Vanhin McMullan's Mission to Finland!

 Tuesday October 8, 2024 Welcome to the final email of this blitz of emails haha. This was a really great week! I hit my year mark this week! Its crazy to think a years already gone by! I've learned a lot this year, and I look forward to another year of learning more! Its also crazy to think that now basically everyone I knew coming into the mission is either home or going home next transfer! Its crazy! So crazy miracle! Since the start of my mission I've been texting this lady from the Philippines. She kept trying to get into Finland but was having some trouble, anyways finally her Visa got accepted and she got her travel for this time this year. So for this entire year I've been texting her about the gospel, and now finally she arrived and I was able to refer her to our church in Tampere which is great because Tampere is a big city with 2 great wards and lots of members and missionaries there to support her. She's taking the lessons now from the Elders there and told ...

 Tuesday October 8, 2024 (Last week?) Welcome back to another email! This week was awesome! We finally were able to meet up with one of our friends who we've been trying to meet with the whole transfer, and she's really cool! That same day we had our normal language class, but instead of people who wanted to learn Finnish, these three girls from China came wanting us to teach them English! We definitely weren't qualified for that, but we tried our best haha. We ended up talking about really random topics, but it was super funny nonetheless. Our District Council this week was in Kouvola, the STLs came for it since they were on splits. They made TONS of pizza, it was super great, but we had so so much leftovers that they couldn't take home, so it all feel on us . It was the definition of suffering in success. I also made McTruffles, and Elder Dieker made some cookies. We went to go help move a hoarders junk on Saturday, it didn't work very well haha, after about 40 mi...

 9/22/24 Good morning brothers and sisters, I hope I’ve gotten to know everyone here, but just in case I'll introduce myself briefly. I am Elder McMullan, I've been a missionary here in Finland for almost a year now, having came here in December of last year. I've served in two other cities, Hyvinkää and Turku; they, along with Kouvola, are all wonderful cities. Finland truly is a wonderful country, I'm from a city in the Arizonan valley called Surprise. Quite the opposite of Finland, Arizona is Brown and dusty, whereas Finland is green and full of life. Arizona is always hot rather than cold. I like to joke that the Arizona Valley only has two seasons, Summer, and the early warm fall. Every Finnish missionary gets told two things before they come to Finland, 1 that it’s a very difficult language, and 2 that it is very cold. I feel like the latter is especially warned to us from these hotter areas of the world. I didn’t know I was coming to Finland to not only learn the...

 Tuesday October 8, 2024 (But really, weeks ago) Greetings, welcome back to yet another email that I haven't written yet . This week we had ZL splits in a city called Jyväskylä. I got to ride the train through Riihimäki which was one of the cities in my first area, so that was super cool. Anyways though, while in Jyväskylä I got to go teach a lesson with Vanhin Smith who was from my MTC district if you recall, we taught this guy named Yh, very interesting name, but such an awesome guy. We talked about The Book of Mormon and the identity of Jesus Christ. He lived every second and was sad I was only there for the day haha. Afterwards, wr all met up and went to a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom hall that they had invited the ZLs to. It was a super cool experience and always awesome to see the faith in others. The next morning we took a train to Lahti for DC and ate at a members house. I don't remember if I mentioned her in my emails from way back, but she's super awesome and she...

 Tuesday October 8, 2024 (Really WEEKS ago) Hey everyone, I hope all is well, its been a pretty eventful week. We started the week with cutting down trees with the Hyväriset in our ward. It was super fun, and super dirty. They fed us afterwards which was awesome. After that we ran to another service project with helping my former stake president in Turku move a bed into one of his friends house, it was very good to see him again. After that the day was already over. Johnston ended up getting sick for the rest of the week, so I just did a lot of Social media finding and studying. I made my McMoleburgers for the district at DC which were bussin as always. But ya honestly this is about it for this week since we got stuck inside, but its always great to have some extra time to study! Take care everyone, love y'all

 Tuesday October 8, 2024 (But really, weeks ago!) Hey everyone, another great week. We continued our AP splits, I spent most of the Time with Elder Helske, he's a good guy we had our studies to do and then some social media work. Eventually we all met back up and me and Elder Rinne became comps and we went tracting. Nothing crazy happened but it was a good time. Later me and Rinne made some Facebook reels together while Johnston and Helske taught Finnish. We all had a DA with the Hyväriset in our ward, they are super awesome and the food was also amazing. The next day we had Pres interviews which were great. We also helped the Hyväriset take apples to another member all the way in Kotka. We also had Splits in Lappeenranta this week! Its a super cool city and it was good getting to spend the day with the Elders there. I was comps with Riding for the whole day which was great. We street contacted and did our studies then at night we all got back together to play Sähly at the church w...

 Tuesday October 8, 2024 (But really weeks ago!) Hey everyone, very very eventful week, and great too. We went down to Helsinki since it's my Comp ElderJohnstons last transfer and he had My Plan. While he got to go to the temple, I got to go with the other missionaries to institute which was awesome, what was even cooler was getting to see everyone from Hyvinkää since all the youth come to Helsinki's institute. So it was an awesome reunion. After institute we walked around the area waiting for our comps to get back which eventually we did and split up for the night and headed to our assigned apartments. In the morning we got ready and met up with the rest of the dying missionaries and sent them on their way. I was in a trio for the day with Elders Gardener and Smith. After an eternity of street contacting the entire day and getting to see the APs with Elders Browne and Török, I met back up with Johnston and we made our way back to Kouvola. While finding this week we met this aw...

 September 10, 2024 Hey everyone, it was a really good week. We did a lot of finding this week which is always fun, and we also got to meet up with more of our friends. We met up with an older man named Kari and discussed Alma 32 and what Faith is. It was a great lesson and awesome to see his testimony and his faith in Jesus Christ. We also had a full day of service this week getting all the apples off of one of the members here's trees. It was a super fun day but definitely drained us haha. On sunday we had 3 random people come to church which was awesome. We're trying to set up lessons with 2 of them now, the other isn't interested. On P day we went down to Helsinki since we have Zone Conference or Mission Tour the following day, so we had to switch our P day. We stayed in a apartment with Aatos, Elder Johnson, O'Bryan, and Smith. It was super fun! Zone conference was awesome! We had Elder Phillips of our Area 70 come and talk to us since he was on a mission tour. The...

 Tuesday Sept 3, 2024 Hey everyone, it was a great week!  Kouvola is a great city and my companion elder Johnston is a great missionary.  Kouvola is however a really small city as well,  and there's not much here which makes finding hard.   Despite that,  we're always out finding trying to find new people to teach which and have already found a few.  Speaking of teaching people,  we have a lot of friends.  We're trying to have at least one lesson with someone every day,  it doesn't always work out that way,  but we try.   It's hard for hard for people to fit in time for us in their schedules which is understandable since school just started up again.   We got to go to Kotka this week, and boy is it beautiful.   It's by far the most beautiful place I've served in, and there's a lot of potential out there.  So we're trying to get to Kotka at minimum once a week.   The Church in Kotka i...

 Tuesday August 20, 2024 Hey everyone, this was a legendary week for sure! I went to Muumi World!!! If you've been following my time in Finland for some time now, then you probably know about my obsession with Muumi, and luckily in Turku, they have a little amusement park type island that's everything Muumi, and it's only open during the summer, so we were already so lucky, but we also had a friend whose a member here in Turku and she works there and got us in for FREE! It was awesome, it was a really fun time and a great day all around. We played volleyball with a ton of people in the city for pros that night too. On Wednesday, we as a district went over to a members garden that grew tons of vegetables and berries and picked them, it was so fun! They also made us some amazing smoked salmon which was delicious. After that we met up with Our friend Jere who came to pancake night that night as well and I got to say goodbye and all of that. On Thursday we got Transfer news! I...

 Tuesday August 13, 2024 Hey everyone, I hope ya'll had a great week! This was a fairly eventful week, with a lot of fun things that happened. This week started with ZL splits, we headed on down to Tampere and met up with Nielsen and Suman. I was with Nielsen for the day. We had a lesson with a kid from Vietnam, Tri from Hyvinkää helped us translate, it was good getting to see him again. We also had a lesson with someone who I also taught forever ago on splits with Elder Rawlings during my 1st or 2nd transfer, but she's on bap date now which is so awesome!! The rest of splits was great but not too much to talk about. This week we also had the opportunity to be given a tour of the giant Cathedral here. It was super awesome to learn more about its history since its one of the oldest buildings in the country. On Friday I probably had my favorite DA ever, it was with our friend Ream, he's such an awesome guy and he made amazing food. It was such a great experience and one to be...

 Friday August 2, 2024 Hey everyone, we had a semi eventful week this week. One of our members who we had done service for took us out to dinner to a Vietnamese restaurant for a DA, it was super good food. On Friday we had a like second P day, out mission president challenged us that if all the missionaries in the mission made an ad in the span of like 3 days then we could get 6 hours of free time on Friday, and needless to say we all did it and so me and my district went to tour a smaller cathedral here in Turku, it was awesome to be in such a big and spacious church like that. Sister Christensen from my last district here in Turku came here for splits with sister Helske and Klingonsmith. It was good getting to see her again. We had a lesson with our friend Mikail who we met last week, he also brought his friend Kennon. We had a great conversion about God, Jesus Christ, and the Book of Mormon with them. The only hard part is the languages that we have to deal with, Mikail speaks F...

 Friday August 2, 2024 Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well, this week was pretty good, we had a lot of cool stuff happen this week! To start it off we had Helmi from Hyvinkää come to visit Turku this week! We went with Sister Nelson and Slaughter and her to a pizza place. It was really awesome! This week we also had president interviews! It was awesome to get to see Pres and Sister Lehtinen, they're awesome people. It was definitely my favorite interviews so far, me and president talked a lot about the changes that the mission is going to go through over the next few transfers, and my time as a district leader. After interviews we headed to the tall ships race market. Basically every four years, there is a race with sailboats from different countries all over the world, and Turku is one of the ports that the ships dock at during the race. There was tons of shops set up that were really fun to go to, there was even an american shop set up with like a 1950's vibe. It w...

 Tuesday July 23, 2024 Hey y'all, not too much to report for this week, just a lot of grinding trying to find people who want to hear our message.  A member from Hyvinkää came and visited Turku for a few days, she's the same one that died my hair last time, and she offered to do it again, so of course I had to accept, only this time she accidently used a far stronger dye and turned my hair bright ginger, so I had to do a lot of hot showers to get rid of a lot of the dye so now it's ok haha.   We had some 1st lessons this week which was good.  Over all not too much of an eventful week except for the hair, but I love finding weeks, so it was really enjoyable.  I'm trying to increase my Finnish knowledge a lot more now, trying different strategies to do it, so pray that I can learn this language.   There's really not that much more to say though, so I guess i'll talk to you guys next time, take care everyone, love y'all!