Feb 17th 2014

Hyvää Huomenta Perheni ja Ystäviani!                                                             

Just another week in the life of the Finnish missionary. I love this mission so much. Man it is way rough some times but I have learned so much. Throughout life we go through much physically training to get our bodies in shape, but a mission is boot camp for the soul. Spiritually training and character building is not an easy thing to do, but it is the best thing we can do to let the Lord help us become the people that we truly want to become.

We have been still going through a rough patch in work.  Most of our investigators have dropped or have ditched us, and for some reason it has been really hard to find more. Also we got change calls, a lot of things are changing in the mission, but Sisar Pack and I will be together for at least one more transfer so that she can finish out her training. We have come up with a plan to continue to get rid of all the 'little sins' or weapons of rebellion completely. 
Our plan to completely get rid of the 'dirt' in our lives and work to become qualified for the blessings its called “21 days of Love” because it takes 21 days to make a habit, and we are going cold turkey on a lot of things. We have been reading in the orientation book about bridling our tongue. We realize that both of us are using sarcasm too much, and we need to stop immediately, and also just little complaining that shouldn’t be as we represent the Lord. We are starting a budget, niin että we can make goals to have ainakin 800 euros saved up at the end of the mission to be able to help pay for another missionary. We are shopping smartly, we are eating healthily, no sweet, other than what the member give to us, and we are getting water bottles so that we can be well hydrated. To kick-start this new transfer we are doing a whole SYL week. And transition from having our SYL days be sporadic, we are going to be doing as much Finnish as possible and then maybe one or two days in the week where we can speak English on a p-day or another day. We are praying always. We are following counsel immediately and we are focusing on love. We are being motivated out of love because we know the Savior, and we are inspired by Him to bring others back to Him. Our goal in the end is to show to the Lord that we are serious about getting the work really started in Tampere, to find our replacement, find the one who will be baptized in March, who will lead to more, to seriously be doing everything cheerfully, long-term and to call down the blessings of heaven.

Another thing is timing, we are also going to be very strict on timing, around 30 minute lessons, never a DA longer than an hour. We want the blessings so bad for the members here in Finland, and its starting now, this transfer, so that the missionaries that come after us can pick it up and run with it because it is already flowing. We have been promised blessings if we obey exactly, we are obeying. We shine our shoes on the way out, we wash our faces twice, we use rinsing buckets, we are focusing on asking for referrals, in effective ways. We want the natural man\woman out; she has no place in this mission. I am tired of asking for prompting and then letting the natural man kick in dismissing the promptings. I am here to be an instrument in the Lord's hands. How can I do this unless I am spiritually minded? The complete change starts now. The best part about this 21 days of Love is that, if we brake one of the rules, the 21 days starts over again. We are determined to make this a habit. 

We are set apart representatives of our Savior, I do not intend to take that title on lightly.




This last week we had made this goal to find people in the area of the members so that they can fellowship them. It can be there project to give them love and help them develop a testimony. We have prayed a lot about what we can do so that when we leave this area so the members can continue doing the work. This has made the work really exciting because it’s like a treasure hunt to find ''the one'' that the member specifically can touch. So after we had met with a member who is way excited to do missionary work but doesn't know where to start, we told her our plan, and then left and hit the streets by her house to find the one. It was incredible, we were praying always (so important) and loving the people we were talking to and tracting into. It was crazy; usually tracting is the worst thing ever so degrading, so many slammed doors. But this time it was so fun, this whole week was awesome, we just started talking to them, loving them and a decent amount of ''uninterested people'' opened up and talked with us for a good 10-15 minutes. We were so excited and we came to this one house, and this lady came to the door and was like,''Umm I don't know you.'' The normal Finnish response, and SIsar pack just started off and introduced herself and we had this great conversation with her. She totally opened up and turns out she has done family history at our church before, and we were able to talk about the importance of families. She was so happy, because we were so happy and she said she noticed the joy we have. Then as we are about to part ways, I get this prompting to ask her if I can use her bathroom, (weird I know) I try to dismiss the thought but we have really been focusing on acting on prompting, so I ask her. And she says off course, we are let into the house and I use the bathroom, now she is even more open, still hasn't invited us to come back. I come out of the bathroom and she is showing us her house and the beautiful paintings she has, and they are Helenti (Pentecostal) so they are really into spiritual music. So I express my gratitude to her for being so kind to us and ask if we can sing a song to her to thank her. We sing Mua Jeesus Rakastaa, I feel my Savior's love, and she is so quiet for the whole thing then at the end she says thank you so much and loved the lyrics to the song, and from the back we hear, ''Jumalan siunaksia teille!!'' God's blessings to you! From her husband that we had no idea was there and they were totally open and touched by the spirit and said that we can come back next week! I have such a testimony of following the spirit. We later told the member, about this couple and she will be coming with us next week! We are all so excited!

The Lord is really watching over us, even in our times of hardships. I know He is there.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!



SIsar Hubner

P.s. this is a funny picture of the hat this member gave me while cleaning her house, the best part is that it has pockets on the side of it! I know grandpa hubner would be proud!