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.
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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!
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