The eye of the storm

So there was a record breaking storm here in Denmark this week! That was fun. According to the newspapers the next day there were winds reaching 120 mph, and I saw a ton of crazy wind damage. We got word from our mission president to stay indoors for the day but we had already gone out and so we got to battle our way through crazy winds with the Seden Ældster. Ældste Sullivan almost got destroyed by a flying branch, and we almost got attacked by a tornado of glass. One of the shops on the gågade had it's windows smashed in, the glass got caught up in a little dust devil type business and the result was a horrifying glass tornado that chased us down the street. The biggest damage though was the huge tree right outside our apartment that got torn out of the cement and dumped right onto the ground in front of where we live. Eventually we made it back and had all the Elders on Fyn gather in our apartment and we made Abælekage with Ice Cream and played cards and watched all the crazy Danes that were still outside get blown off their bikes. Like literally blown off the bike.

The tree was a good 30 feet. I was impressed it fell over.

The storm was just the beginning though. This week has been really crazy, it's my companions last week as a missionary and Halloween and the storm and a zillion other random little appointments and people asking for help and so we haven't been able to get a whole lot done. Our numbers this week were really low. For example this week a member had us move our P-Day so he could steal us for the day in order to say goodbye to Ældste Larsen. He was flabergasted that I hadn't yet tried a real Danish hotdog (apparently the ones at the cheap muslim joints didn't Count) and so he bought us both Ristet Hotdogs WHICH WERE AMAZING and then took us on an adventure. He said he would have taken us to legoland but it closed the week before. So we went to this big Danish arcade, and Ældste Larsen won 7 stuffed animals in 5 tries with the claw machine. I never thought those Things worked.

 

 

Then we went Go-Karting, Laser Tagging, Bowling, a few other Things as well. Best. P-Day. Ever. But Ken had a Price for taking us on all these adventures. We had to go through his Danish fear factor... it was terrible. He forced warm leverpostej (which is straight up ground liver) Down our throats mixed with salt licorice and spicy peppers. I couldn't get the spicy one Down and it came out all over the sidewalk. Then we each had to eat this massive pastry thing so that we felt like we were about to explode, topped it off with this gross salt licorice stuff and a ton of ice cream, and then we had to do the cinnamon challenge with our eyes closed not knowing what to expect. That was terrible. Then came this big old fish that  was still intact scales and all just staring up at us with it's freaky eyes. And we topped it all off with this gross cheese taht is supposedly high end stuff but just looked sweaty and moldy to me, I survived though, and it was a great day to say the least. We looked legit in our Go-Kart racing clothes (they were so powerful we had to Wear helmets)

 

 

As far as missionary work goes though we put on a Halloween get together with the same member that fed us all that Danish garbage to try and get people out that were investigating the church or had recently converted. Unfortunately our main investigators Fredjuf and Mik weren't able to make it. Fredjuf has been worrying me because he didn't show up to church Again! We had a pretty good lesson with him this week though where we think he finally understood what baptism means and told us that he would pray about the message we had been sharing in order to get an answer. He is just such a hard guy to read that I can't tell what his intentions are or anything. He also didn't show up to the fireside we had last night. We did have a recent convert from Slovakia that was there though. He was baptized six months ago and is going to college in Danmark. He's a really cool guy and we got to watch The Other Side of Heaven with him and a bunch of members and other investigators. IT'S A SWEET MOVIE! I hadn't seen it before and I don't know why I never did. It's a Disney movie about a missionary! How cool is that?

 

Anyway yesterday marked 4 months since I entered the MTC. I can't decide if that feels like yesterday or four life times ago. Everyone says the first month of your mission is the slowest, and I feel like I've had three of those so far. The first month in the MTC, the first month in Washington DC, and now I just finished my first month in Denmark. So hopefully I don't have to switch countries until I serve in Sønderborg and get a baptism. Because they have to go to Germany in that area to find a baptisimal font. Anyway, I get my new companion Ældste Merrill on Wednesday. I'm excited to take over our area and introduce my new companion to everyone and everything in Odense, because it really is a cool place.

 

And I had a cool experience with Ældste Henrichs the other day. We were on splits because we needed to do a lot of Things in our area. Me and Ældste Henrichs went to go visit Jens Ulrich Petersen who is listed as an inactive in the Ward but reads the scriptures all the time and hasn't been coming to church simply because it was too hard. Now he has a car and a way to get there and so we've gotten him to church two weeks in a row! Anyway we had a long lesson/discussion with him and got out late. We had to wait a good 25 minutes for the bus and so while we were sitting there we started to sing. Elder Henrichs has an insanely good voice and was trying to teach me head tone when this lady walked up by the bus stop, stopped and looked at him singing, and then came and sat NeXT to us and told him he had a very nice voice. We started talking, and eventually she asked why we had been living in Danmark lately if we came from America. We started talking about religion and figured out she had been studying with the Jehovah Witnesses for the past five years but hadn't gotten baptized because she had doubts about the bible because it always contradicts itself. We gave her a book of mormon and then got on the bus. I realized we had no way to contact her so I wrote our number on a pamphlet and gave it to her and told her to ring us if she had questions or wanted to talk about the book. SO HOPEFULLY SHE CALLS US! It was just neat because the odds of me and Henrichs being at that bus stop when we where were really low and then add us singing right when she walked up and I think it wasn't a coincidence. We saw her open the book on the bus and look through it and even read a page or two so we have hope!

 

Anyway, long letter... but I love and miss you all! Write me and keep being awesome!

 

Vi ses! Ældste Durrant