A Prodigal Daughter's Perspective on Life in Finland: Feasts, festivals and a birthday

I thought it might be fun to report on this week's activities in reverse order. So, let's start with today and work backwards.

After church, the Koivisto family joined us for a mini-feast.

Samuel, Anukka, Eevi and Kalle. Once upon a time I was Eevi's (in the blue shirt) advisor in the Young Women's program at church. She also translated the talk I gave at church back in March. Love her!! Kaapo, their youngest, was in Helsinki so we were sad to miss him.

I love that we caught them showing off their 'American smiles'...

TWICE! :)

(Related side note: It's happened on many occasions that Finnish friends and colleagues have said, 'All you Americans have the same American smile. We have to learn how to smile like that.')

One of the highlights of the afternoon together was to learn more about the (recent) history of the LDS church here in Finland. Samuel oversees several congregations in the central and western regions of Finland. Individual LDS congregations (called wards) are grouped together into 'stakes' that are overseen by a stake president. Samuel is the stake president over the Tampere Stake (the Jyvaskyla Ward, of which I'm a member, is part of the Tampere Stake). Here's what I learned about the LDS Church in Finland:

Number of members: 4-5,000 depending on how you count them (Finland says 4,000 according to how they record Lutherans who convert to the LDS faith; the LDS Church counts the number of baptized members which hovers around 5,000)

Number of stakes: 2 (several wards in each stake)

Number of districts: 2 (4 branches in each district)

Number of missions: 1

Number of members you need in order to form a stake: about 2,000

Number of members in the Tampere stake: 1,600

There are roughly 5,000,000 people living in Finland. 5,000 members. Being a Mormon in Finland isn't quite like being one in a million. It's more like one in a thousand. :)

Thinking about how this compares to San Antonio, we have 5 stakes (each of which has 8 or 9 congregations, I would imagine) in the city and surrounding areas, which would put the total membership around the 10,000 member mark. My guess would be there are roughly 2,500,000 people living in the region. That means there are roughly four times the number of LDS members in San Antonio than there are in Finland.

After we wrapped up our visit together, we headed to the university campus to attend Katie's piano recital. It started out with six little kiddos performing a couple of pieces on their xylophones:

Katie was the second to the last performer (she's among the oldest of the kids) and did a great job...

playing 'Let it be me.' She is gifted in music!!

Afterwards, while all the kids lined up to have their photos taken...

I thought the more interesting line-up was this one:

Proud parents grinning from ear to ear as they're taking pictures of their little ones.
Love that this captures Finns with American smiles that are completely natural!! :)

It kind of reminded me of this site I came across earlier this week on what places look like from a different angle.

From there we headed outside to enjoy...

cotton candy! Agnus, one of the music teachers, and her husband (the cotton candy maker!) are famous for their cotton candy machine ('hattara' is cotton candy in Finnish). Check out the video below on how you make this treat (and listen for his favorite flavor!):

Incidentally, Aila and I ran into Agnus and Jannus at the Yläkaupungin Yo (City Festival here in Jyväskyklä) yesterday afternoon where they were making the cotton candy for festival-goers.

The weather was perfect: high 70s, very light breeze, nothing but sunshine and countless shades of green cover the lawns and trees. We checked out a band that we heard playing in the amphitheater across from the university's main campus.

We arrived to find the band doing a quick warm up before the concert that was scheduled to begin later in the evening. We weren't able to make it back for the performance but LOVED listening to them during their warm up.

We also saw some craftsmen working their magic:

and discovered a Frisbee Golf course that they had set up for the day:

We wrapped up the festivities by checking out a 'Roller Derby':

While we watched them warm up, I was curious about why the need for so much protective gear (helmets, mouth guards, knee and elbow pads). Then the derby started. It's a full-on contact sport! Rugby and red rover are what came to mind when I watched them play. I'm not sure how else to describe it. They said it comes from the states. Turns out it was a really popular sport in the US in the 1940s with 5,000,000 spectators watching amateur games in roughly 50 cities. (Thank you to the roller derby entry on Wikipedia for the history on the sport.)

One of the things I love about Finland when the lakes aren't frozen is this:

The reflection in the water. This is a small pond very close to my office. I took this picture around 9:45pm on Friday evening. The skies here are just spectacular!!

This week we also celebrate my sister's birthday.

This precious little girl: