Just a little bit of stagefright...to say the least!

Today I did the unexpected. I can't say that I'd ever imagined myself doing this, but it took me by surprise. It's been a hard thing to deal with the whole semester, but I figured it would mean a lot to those I was doing this for.

Any guesses??????

I spoke in church. In Finnish. Yeah be impressed haha.

Our building

No, I was asked a few weeks ago to say a small talk in church. In our church, every week members address each other, talking about experiences in their lives that have impacted them, quoting scriptures and messages from our prophet and other leaders. It's a time to gather strength from each other, and helps us all see that we have similar struggles.

Becuase of the language barrier, I haven't been able to really share my thoughts or feelings or experiences during lessons or meetings this semester. I felt like I didn't really have a voice in church. So I was really looking forward to having this opportunity for the other members to hear from me in my own voice, what the gospel and Jesus Christ mean to me.

As you can kind of see, it's a small building. One big meeting room, a kitchen, one class room, and office

I wrote it in English first, quickly used google translator (to give us a place to start), and then Leena corrected that translation. It was a big job, and it took a lot of time. She was working on it until about 10:15 on Saturday night, then her friend Antero stopped by the house (who happens to be a professional translator), who said he'd "read it over." Well, he spent another hour or so making it sound flawless in Finnish. Then I had to sit down with it and learn to say all the words. I knew the gist of what  I was saying, but some of the Finnish words are so long because they have less small words (like articles and pronouns), and combine other words together. So I stayed up until 2:30am doing that, plus we had daylight savings time.

Lovely candid moment Leena captured while I was practicing!

I was pretty nervous to say the least, even though there were seriously only 15 fifteen people tops.

I know that I didn't get all the pronunciation right, and I really was only reading the talk, instead of speaking, which I usually hate to do. After it was over I had no idea how it went. Until after the meeting, when two of the ladies reached over to me, took my hands and expressed how wonderful it was. One sweet lady said "It was music to my ears. The words and the content were just beautiful." One man told me that "You read Finnish very well." Haha, but I can't speak it! Finally, in our Sunday School class, the teacher asked the class to share moments where they had felt the love of other members in the branch. One lady that I've barely spoken to mentioned my talk, saying that she was touched that I spent all that time to learn to say my talk in Finnish, because it showed how much I cared for them to do all that work for just the 15 people there. When I was preparing this, I only prayed and prayed that they would be able to understand me. I had hoped that they would feel the emotion in my words, but I am so grateful that I was able to say my testimony and my thoughts to them in their own language.

Note, I was standing at the back of the room. 

The greatest thing was that our neighbor Pekka showed up to church to support me! He is the one that has driven me several times to the hospital and health center in the early mornings so I didn't have to walk. He doesn't speak any English, but he told Leena that Sunday morning he woke up and thought I would like to see him during my talk. Since then, he has told me several times how good it was. Positive feedback sure does make me happy haha!

I've attached copies of my talk in English and in Finnish. I talk about some experiences in my life that have strengthened my faith and testimony. I hope you read them.

Suomeski

In English