Vikings, ''Foods'', and Sirens...

So I've been bad at remembering to take pictures of stuff this week but here are some pictures of last weeks adventures! This is an old looking grave stone that actually isn't that old... but the graveyard was a neat place and we think there was a viking burial mound in the middle of it as well!

One of my fancy sandwhiches. They actually don't call them sandwhiches and just call them ''foods'' which I don't really understand, but hey I guess it works. Yes you eat them with forks and knives. I felt too fancy because that parsley looking stuff was growing in dirt about 2 seconds before it went onto the sandwhich... we had to cut it with little scissors so we could put it on the food. 

But as for stuff this week, it's just been another week of hard work! We had one of our friends at church yesterday, he's an Atheist and asked a lot of good questions. I'm always way over concerned about people at church for the first time and about all the things that are said or who talks to them or doesn't and blah blah blah, and although he though sacrament meeting was a bit long he met a lot of new friends and had some great conversations with a few members including a past atheist so that was great to see. 

We also played soccer or ''football'' with some of the youth in our area and now I'm way sore... I didn't realize how much I don't run out here. Just walking or biking... or sitting. Speaking of biking we got our bikes up and running for the first time since I've been here. We only are allowed to drive the car for 2000 kilometers each month which is way limiting considering the massiveness of our area. So we bike around Holbæk to try and save on the car. We've been able to do some good work in the city talking to everyone and we taught five lessons this week so it wasn't too bad. We had one interesting experience as we realized we still had about twenty minutes left and we had finished all of our plans. We took a walk out on the fjord (gah... it means ocean kind of... I think the English word is inlet or something) to try and find a few people to talk to and saw a group of young Danish girls sitting on a blanket as well as an old lady taking a smoke on a bench not too far away. We decided to talk to the lady on the bench, and she was way nice! We had a good talk about the Book of Mormon and gave her a chapter about the Plan of Salvation because she had just lost a few members of her family. She was happy to talk to us and accepted our invitation to learn about it and gave us her number! The whole time though these girls that were on the blanket behind her kept making faces and gestures at us... like weeeeird ones. Two started posing trying to catch our attention. I just had to block out the inappropriate motions they were making to try and focus on helping this lady... LITERALLY THEY WERE LIKE SIRENS! Haha after we were walking away they tried to call out to us and wated us to come over and talk to them but I just smiled and waved and left. Just another example of putting off the distractions to focus on what really matters. Hopefully that lady will pursue this farther! 

Transfer calls should be coming soon though. Like in an hour or so... We're hoping to stay together another transfer because things are going great! Me and Elder Enniss get along really great and I love the ward here, it's so big! ​Two of the members that are around 20 years old are about ready to leave on missions to South Africa and Scotland! I get to go through the temple with them on Saturday! It'll be my first time going through the Danish temple so I'm way pumped! I went on splits with one of the guys that just got back from his mission to England and I really realized that for the first time his personality didn't change to me when he spoke English. I can communicate with everyone in Danish but in the past they haven't been as real of conversations as they are in English, at least to me. But when he switched to talk to another missionary in English I realized that it didn't make much of a difference which was fun to notice. It really depends on each person though... the dialects here are ridiculous. You can make a three hour trip and all of a sudden they speak 150% different, to the point that Danes have difficulty understanding each other from other areas of the country. Some people I can catch every single word... and others I barely get what they are talking about -_- 

Also, can I just say I wanna go to Greenland? It's in our mission but the First Presidency hasn't dedicated it for missionary work. There were two elders there a few years ago and in just two months they had close to ten people ready to go for baptism but they had to get pulled out because I guess it just isn't time for missionaries to be there or something. :( I'm teaching two Greenlandic women and they are super nice! We also had this crazy guy ride a bus with us and follow us on a train to tell us all about how much he loves Greenland and how if we went there then way more people would listen to us. Literally Greenland is the only thing he wanted to talk about. I asked him like three different questions and each time his answer somehow invloved the history of the Vikings and Greenland...

​

Sometimes the work gets repetitive but me and Elder Enniss are working on ways to change things up and really get something going here in our area. We're working on a preposition to either allow us to stay overnight with some members a couple days a week so that we can go to the bottom part of our area or else give us more elders or something so we can visit the people that are so hard to get to! I invited the mission president to our district meeting this Thursday to talk about it so wish us luck :) Next week is my 11 month mark! Wow. Crazy in many different ways. 

Love you all!

Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark

No title - I hate when I forget to put a title!

So let's see.... what a week. Well we did a lot of stuff and I had some great pictures but unfortunately I left my card reader back in the apartment so you don't get those today. What did happen though was a lot of work involving people who weren't home. Seriously Danes are never at their houses. I feel like that is the reason the work here moves slower than it should sometimes, because we spend forever getting to peoples houses and then they are just never there so we can never set appointments with them, and then missionaries get transferred and we lose contact. I was on splits in Taastrup this week with my MTC companion Elder Read on the one day that we got a few lessons in Holbæk this week so I had a week of travel. But we did get one of our friends to come to church! She has been meeting with us for the past little while and really likes what we say and really enjoyed church. Also she plans on coming next week as well! Score :) 

Other than that I got to have a lot of real Danish Smørrebrød with some members in the ward. Basically you take rye bread and butter, and then add a bunch of weird sandwhich ingredients. I had pictures of the fancy open faced sandwhiches I made but, like I said, you guys don't get those this week. We also stopped by a way old graveyard while we were up in the northernmost part of our massive area. Fun stuff. It was really close to an insane asylum so that was interesting. 

     As far as work goes though, I've really loved seeing how much the church helps members here. We talk to a lot of people on the street, and half the time the people won't even stop walking long enough to let us say more than 'excuse me' before they blow us off or just say no no no no repeatedly. The ones that do stop to listen usually tell us that they believe in something but they aren't sure if it's God or something else... so I ask them how their faith has helped them in their life. NOBODY CAN EVER ANSWER IT. Holy cow... this one Danish man seriously stood there for like two minutes thinking and was like, ''I don't know how you want me to answer that, I've never thought about it'' so I asked him just to think of one thing that is better because he said he had faith in God. After thirty more seconds he just said ''I don't think I have an answer to that question'' and then excused himself. Seriously?!?! 

     The single most important question you could ever pose yourself in your entire life, what every other person in the world would die to finally have a sure knowledge one way or the other about, what wars have been fought over, lifes lost, and others changed forever - and you can't name a single thing the answer you believe to have found to the ever standing question of ''Findes der en Gud?'' has changed for you? I was admittedly a bit mad after that contact and way surprised. 

     Take the flip side for example. During a dinner with some of the members here me and Elder Enniss shared the scripture 2 Nephi 8:12 and asked the members what they had seen the ''Fruit'' in Lehi's vision do for them in thier lives. Their answer was completely flipped around, night and day compared to the man on the street. They asked if we had to be home anytime soon because if they were gonna list blessings the church had brought them than we were going to be there all afternoon. ''The easiest answer is everything'' they told us. But to be specific it they said it helped overcome conflicts, provide comfort in challenging situations, give friends with similar beliefs, a way to learn more, a place to express the feelings they had discovered and felt with their own personal experiences and had kept them from falling into countless bad situations, addictions, and provided their family with a tighter bond than anything else they had ever seen do. 

     That's what your answer to the question of ''Does God exist'' should do for you. That gave me hope that the fruit I have to share with other people on the street trully is the ''most desireable fruit'' and that I should have a huge desire to share it with my family around me in the world. This has happened repeatedly as we ask different members how their faith has helped them. 

So ask yourself! What blessing have you seen or what blessings do you hope to get from your faith? I know I want it to strengthen my future family the way it does the members here in Denmark. Speaking of future families - holy cow everyone at home just needs to take two breaths and stop getting married! I'm going to have no friends left when I get home because they're all going to be married or still on missions. Good thing I still have a year before that happens though :) 

Love you all! Write me big long letters and if you send any packages I would appreciate it if you included a few investigators in said package.  Tak. 

Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark

Mother's Day!

My best bud Thomas got baptized on Saturday! He's in a wheelchair as you can see from the Picture. It took three people to get the job done! Two carried him into the font while a third propped him up and said the prayer. So great :) I'll admit I was a little worried about the Whole thing going smoothly at first. There was a bit of debate when I was in Odense about baptizing Thomas. But during the baptism (I got to be a witness :)) there was such a great spirit present and Thomas bore a very powerful testimony afterwards about the church and about how we are a light to the other people here in Denmark.

 

 

 

It was great, Thomas kept explaining the church to the nurse that had to come with him, he told me he wants to be a missionary like us one day so I guess he's getting a head start haha! This man is a big example to me. After he was carried out of the font he had the biggest smile on his face even though I'm sure it was not comfortable being pushed underwater with no way to plug your own nose. He just kept saying what a wonderful feeling he had. I stayed just a minute or two after everyone left, and he was just full of joy even though he was going to have to get help changing out of the wet clothes. It meant so much to him! Right after the baptism my other best bud Fredjuf showed up. If you've been an avid follower of these emails then you might remember Fredjuf from the very start of my time in Odense. He had a baptisimal date but we lost contact  with him right before I left. He came back to the baptism and it was the first time he'd been to any church activity or had any contact with the elders since I left. The elders serving in Odense now didn't know who he was or that he wasn't a member so I went and talked to him for the rest of the program and he told he he'd love to come back to the Young adult activities that have at the church! What are the odds I was put there at the exact time he came back to the church to introduce him to the new missionaries and get him interested again? Definitely a blessing. I'm way punmped! Hopefully he can see himself to the font this time around haha!

 

 

 I also got to visit Jens, the artist that painted a picture based off a spiritual thought I shared with him.

 

 

 

I'm gonna see if I can get it.... it's a little pricy though.

 

On another note, I GOT TO SKYPE MY FAMILY :) It was way fun to see them all again. Love you Guys! And Mom for Mothers Day I couldn't really get you flowers considering I'm like 5000 miles away. So I just got you a Whole field them instead :)

 

 

 

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

 

 

 Love you :)

 

 

So much fun to see the Family again, even though the time I got was not even close to enough. I can't believe how much is changing and how much you've all grown up. Makes me realize time is still passing even though it all seems the same to me over here in my mission bubble. That's ok cause I still have a year of it left! We have a lot of exciting stuff going on here in Holbæk now and I'm super stoked to get to see it all happen. So even when I realize everyone elses lives are going forward and a lot of friends fail at writing and I have only my weird little EFY songs as comfort music I'm glad I get to see the big changes like what happened with Thomas. Cause that's why I'm here, the rest will take care of itself when I come back. So I'll keep plugging away. I only get a little bit longer to enjoy this part of my life.... why does time keep going forward? Someone should tell it to do something different and exciting for once.

 

Anyway. Hope you all enjoyed my weird little stories from this week. I promise there will be more next time! That's the great thing about this country, there's a ton of random little adventures just waiting to happen. Also nobody is waging war on the Eastern half of my mission, so that's a plus. Don't die Conner.  

 

Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark

Spaendende :)

Hey hey hey!

 

So I left Silkeborg like I said, and was Lucky enough to go to another awesome location in Holbæk. We live across the street from the Fjord (Not sure what it is in English... it's a part of the ocean that goes far into the land... sorry dad I fail at Geography haha).

 

Check it out

 

We go walking along a path by the fjord to contact people that are out, it's great!

 

I've been here in Holbæk for about a week now and I'm loving it. I went to the Roskilde Ward for the first time yesterday and it blew my mind. For the last 4 or 5 months I've been going to a tiny building with less than ten people each week and just struggled to have a normal church meeting. It was a huge contrast to see rows of pews filled with Danish families and hundreds of people listening to several different people baring their testimonies.  It was actually a lot of fun! I remembered what normal church is like back home... people were coming in a little late to a seat in the back or else taking a crying baby outside and a young girl got advanced out of primary. In short? Awesome awesome awesome :)

 

So I have a car in this area, becasue it's so big. It's great to jsut drive through tons of open fields and Danish countryside. I drove for the first time in 10 months cause for some reason they accept American drivers licenses here! Elder Enniss my new companion has been in a car area for all 7 months that he's been here in Denmark so he helped me with the weird traffic Laws and keeping a look out for all the pesky bikes that I have to avoid.

 

The Ward here is in the middle of a 100 day fast where each day one person is fasting for missionary Work. We've seen the help! We stopped by a less active member who lived pretty far away and were able to talk to her about church. Turns out she misses church a lot and wants to come back! She loved the new Book of Mormon we gave her and she was way excited to look up the General Conference talk we gave her. The only problem is that she has no way to church. But guess what? The member we brought with us lives close to her and offered her a ride! Perfect situation and perfect time. Little miracle right there. Another great experience we've had was after we had been stopping by a lot of different people in Apartment complexes and weren't sure what to do with the rest of our time. We walked to a private Little spot and said a prayer and ended up deciding to try one last person who lived in an Apartment that we couldn't find... well we took off wakling towards where we thought it was and on the way I stopped a girl walking her dog with her headphones in. I told her we were out to talk to people about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and asked her if she'd heard about it. She said yes! I asked her how and I guess she'd been taught by missionaries before and has her own Book of Mormon. We got her number and will hopefully be in contact with her soon. Great! The Work here in Holbæk is really picking up, Elder Enniss contacted a lot of people and knocked a lot of doors the few weeks before I got here and now we have a huge list of people to stop by and meet with so I'm way thankful for that and super excited to see Things move forward here. Elder Enniss is way great! He comes from Bluffdale and we're having a blast. At this second while I'm writing this email he's over on a couch talking to a guy who was looking a little Down and from what I can hear he's really interested in the Book of Mormon and really wants to talk with us! Jo tak! I really do feel like I'm doing some of the best Work I ever have and being the sort of missionary I've been trying to be for a while now. The sickness doesn't bother me any more as long as I eat regularly throughout the day and don't overdo it so we've been able to hit the pavement and talk to everybody. I love it <3

 

Elder Enniss is done being a stud missioanry now. Here's a pictuer of him. I've been bad at Pictures this week so this one will have to do.

 

We're having a blast. I feel like I'm back home cause we have a little tiny enviornmentally friendly car that feels like my Honda Fitt haha. We were at an appointment with a family in the ward after church eating dinner and they were going off about how the other four missionaries at the table were all from America and how we all come from Utah and stuff and so me and Elder Enniss looked at each other and invented a story of how we could only communicate in Danish because neither of us were American. They asked us where we were from and I told them France. They all believed me straight up and were way impressed haha but when Elder Enniss tried to tell them he was from Latvia they didn't believe it for a second. Good times. 

 

All in all I'm excited, excited to be in a big ward with a lot of youth and families and people that can come to lessons and relate to the investigators we have, excited to be able to get out and do what I haven't been able to do as well the last few months, excited to Skype home on Sunday, excited to have a bigger apartment, excited to meet the people of Holbæk and excited to be a missionary!

 

Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark