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Come with
Us to Finland! Part 2
A Photographic Essay by Scot Facer Proctor
Please click
on any picture to enlarge
The farms in Finland are
so beautiful. Many of the natives here have told us that the Finns
are very organized and love to keep things in order. Their farms
show this. Most of the farms we observed were picture-perfect.
Here is that same farm
from another angle. This farm just spoke peace to my soul.
Never have I seen so many mushrooms
in all my life. We’ve been hiking around a bit in the woods
and they are everywhere. This one is very poisonous, but there are
people we’ve met here who go out and gather mushrooms every
day. Picking mushrooms is a very popular pastime throughout Finland.
Just in the few minutes we were standing
around the market here I saw two sales for a substantial number
of mushrooms from this bin. We’ve seen the mushroom motif
all through the gift stores, on napkins, designed on tablecloths,
carved in wooden figures — they are everywhere.
I love taking pictures of produce and
the good things of the earth. We’ve been eating various berries
each and every morning we have been here. This morning’s buffet
in the city of Lahti had an amazing mix of berries, some of which
I didn’t know, and they were labeled: Forest Berries. I could
not understand from the woman who was selling these, what they were.
I thought they were currants. I just don’t know. Is there
a Finn out there who can help me out (in Finnish and English please)?
Even though it is not particularly
cold yet (well, Maurine thinks it is) the schoolchildren are all
dressed warmly, prepared for a sudden blast of cold from the real
north. The Finns are delightful to be around. Many of the natives
tell us the Finns are shy. Perhaps they are, but we keep meeting
the ones who are not. What delightful, wonderful people they are!
Okay, I admit it. This
scene was so beautiful and so already-perfectly-framed, I just rolled
down the window and shot it from the car (ouch). What was so fun,
though, was the aroma of mint was so strong here it just filled
our car, and our olfactory systems were going wild. It truly was
delightful beyond words. The combination of beauty and smell was
heavenly. This picture was taken less than 45 minutes from the Russian
border.
This was a welcome site in Turku. Does
your heart leap when you see this? It should! Yes, it is Finnish
for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and this is
one of our chapels. Maurine and I have attended church all over
the world and there is nothing (except for the temple) that makes
us feel more “at home” than our chapels. What a joy
to be a member of the Church.
This makes the photographic essay
more personal. Here are my traveling companions — my parents
— Martha Proctor Flandro and Royce Flandro, and my precious
wife (most of you know her), Maurine Jensen Proctor. We invited
a number of people to come on this trip with us. One by one they
could not come. One day I was telling my Mother about all the people
we had invited and who could not come. Mother said, “Well,
you never invited us!” I said, “Would you like to come?”
She answered quickly, “We’d love to!” Within a
few days we had made the arrangements, got the tickets and here
we are together having the time of our lives. Mom is 87. We’ll
plan another fun trip next year.
Click
here to go to the beginning of Come with Us to Finland!
Click here to go to Meridian’s
home page.
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