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It would be tempting if you were seventeen
years old, and the only girl your age in your ward in Kouvola, Finland
— and maybe the only LDS girl in your city and in all the
cities round about, to think you were all alone — isolated
by miles of forest and a world of values very different from your
own...
Rikka Ylimaula, Marit Kenppainen and Taina Suurinkerainen.
Yet, in the LansiAuto Areena just before
the Youth Cultural Celebration for the Finland Temple dedication,
Taina Suurinkerainen is huddled, giggling, with two of her best
friends, Riikka Ylimaula and Marit Kenppainen, who live 130 miles
away in Espoo, a suburb of Helsinki.
You would think they got to do this
every day. This tight bond, however, has grown through the inspiration
of Church leaders who consciously plan activities to nurture the
rising generation — events like FestiNord — a once a
year gathering of all the LDS youth in the northern countries. They
say that once they have met each other, they stay in touch with
youth in Sweden, Norway, Finland and beyond, via Internet messaging
programs.
All, Nordic blonde and beautiful, dressed
in white, they are confident, friendly, the picture of vibrancy,
and looking forward to playing their roles tonight.
Each will be a tree in a Finnish forest.
It wasn’t too hard to learn our parts, they laughed in their
perfectly-mastered English.
Tying Their Hearts to the Temple
When President Gordon
B. Hinckley asked that youth cultural celebrations be part of all
future temple dedications, he hoped that working hard to create
these festive events would connect the members — and particularly
the youth — to the temple, tie their hearts to the House of
the Lord.
Yet, these celebrations have done something
else as well. They have given members a sense of being a part of
something big, that the Church isn’t just an isolated few
members in a branch in Lithuania or a leased building in Moscow.
Members come together and feel the
strength of their numbers, the power of shared testimony, a strong
sense of community.
It is something wonderful to walk into
the biggest arena in Sacramento or San Antonio and realize that
the thousands of people gathered here are all members of the Church,
their eyes singled on the temple. It is downright astounding to
do the same thing in Finland, where there’s never been anything
quite like this before.
A Coming Together
The Saturday morning before the celebration
that night, young Latter-day Saints, most in the bright costume
of their own nation, gathered from every country in the Finnish
Temple district. Russians came with boys in soldier uniforms and
girls in bright blouses that made them look like nesting dolls.
Young men from Estonia wore bright
blue suits to match their partners’ red, peasant skirts. Finns
came as reindeer, trees and sea-farers. Latvians and Lithuanians
came in unique native dress.
Most from the various countries had
not seen each other before; most couldn’t converse in the
same tongue, but they would do a dress rehearsal in one day that
had been in the preparation for a year and perform it that night
to a rousing applause.
Click
here to go to Part 2 of The Finnish Temple Cultural Celebration
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