Today I went out for a little walk with the people I know from my time in Viikin kristityt’s Bible study group (or there were only 4 people that I already knew. As it has been four years since I last attended their meetings some new people have joined in). We went to Nuuksio national park that is just a one hour drive from Helsinki city center. There we walked around and looked at all the pretty flowers, lakes and marshes.
I found out that even though there are around 7 different words in Finnish to describe a marsh (to distinguish how wet it is and how it is formed), you can never go wrong if you call a marsh or wetland “suo” in Finnish. An observant person may even notice that this word makes up one part of our nation’s name in Finnish. Even though our country is called Finland internationally, in Finnish it is Suomi – as in “suo”-mi.
I, on the other hand, was embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know the difference between the different Swedish forms of the word marsh; myr, kärr, mosse osv. So if someone who knows would please give me an answer to which of these that is the most wet I would be very grateful (mainly because it would save me the trouble of looking it up in Wiki 
)
Today has been a very informative day indeed, since the guy driving me to the park turned out to be an Adventist. Some of the differences between Adventists and the Pentecostal church: They celebrate Sabbath every Saturday. Then they are not allowed to do anything that can be considered working. For example, they should not be going grocery shopping. But, if they think it’s pleasurable (and not an obligation) to go out running or do some other kind of exercise they are allowed to do so even on Sabbath. It is in any case a personal interpretation of the word “work”.
On Sabbath they go to church. Their sermon starts off with half an hour of Bible study in which all participating in the service can take part. It’s like a big discussion on a specific topic. After this there is a “normal” sermon held by the pastor.
They try to live healthy and many are therefore vegetarians. They abide to the practise of the Old Testament avoiding to eat pork meat, and try in every way to live a pure life. They don’t mind female pastors as the founder of the Adventist movement was a woman. And then I heard something about them washing each others feet, like Jesus did for his disciples, but I didn’t get this confirmed…
Here are some pictures from the five and a half hours we were out walking:
The whole gang. From left to right: Johanna, Ella, Risto, Aapo, Tea, Matti, Anne and Elina.
It was a very nice day, even though we got some rain. We took short breaks at each lake and a very very long break for food. In one of the pictures you see Matti and Tea making pancakes in the frying pan they brought with them 
