Break the Fast

This is a widely used activity in YSA units all over the world.  It's a great time to gather our single adults and provide a home cooked meal in a safe and inviting environment.  This summer, we have seven BYU interns living here in Tallinn, so our turnout has been fabulous.  From month to month, over the past year, we never know how many will come until we sit down to eat, and sometimes, we still don't know as others may come late.  So we always make extra.  It's really satisfying to see them interact and become more acquainted over a meal they didn't have to cook on a hot plate or a microwave.  Sister Allred always makes the best dinners.  Occasionally, we will have guest chefs come and prepare the meal.  This month we enjoyed authentic Estonian cuisine made by one of our YSA sisters.  It was a hit with everyone.

Enjoying our Estonian meal

The young Elders came too with an investigator

A Night at the Opera

Well, not exactly.  Some of our branch members are in a choir that was performing during the Old Town celebration week.  We thought this would be a fun activity for the YSA group and so we made a plan to attend (free admission helps).  It turns out that there were two choirs performing.  These choirs are sponsored by various government agencies.  The choir our friends are in is sponsored by the Politsei (police) and the other by the Tax commission.  The Politsei choir had very nice uniforms and sang a variety of songs from classical composers to more modern.  The Tax choir sang a number of movie theme songs from familiar Hollywood films.  See if you can guess the tunes.  At the end, both choirs sang together a song (Smile) written by Charlie Chaplin and used in his movie "Modern Times".  The lyrics and title were later added by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons.

Another Visit to the Open Air Museum

The summertime activities have started and so we thought we would catch some of them at the museum ( Click here to refer back to our first visit in September, 2016).  We hoped to attend a song fest of choirs representing various regions in Estonia where they would sing to each other (outside, of course) their favorite folk songs.  I read the time wrong and we arrived just after it ended.  So we wandered around the place and actually caught a song here and there.  We bought a yearly family pass as we intend to come back several times this summer.

Who knew a kiik (swing) could be so fun

Things heard while on our path

These people love to sing