What a wonderful week!  FHE was the largest group yet...21 young adults packed into our apartment.  In our lesson, we shared feelings on the Family Proclamation.  This revelation is so important for families everywhere!  The majority of families we have met have only one parent and most families rely on the grandparents because both or the one parent must work.  If our young adults would embrace the Proclamation and its' teachings...what a difference it would make in their lives. 

We went to visit this sweet sister, Luba (which translated means love). She works full time feeding patients in a hospital.  She loves her work.  She lives in a one room apartment with a shared kitchen and bath!  This single hide-a-bed is where she sleeps.  The closet to your left is where she keeps her clothes.  She has her grandson over on her days off.  He hung on the doors of her closet and broke them off...so Elder Pocock came to the rescue and repaired them. She works two days on...two days off, so she is only able to attend church two weeks of the month.  She is a lovable sister!  The rest of the day was spent teaching an investigator, teaching piano lessons, altering missionaries suit pants, and packing for our visa trip!

   

Every three months, visitors to Russia must leave the country and renew their visa.  It was hard to believe that our three month time had come.  The church must fly their foreign missionaries to either Finland or the Ukraine for this process.  They send us to a country that has a temple so that we can enjoy the blessings of temple attendance and complete the necessary visa requirements.  We left for the Perm airport at  five a.m.!  This is all that we saw of the capital, Moscow.  We had a long layover, but it being our first trip...we were quite content to walk the halls and take pictures from the airport.  Next time we will get a little more daring and if time allows, maybe see a little more of Moscow.

We made it through the maze of passport/customs control in both the Moscow and Helsinki airports with great relief!  We took a taxi outside of the airport and were thrilled that the young driver from Somalia spoke great English.  Finland is beautiful.  The driver told us that they get a lot of moisture and a ton of snow and you can see the results...it is lovely.

I took this picture of farmland ready to plant and individual family dwellings that we rarely see in Perm.

The Helsinki temple is located in a suburb called Espoo.  It took us about 20 minutes from the airport.  This is a view of our approach to the temple.

It is a beautiful temple, built on a bluff.  We got our room at the hostel that is just across the street from the temple, and then ran to the temple for their final session.  There is a driveway where patrons can be dropped off right at front of the door, or these steps that provide a gorgeous view.

As you would expect, the grounds are manicured and there is a very peaceful feeling in this wooded area.

This is the hostel that the church provides for members to stay when they come to participate at the temple. Because people must travel so far to attend the temple, this is really a wonderful service. The accommodations are very reasonable, clean and comfortable.  The temple president and his wife live here as well as the foreign temple workers.  The earliest session begins at ten a.m. and the latest is six p.m., making it five sessions a day with an additional one on Saturdays.  We got up on Friday morning to get to the eight a.m. session only to find that they don't start until ten.  Finland is three hours behind us in Perm,  so when we got out of the temple on Thursday night, it was eight their time, but it was eleven p.m. for us!  It was a long day but how wonderful to be in a temple again.

We woke up to rain on Friday, May 11, 2012.  Everywhere we looked from the second story windows we saw trees and more trees.  This day was dedicated to completing our dear friend Michael's mothers temple work.  The workers were so accommodating and everything went as planned.  It was a very spiritual experience.  Michael is no longer alone in the church!  As I sat in the temple, there was a sister from Russia to my left, a sister from Finland to my right, and I thought this is what it is all about.  We are all brothers and sisters!

This is the main area past the check in desk.  Next to this room they have a TV room with toys for children, a piano, plus a computer that has a keyboard with multiple alphabets on it.  Straight ahead they have a lovely dining area.  It was totally fun to talk to the American temple missionaries.  I thought that the Russian language was difficult, but the Finnish language is the hardest by far!!!

This is the dining room with two complete kitchens.  To the far left of the picture you can see four refrigerators.  There are two more in the kitchen areas.  These are assigned to the rooms.  Each room has four bunk beds, closets, lockers, a lovely shower, and bathroom.  When it is busy, women are assigned to one room and men to another.  We stayed at a slow time so we got our own room. You are required to clean it when you leave but for the convenience, it was little to ask.  We walked about a mile to a nearby market and got us some food so that we could prepare our own meals.

Here is a lovely patio for eating during warmer, drier weather.

Goodbye Helsinki.  What a wonderful experience we had.  I have to tell you that both the Aeroflot Airline in Russia and the Finnair Airline in Finland serve meals (small and simple) but non-the-less, they
do serve more than a drink and peanuts.

Helsinki from the air...the Baltic Sea in the distance.

Below you see Moscow from the air.  You can see that there are many individual homes in this area.  The young people told us that Moscow is where Russia puts a lot of its money.  It is a tourist stop and it is cleaner and kept really nice...according to the young people here in Perm.

We got home about eight Saturday night. As we got off the elevator and rounded the corner to our apartment...taped to our front door we saw this candy bar card from the dear sisters in our zone!  We have totally enjoyed the candy!!!

Our dear friends, the Skows, who are the mission office couple, sent me this Mother's Day/Birthday greeting from some Elders in the Ekat area.  Click on the arrow in the middle.

Flowers from the Sisters of the branch for my Birthday on Sunday.  A special thank you for all your email cards, emails, and skype calls.  We feel your love and pray that you can feel our Heavenly Father's watchful care.  Have a great week!