The Mormon form of Christian worship does not pay much attention to the liturgical calendar, but Finland, on the whole, does - it is a Lutheran nation, after all. So what to do when you are Mormon and Finnish? You add liturgical stuff into your Mormon worship!
First, though, a few more notes about general Christmas worship here in this beautiful country. The girls headed off to Advent services at the neighborhood church with their school classes on Friday morning. Sterling went with his päiväkoti this morning. This was all in observance of first Advent (I am still learning this liturgical language so forgive me if I say things wrong), which was yesterday.
Anyway, the Mormons. The opening song in sacrament meeting yesterday was Hoosianna. This traditional advent hymn is not in our Mormon hymnbook - we sang it from pieces of paper the music leader handed out. The best part was that the girls already had it memorized since they learned it in school! I cannot ever recall singing an opening hymn in sacrament meeting that was not in the hymnbook. It was lovely to learn a little bit more about this culture by singing that song with our fellow Mormons.
Then, in Primary, the children sang the first verse of another Advent song. This one has a different verse for each week of Advent, so yesterday, we sang only the first.
And now we need to buy some candles, apparently? And light one? There is so much to learn! I'm glad to be motivated to do some intensive study of Christmas - I couldn't ask for a better topic.
