These first few pictures are of our little service project. One of the sets of Elders (Elder Bishop and Elder Stanley) and I pruned the apple trees for sweet old Sister Jaakkola, a wonderful 86 year old ex-actress and singer.
This guy below is a member of the Estonian Navy. Martha thought he was good-looking, and sweet talked him into letting me take his picture! (He is kind of cute!)
Speaking of "cute", here are our dear friends, Chris and Bobbie Coray. We ate at an "authentic midieval restaurant" in Tallinn, Estonia. Our table was outside, but they supplied us with blankets. We ate soup with bear and elk meat in it! Yummy!
This was a view of the old city of Tallinn, taken from one of the high walls:
Sorry... I got these out of order. But this is Chris Coray and Sister Mortensen eating at a wonderful little old restaurant on an island, called Parainen. We each got the dish that the made the place famous.... fish soup, made from fresh salmon. Chris said that it was the best fish soup he has ever tasted. Jurkka and Kirsti Vuorela took us there.
This is old Elder Mortensen sitting with two of his favorite young men. They are Aleksi (on the right) and Tuomas (in the middle) Kiikko (brothers). Aleksi leaves in less than two weeks on his mission to Leeds, England. Tuomas just got out of the army, and is starting to fill out his mission papers. Both have been competitive swimmers. Aleksi was in the special forces in the Finnish Army, and Tuomas was in the military police. Both are big tough guys on the outside, and teddy-bears on the inside. We love their whole family!
This is actually the view of the old city of Tallinn taken from our hotel window! Isn't it beautiful?
This picture was taken because of the beauty of its finish work... incredible extra touches, and masterfully restored!
Here are pictures of two more interesting buildings that caught Martha's eye:
Next we have a fun "minstrel show" of some type. These silent actors/dancers wheeled their production into the town square, performed as "mimes" to some mysterious music, and then wheeled themselves out again. Interesting.
Just outside one of the city walls, we found a guy who is actually the world champion long-bow archer (several times). For a few Euros, he will give a quick lesson on how to shoot a bow and arrow, and then you get 10 shots to see how well you learn. To get on his "leader board", you had to score over 50... quite a daunting task! Well, our hero, Chris accepted the challenge and easily scored 66! Not bad, huh? The rest of us declined the invitation.
Here is some more architecture from Estonia.... Mom had the camera:
As you know, Martha has started a collection of bench photos. She has now expanded her interest to include doors and windows. Here is a wonderful collection of her photography. Not bad, considering the quality of our handy little camera! I am quite proud of her!
For Mother's Day, the whole district of missionaries went in together to buy Martha a potted flower. Then they cut out a small picture of each of their faces and made colorful, artistic flowers to surround the faces. A wonderful surprise for Martha. She really is like a "mom" to these kids. And we love them like our own. Don't get paranoid kids... I should have said ALMOST like our own!
I mentioned in a letter to the family about a "mormonad" poster that had a picture of a girl holding a melting ice cream cone. And the caption says: "Some things just can't wait!" We decided to make our own poster saying the same thing... our young single adults conference has a theme of "TIME".
These are Emmi, Oona, and Aura with the ice cream. They had a lot of fun with this!
Love,
Grandpa Glenn and "Gigi"
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