Dåb nummer et!

Davs!

 

So Davids was baptized this Saturday! It was great to get to be a part of that, I showed up after he had made the decision and been taught most of what he needed and so I was just part of the official preparation for his interview and then just got to watch him seal the deal and join his family in the church! His nine year old sister gave a talk at the baptism about how she was happy he was joining her so that was really neat to watch!

 

 

Davids had a family friend from the Ward baptize and confirm him. He's all set to go!

 

So I forgot to tell you guys something in my last email. I gave my first Blessing in Danish! This was the day before we talked to that naked guy. Me and Ældste Larsen made an appointment with a member named Daniel Pedersen who wanted to just talk with us. We went in his house and the guy had a PMG, Quad set of scriptures, the Liahona, and everything else you could imagine lined up on his table ready to go and had the nametag of the missionary who baptized him as well. He was nearly impossible to understand because he slurred his speech and had Mo-Tab music on really loud right behind him. According to Elder Larsen he's hard to understand anyway because he is kind of an odd guy but really loves the church. We shared a thought on Alma 32 (basically my favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon) and after asked if he needed anything. In his response I caught that he mentioned a blessing, but what I hadn't caught is that he asked us, and specifically asked me if I'd give him a priesthood Blessing. So that kind of scared me because I literally had the amount of time it took to open the White hand book to make sure I got the translation right for the first part to prepare for it. I hope he got something from it. I was able to speak clearly the Whole time without ever needing to pause for a Word so that was cool to see how the Words weren't as big of a block as I thought they would be.

 

This week itself hasn't been super eventful. We've been focusing on Fredjuf and transitioning because this next week is Elder Larsen's last full week. I'm a Little worried about Fredjuf though because we are going to have to move his baptisimal date back a bit. After talking with him some more we kind of got the feel that he didn't quite understand how big of a commitment it was. To give him a better idea we brought him to Davids's baptism and talked with him and the bishop about how it was representing a promise and how he needed an answer. He told us it was a bigger commitment than he had thought and he didn't show up to church yesterday.

 

:(

 

Regardless I still think he'll get there, we just need to have a few more talks with him where we make sure he knows that this is totally up to him and that we aren't going to pressure him. That's something me and Ældste Larsen were worried about. We just figured that we was set because he had been the one to come to us and ask us about baptism. We were more focused on making sure that he got all the lessons officially taught and that he was all set for the 2nd as his date rather than making sure he had a real Desire. That was a lesson learned. We'll be trying to fix everything and make sure Fredjuf keeps that excitement that he's had the past few weeks about everything that we've been teaching him. I know he's ready, but it's hard to judge exactly what he needs when he answers a lot of our questions by being unspecific and mumbling a half of an answer... With Elder Larsen leaving soon I hope we can get this set.

 

We also made pumpkins this week for Halloween!

 

 

 

We made them with the Hall Family. Ken Hall is a stellar member. Each of the missionaries that serve in Odense that meet Ken usually earn a nickname, and usually it's degrading haha. He calls me Pee-Wee because he says I look like a blonde PeeWee Herman. I don't think so.

Anyway Ken is putting on a haunted house for the missionaries to invite less actives or recent converts or even investigators to come and have a good time (MEMBER MISSIONARY WORK FOR THE WIN!). This is great cause his Family has been through a rough time the last two years with divorce and the economy but he still makes this effort to give his kids a fun halloween and to help the missionaries out for being a good example to his Family. I'm pumped because Mik told us he's gonna stop by.

 

Mik is the coolest guy ever. I don't have time to tell his story but he's great.

 

Other than that I've just been enjoying my life in the promise land of Odense! I literally can't imagine a better area. We had a new missionary meeting where I got to see almost my Whole MTC group again and everyone told me the great Things they've heard about Odense. It's a really cool city with an incredible Ward and when you walk Down the street sometimes you run into Things like this just chilling on the side of the road:

 

 

 

I think it's supposed to be HC Andersen. They love that guy here. Like even the streetlights in Odense are the outline of a guy with a cane that is supposed to be HC Andersen. It's kindof over the top.

 

It's rains a lot

everyone is blonde

still a lot of bikes

 

Oh! I did some actual door contacting this week. We've mostly been busy with Fredjuf and Davids getting baptized and the other people we usually stop by but we had an appointment fall through and got stranded in a college home for an hour so we knocked and I realized just how much I still can't understand Danish. I can talk a lot but I can't listen and that's the most important part. DONT WORRY IM WORKING ON IT! I translate everything in church under my breath to make sure I'm actively listening cause it's so easy to let a foreign language go in one ear and out the other.

 

Anyway, I'd been having a bit of a harder time earlier this week feeling almost like the reason a lot of missionaries where out here was just because that was our culture as Mormon's and that that included me. Well knocking doors helped because there was this one college student who tried to use some ridiculous logic to disprove our message and I WANTED TO SPEAK SO BAD! But I couldn't because I was only kind of sure what he was saying. Regardless I told him what I knew and then we left. It really helped remind me that I trully do believe this message can help peole and that even though I may not have that unshakable faith Elder Holland talked about in Konference last year I need to hold my ground in what I do know. It's been great to learn that in this last week.

 

So BARE YOUR TESTIMONY TO PEOPLE cause sometimes it helps it grow.

 

Anyways, this is Peewee signing out.

 

Till next time!

 

The Naked Billionaire

So Tuesday was an interesting day. Me and Elder Larsen had tried to visit Thomas Bølund, a cripple who lives in a professional care center. You think he'd be easy to find but everytime we've shown up he's been doing something... one time it was skydiving. Yeah.

 

Anyway, we had time to spare in Tornbjerg and didn't want to wait another hour for the next bus so we decided to visit a few inactive members around the area. That's when we met Christian Hansen. We walked up to his door, and knocked, and instead of answering he poked his head out of the window. After telling him that we were missionaries from his church he told us to wait a second and went back into his house. Now, it was clear that he hadn't been wearing a shirt when he looked out the window so we figured he probably went to go grab some clothes... but he flung the door open and was completely naked other than a pair of sandals. He then proceeded to barage us with a very long Danish monologue. Now, it's already hard for me to understand Danish people when they talk, but add that to the fact that I had to focus on not laughing and trying to keep eye contact with this very strange man made it so I couldn't understand a thing he said. He talked to us for around 25 minutes and the whole time it was all I could do to not burst out laughing, although I admit I couldn't hold it back when he started swaying back and forth. Apparently he informed us that he is now Catholic, and a Naturalist... obviously. He also mentioned that he was a billionaire who owned several houses around Denmark. He then proceeded to inform us that the best thing about the Mormon church was that we used to allow polygamy, and that we never should have gotten rid of it. I tried to talk to him and tell him that we had a bus to catch... bad idea. He didn't quite catch what I had said because he had been talking for half of it, and took a big step closer to me so he could hear. Eventually we escaped, but he shook our hands... Ech. As soon as he closed the door me and Elder Larsen just burst into laughter. I don't really expect to see that guy at church this week. Maybe in an insane asylum though.

We took this picture to express our feelings about meeting Christian.

 

OTHER THAN THAT THIS WEEK HAS BEEN AWESOME THOUGH!

 

This week was the Harry Potter festival in Odense. Yeah, Harry Potter fesitval, they have it every year because it's Odense, and Odense is awesome. So there were a trillion kids running around in authentic Harry Potter gear fighting the volunteer Death Eaters and Dementors and going to Diagon Alley and trading Danish Kroner for Galleons to spend at the shops selling Harry Potter stuff. I kid you not they had a St. Mungos, a stand selling the Daily Prophet, a potion shop, a robes shop, a pet shop, a great hall with the houses banners where you could buy food and drinks like Butterbeer, and even a field for Quidditch! Me and Elder Larsen played a round of Quidditch because a member of our ward registered himself as the Danish representative for the International Quidditch Association and he needed more players for the first game.

 

Also we stumbled upon a showing of an authentic knight fight as we walked through the Gågade

But as for actual you know missionary work this week we've been focusing on getting Fredjuf døbt! His baptism date is in two weeks so we knew we needed to meet with him often so we could cover all the material in time. We called him but his phone wouldn't connect the call for some reason. No biggie, we had his address. We walked about ten or fifteen minutes to his house to find a big lock out apartment complex. We checked every single name on the mailboxes and the surrounding area but none of them were Fredjuf Klein. Frustrating. But luckily Denmark is a socialist country! That means the government always knows where people are! We headed to the library to use this website called Krack. Basically you put someone's phone number in and it can tell you there name and where they live and a ton of personal info that kind of freaks me out that it is so easy to get. Anyway we plop his number in and NOTHING COMES UP! This man is a ghost. So we're sitting there trying to think of what to do with this golden investigator that we couldn't find when I turn around and look over my shoulder and see Fredjuf himself walking through the library! It was crazy! He was happy to see us and we set up a lesson at the church for later that day. He came and it was awesome and we talked about the Plan of Salvation and I understood most of it and he loved it and I even taught the harder parts about The Fall and how the Judgement Works and there was a member there and it was great. So here we are thinking everything is perfect and he agrees to come to church but when Sunday rolls around he never showed! We were pretty bummed about that and are going to have to make sure everything is good and that we don't need to change his date. If everything goes alright we'll have a baptism this Saturdaywith Davids and the one after that as well with Fredjuf.

 

Church was a party though because I could actually understand a good chunk of the talks this time and wasn't jet-lagged. It was weird to realize how much I had improved from just a week ago because when Sofia gave her farewell talk I literally understood nothing. This time though I knew what each person had talked about and could understand the stories they told and could pick out whole sentences that made 100 percent sense to me. It was a relief!

 

This week we also played basketball at the bishops house, (And when people asked me to pass them food or other stuff I got it right everytime! Yay for not looking like a fool at dinner!) as well as breaking a trailor while trying to do service, getting stuffed beyond human capacity by a Vietnamese lady who calls all the missionaries "Mit barn" (my child) and refers to me as "lille ven" (Little friend) because according to her I look so young to be a missionary that it actually made her cry, (She also cried because she saw the Svendborg elders walking and thought it looked hard so I guess she just cries a lot) and a whole lot of eating appoitments. They kind of frustrate me because when you eat at a Dane's house it is impossible to leave until at least 3 hours have passed, and some old guy telling me that my Danish is better than some people that he knows have lived in Denmark 20 years... I think he was exaggerating.

Anyway other than that I think I'll just leave you with some thoughts I've been having about achieving stuff. Remember that when things get hard the best thing we can do is take it a step at a time! Frustration stems from unmet expectations so when we accept that things aren't going to change over night and work on daily progression to build ourselves we can see great things happen over time whether it be learning Danish or healing your hamstring! (Good luck with that one Dad!)

Vi ses venner!

Flamingo and a baptism

Sooooooooo I survived Denmark for a week, even though some guy in Høje Taastrup Station didn't. There was a murder in some other missionaries area and they happened to be near the scene and saw the dead body...

Anyway my week was interesting! Remember that guy I told you who came to General Konference and so I had to watch part of it in Danish? Well that wasn't just any guy, his name is FREDJUF! He's incredible, that was the first time we met him but he said that Konference was exciting (which is hard to imagine because the Danish translators have zero emotion in their voices when they translate) and he accepted out invitation to come to CUV thatTuesday (which is pretty much Young Single Adults Danish style). So he shows up on Tuesday, stays for all of CUV and after the institute hour which included a sweet lesson on the Book of Mormon HE asked US what our church thought about people getting re-baptized into OUR church. Ældste Larsen was totally down for that, I thought he had asked why it was important to get re-baptized and so I didn't completely realize that we had set a baptisimal date for him until after we left... BUT WHEN I FOUND OUT I WAS EXCITED! Haha that means that before Ældste Larsen goes home on November 7th we should have two baptisms! So in your face worldthattoldmeiwouldneverbaptizepeopleinDenmark! Haha it's really been such a blessing because I've just been along for the ride in this journey. I mean I can usually understand the topic of discussion, but it's hard to understand the topic, think of what I want to say, and say it before the conversation goes somewhere else. So I'm thankful that Ældste Larsen is on top of the language. Anyway Fredjuf actually went to a youth activity without any notice or invitation from us to watch a soccer game with the other 20ish year olds and showed up to church for all three hours. When asked if he was a member he answered "Ikke nu" which means "not yet" PERFECT ANSWER! He's set to get baptized on November 2ndand he is super prepared! He asked a ton of good questions at church and everytime the teacher or Ældste Larsen answered he would say how that made sense and that he agreed with that or something similar. Pragtfuld!

Other fun things have been teaching a family home evening in Danish, having dinner with Danish families and going to a farewell party and trying to talk to like three people at once in Danish with a trillion conversations going on around me and not being able to hear anything....

Oh yeah, the farewell. So there's a girl in our ward named Sofia who is leaving to Montreal Canada on a French/Spanish speaking mission and she alraedy speaks Danish and English and Spanish and even a tiny bit of Italian and will now be working on French. Talk about multi-lingual. She was the first acutal Danish person that I had an entire conversation with that I (at least I think I did) understood. I'll put a picture at the bottom.

So we walk everywhere and take buses and I think it's entertining. I know the area a bit better now and could find my own way to the major bus stops around our apartment as well as the church and the Banegård which is the big train station by our apartment. I'll also but some cool pictures of Denmark and one of my Mission family. The Ældste at the top is my trainer - Larsen. Everyone else was either trained by Larsen, trained by someone who was trained by Larsen, or trained by someone who was trained by someone who was trained by Larsen. Ældste Larsen is pretty much the Abraham of our mission so I get to be in part of the biggest "family" in the mission haha.

Only other things I can think to put in is that Danish food is still awesome, I talked to Ældste Swan who went to Jr. High with me and is actually part of the Larsen family, and Danish people should really slow down when they talk so I can seperate the words they use and then maybe I could understand at least half of what they say. OH! I tried street contacting for the first time. That was scary. But I managed to stop people and introduce the Book of Mormon before getting denied. The last girl I talked to outside of our apartment actually gave us her email and I almost got through the whole contact before Ældste Larsen had to step in to help. Anyway, that's all for now folks!

Oh - completely forgot... Flamingo is the Danish word for Styrofoam, said just like it is in English. That's why it was in the title, I thought it was hilarious haha!


 

Danmark!!!

So basically I'm in the coolest country in the world (sorry Conner) and let me tell you why - The floor in my bathroom is heated so that's pretty much the coolest thing ever, they put cheese AND jam on their toast and it's pretty much the best secret that has never made it to the United States (make sure it's parvati cheese though!) and I love it, on top of that all the other food is incredible, the kethcup is tasty enough I could drink it, and I had a breakfast comprised of almost exclusively chocolate at the priesthood breakfast yesterday. Yum. The trains (WHICH GO UNDERWATER!!) and buses are always perfectly on time, and yes we use trains and buses to get everywhere across miles of BEAUTIFUL Danish countryside, everything is old, the houses and sidewalks and buildings, except the people. The people are all young and look a lot better than Americans, I didnt really believe the whole thing about Danes being beautiful but a Dane is basically an American that is not overweight, has blond hair, blue eyes, perfect skin, super nice clothes, and is smoking. The money is called crowns which sounds awesome, there are couches in our church, there are at least 5,131,075,329,737,377,019 bikes that I've seen so far, the cars are super small and all kind of look like the Honda Fit I drove, my nametag finally fits the people I talk to, and they have this super cool stuff called Saft. Its a kind of syrup you pour into your cup, add water, and it makes juice. Like really really good juice.

The language is sweet too, I still can't make the stupid noise that this thing makes - Ø, it kinds of sounds like a seal giving birth to triplets. So everytime I say anything the Danes try and speak english to me because they know I'm American and they all speak English! It's lame because I want to practice Danish but then I can never understand them when they talk so they say it in English... Speaking of not understanding Danish, I hope you guys enjoyed the session of Conference that Elder Holland spoke in (Sunday morning I think?) because I had to listen to that one in Danish with an investigator and understood nothing... like I could tell the subject they spoke about but that was about it. So basically whenever I have to do anything like buy a bus pass, or try and register at the commune as a Danish resident I get about three words out and sit their open mouthed while I get slammed with a barage of noises that apparently are Danish because my trainer Ældste Larsen can forstå them but I can't even forstå the little kids that ask me to buy apples on the street. There's also a lot of other unfortunate parts about Danmark like the 25 foot behemoth she-male statue that is laying down in a super weird and super naked position right outside of our apartment. There's tons of weird naked statues on like every other street. And you have to pay to go to the bathroom in public buildings! What the...  plus everything, EVERYTHING, is a trillion times more expensive then America. They give us about the equivilant of 300 dollars each month to do stuff and in the states we only needed 160. I'm very grateful that Cole and all his buddies living in Argentina are helping us pay our rent! We live above the Gågade, which is basically the center part of Odense (Odense is the third biggest city in Denmark on an island called Fyn in between the main part of Denmark called Jylland and the island close to Sweden called Sjælland that has Copenhagen on it) above a store called Tante Grøn which means Aunt Green. A Gågade is a walk street (litterally) so there are only bikes going around all the tons of shops we live by. Our apartment is a small three room place on the third floor so we can see all the Danes passing below on the Gågade on their way to work.

The Danish people are very interesting. In a way I can see myself in them. They kind of keep to themselves in public but once you get to know them at all they are super lively and will never stop talking. They don't really feel a need for church because they already have so much. The Danske Folke Kirke (The state church) is like literally empty each week because people are content with their lavish lives of smoking, drinking, sex, and buying tons of super Danish Danish things from other Danes like Danishes. It's kind of weird for me to admit but I feel like I could easily be just like them if I didn't have the knowledge of this gospel. That makes me love the Danish people even more and makes me want to share this message with them. I know the best I can do right now is just introduce myself and then tell them that I have no idea what they just said but I plan on letting them all know just what they're missing. It'll just take a while haha. I'm throwing myself into Danish conversations whenever I can though. My trainer is Ældste Larsen, he's great with the language and the culture and pretty much has saved my life every five minutes. He's going home in FIVE WEEKS though so that means I'll have to take over my area and know who everyone is and where they are and what trains go where and when the bus comes to the stop that will get us to Banegården so we can catch a train to Svendborg... Hvad for nogle...

Totally forgot to bring my camera in all the craziness of making sure the government knows where I live so they don't kick me out of the country so I'll have pictures next week! 

Vi ses senere :)