Young Single Adult Nation-wide Conference

Well, Martha and I just wrapped up the YSA Conference here in Turku.  It seemed to be a big success.... Mostly because of Martha!  I'll just show a few pictures of her decorations here.

 This is one wall in the "dance hall".  It announces that it is "Summer, 2013".  You can only see the tail of a kite that is up and to the right.   Also, you can't see the sun that is just out of the picture to the upper left.  It was really cute!

And all of these were decorated with fluorescent paint;  so they lighted up magnificently in the "black light" dance that evening!

Below is a close-up of a travel bag decorated with name tags or tickets representing all the missionaries from our Turku group of YSA.  We already have three out in the mission field:  one in Finland, one in Japan, and one in England.  Another just gave her farewell address in church today (going to England).  Still another has her call to France.  And two others have their paper work sent in, and are just waiting for the calls to come in the mail!  And three more are working on their paper work right now!  That's ten just from our little group in Turku.  Something must be going right, because when we arrived, they were pleased to have more than 5 in attendance at FHE.  There are also three more young men who are planning on missions as soon as they get out of the army.

Below is a backdrop for taking photos of the attendees.  The hat rack on the left has "props" for the photos.

This picture is a table set up with fluorescent paints and pens for decorating their white shirts, their faces, and their arms/hands in preparation for the Friday night dance which was a casual dance with black lights (UV light).

This was the sign-in desk, all arranged with programs and also their room reservation numbers for the hotel where the out-of-towners stayed.

This is a copy (front and back) of the program.  The theme was "TIME".  And for some reason, the kids that helped us organize it loved the phrase in English:  "Time is precious, waste it wisely!"

They had a map showing where the chapel is, where the park for the outdoor activities was located, and also the hotel's location.  If you look closely, maybe you can read the events?!

We looked up on the internet to find out how the average European spends his time during a life time.  The results were posted in these signs on a string in the foyer.  They are pretty funny, and also scary!  

We were in charge of one of the class sessions (there were two occurring simultaneously, and then they switched rooms, so that they all attended both classes).  We gave them each a small "egg-timer" (three minutes), which we used in our lesson.  They also played a game of "Boggle" that I rigged up to contain many time-related words for them to find.  We had a lot of fun.  I also told about three amazing people that used their time well to accomplish great things:  Peter Snell (New Zealand runner from the 60's), Albert Schweitzer (German philosopher, religion reformist, musician, organ maker, and doctor); and my father (paid tithing on his most valuable possession:  his time!)

  This is how we have been spending our free time over the last couple of weeks.... in between finding and furnishing new apartments for the influx of new missionaries!

We have lots more fun pictures, but not enough time to post them currently.  Maybe soon??

We love anyone with the patience or the interest to follow this blog post!