You did it!

You made it through my mission.

This Sunday I was talking to a man in our ward and he said

“Your family is excited to see you.

They’ve been waiting around for you for a year and a half,

they are ready to have you home.”

That’s when I really realized…

This mission has been hard, sad, long, fast, short, happy, and great for you, too,

just as it has been for me.

You’ve just been living it with me from a different perspective.

So. I thank you for sticking with me through it all.

This last week was a good one.

Heavenly Father has been absolutely pouring out the blessings on me.

The hardest day was definitely Sunday

because it was my last time seeing the ward.

We had already sat down in the chapel when the little girl of one of my favorite families came over and said “Sister F! It’s your last Sunday!”

So then I had the special treat of getting to sit next to her for sacrament meeting

which never happens because she gets a little distracted by the missionaries.

It was one of the sweetest experiences I have had on my mission.

We started the opening hymn and try as I might,

I couldn’t hold back my tears as I realized it was one of the last times I will hear a hymn sung in Finnish in sacrament meeting.

I quietly cried through the beautiful sacrament prayers as well.

I will miss that. I will miss those prayers.

After the sacrament ended, the little girl looked up at me with her sweet face and said “Sister F, it’s okay to be sad. I love you.”

Throughout the whole rest of the meeting she would look up at me and whisper little things to me.

“Sister F, you’ll have happy times!”

“Sister F, I will miss you.”

“That’s what happens when you get used to a place, they move you right out!”

I can’t wait to show you pictures and tell you all about her and her family.

She and I shared a few tears that day.

This ward here is absolutely incredible.

They had me give the first testimony of the meeting and I got my first greeting sentence out and then I had to pray that Heavenly Father would help me speak because my heart hurt almost too much to say any words.

At the end of church they sang God Be With You Til We Meet Again

and all the Young Women came and said bye to me..

It was super sad. But I am so grateful to have been in this ward for five months and to have gotten so close to the people here.

I love my mission so much.

Getting on that plane will rip my heart out, but I know this isn’t the end.

I’ll bring Finland with me wherever I go.

This mission has given me a rock-solid foundation upon which I can build and rely

and I know it will never crack or disappear.

The greatest gift I have ever been given in my life is this mission.

And I look forward to being able to share it with each of you.

God lives. He is real.

He has never been so real to me as He is now.

I love Him, and I trust Him.

And I thank Him for this precious, precious gift.

I don’t think I can type much more because at this point I can’t really see the screen through my tears. My mission has definitely made me super cry-y.

I will see you in soon.

And I promise that as hard as it is to leave Finland,

I really am sincerely excited to see each of you.

I just have to leave something I love so dearly

to come home to something else I love so much, too.

See you on the other side of the Finnish line.

We’ll have “happy times!”

Rakkaudellani,

Sisar F.