early time because we needed to be home on Saturday but we didn't want to cut our exchange short. We had the transfer meeting with President and it was intense.

Things are extremely complicated with transfers this go round. I wish I could tell you how cool it might be! But we also got a small change call. The office secretary is sick and might be going home. Also our fleet manager and office worker is going home on Friday! So we are super short handed in the office. Well, our new job is to help out in the office as much as we can. We had a crash course last night in the office responsibilities. I'm already stressed out of my mind so it should be fun!

Then yesterday was church and we had the normal miracle people walk into church and the miracle lessons pop out of nowhere. It was great and of course this was peppered in with people getting sick and us taking them home.

Fairly eventful week. This week is MLC so it will still be busy. I also get to go to the temple.

Well, I pray for all of you and hope you are all remembering to study Preach My Gospel and the scriptures which are basically the same! BTW Does anyone know who wrote PMG? Answer: The 15 living Prophets and Apostles. Any other books with that author list been written in recent time? Part of following the Prophet is to follow his teachings. PMG is a great way to do that!

Love you all and have a wonderful week!

Ps:

Espoo is considered its own city but is part of the "Greater Helsinki" area. and the temple is actually in Espoo and its official name is the Finland Helsinki Temple. The mission name will also remain the same even though all our HQ stuff will soon be in Espoo.

People have been speculating that the assistants would move to an Espoo ward. (there are two) But there are various reasons why we haven't moved, however we could move in the future. For now we still live in Helsinki.

Elder Spencer Tippetts

Finland Helsinki Mission

Neitsytpolki 3 A 4

Fi-00140 Helsinki

Finland

Bonus: Pictures