John and Evelyn leave Saturday June 18 for Helsinki Finland for a Special Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
We arrive Sunday and are warmly greeted by friends we never met before. Very Nice.We get checked into the Indigo Hotel. Since the other friends in our group did not arrive until Monday, we had a day off. It was nice since we needed time to adjust to the 10 hour time difference.
We walked to Stockmann department store, the largest in Finland. John buys a suit since one of the ones he had was showing serious signs of wear.
Evelyn checks out the shoes.
Tuesday our other friends have arrived and we are picked up by bus and taken to a local Kingdom Hall for field service.
We have a great time in service. We were given a presentation in Finnish which we had a tough time mastering. The photo below shows our little group. The other brother is from Russia.
Then we are taken to the Finland Branch for a tour. Very impressive. We are greeted with music and more music at lunch.
Wednesday we are taken to the docks and board a boat for Porvoo, an old Finnish town. Nice welcome and tour of the town.
Out tour guides, Heidi and Noora.
Notice God's name in this old church in Porvoo.
Wednesday evening we walk to the Savoy Theater for an Evening Gathering. The Finnish friends entertained us for a couple hours with music and drama re-enactments.
Thursday we go on an all day visit to the Nuuksio National Park. Beautiful!
A little refreshment along the way.
They feed us well after our nature walk.
Friday we are bussed to the Convention. There are delegates from Sweden, USA, and Russia. About 14,000 total in attendance.
After the first day of the Convention, we have to indulge in a Finnish tradition—the sauna. There are more saunas in Finland than cars!
Then, back to the excellent program at the Convention. They friends really took care of us! They had bagged lunches for us with more than we could eat. We had left overs for dinner and never did go out to eat at night.
Finally, it was time to return home. Finnair is a great airline. We flew from Helsinki to JFK and then to San Diego. What a fantastic trip!
At the airport, some Finnish beer and salmon soup.
THE END