Families

Well my dear friends and family, this week has been fantastic. For my entire mission I have dreamed of helping a family accept the gospel. Family was the main thing that got me on my mission originally, my own and desiring to have one like it in the future as well as the thought that I could help another family have what mine has. That dream looks like it may happen here shortly. The family I wrote about last week, the Steen family, has met with missionaries for several years. Well I had the unique opportunity to teach them last Friday with a member. Just me and the member, no other missionaries... I've never done that before haha! It's much more common in the states, but this was my first time doing it personally.

 

It was the best lesson I've been involved in my whole mission. Originally Anders (the father) said he only had ten minutes and we'd planned to go over the Word of Wisdom. Ten minutes is definitely not enough. Well he seemed to forget about the time after some small talk and we turned the TV off and said a prayer. It really is a shame his wife couldn't join in, but regardless I explained that the Word of Wisdom is a part of the way God fulfills his purpose in Moses 1:39 to help us become better and more like him. The lesson ended up going for about an hour and a half and we really got Anders to open up about the feelings he's had about the church, the impressions he's had about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, and asked him why he hadn't been baptized. The Spirit was incredibly strong as me and my good friend Mikkel from the ward here bore testimony of the blessings the church, priesthood, temples, and everything else would bring to his family. Anders agreed to be baptized in just two weeks! There is a lot more to the discussion, it lasted about an hour and a half, but I'll restrain to simply saying that Anders felt the spirit and knew the time needed to be now. This was the strongest I've ever felt the spirit in my life, and after leaving their house Mikkel turned to give me a high five but I just gave him a huge hug. I was so happy! I could actually notice that I was physically weakened on the way home and the other elders got impatient with me because they wanted me to tell the story but I could barely focus I was jittery inside myself and unbelievable hungry and tired. I ate around three plates of food while I told them everything and then just fell on the couch and lied there. The members here know Anders very well and so they were ecstatic to hear he finally made the decision to be baptized. We are going to meet with him and his wife in a few hours and I have high hopes that she'll follow suit. Their two year old daughter is simply the most adorable little girl ever and fit right in with the other primary kids. (That's the thing here in Sønderborg... the primary is larger than the adult classes put together!) The date is now set for October 18th and it'll take place down in Germany. So you better teach me some German!

 

I am unbelievably thankful I was able to be a part of that experience. If I can help their family have the joy my family has had together every single second of knocking doors and getting insulted will have been 1000x worth it, not a lot of missionaries here get to see the work they do pay off. For example the elders who contacted Anders on the street six years ago. I wish I could find them and tell them that they're awesome!

 

I'd love to write more about the psychologist we met with who told me I only speak Circus Danish, and the drunk guy that yelled ''No interestings!'' when me and another Elder tried to talk to him on the street, but I have been super pressed here lately during email time. Sorry if my family letters are too short for you Mom ;)

 

But our trio is doing great! One more week and then it's back to two.

 

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Love you all! I know that you all have great families back home, realize how big of a blessing that is! You're sealed in the temple, and know what the future holds and the bond that ties you together is that of eternity. That's pretty long you know, kind of makes two years seem really short.

 

As for pictures this week I'm sad to report that I still have not bought a new battery charger... but on the bright side I found these ones. There is a big Hulk statue in our area on the grounds of the castle in Augustenborg and it's a tradition for the Elders here to take silly pictures with it. Here are some of our best ones.

 

 

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Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark​

The Return

Well I can't find my battery charger for my camera so you're going to get some old Pictures... but I think this one is timeless anyway. This was last week in Sønderborg.

 

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So I have no time Again... but real quick. I got to return to Silkeborg this week for Stake Conference! It was crazy, and I forgot how awesome that place is. We watched the Whole stake assemble in the Little town where normally only about ten members attend church every sunday. It was quite impressive! They released the stake president, I ate at his house a lot in Odense, he's a stellar guy. We also got to hear from two General Authorities - Elder Boom and Elder Obando.

 

Here's what I learned.

 

When Elder Bednar came a while ago he told us to listen to the spirit instead of him and to only write Down those Things that we heard from the Holy Ghost and not just copy what he said. When the seventies stood up they both said that we may learn Things that have nothing to do with what they were talking about. I've really been working on it, and this was one of the first times I got a really personal message out of it due to the times I could feel something different. I went in with a question in my Heart expressed in prayer, and I got an answer in return. From Kurt, the old stake president I wrote Down that ''We are called because we have the gospel in our life. We are called to use it.'' from Elder Obando (a really awesome guy) I worte ''Untrue traditions have done more damamge to this church than normal disobedience.'' and from Elder Boom ''We are the real heroes in life, and I promise you that if you pray each and everyday that the lord will help you.'' That's not exactly what they said... and I translated Kurts quote... but it's what I heard and felt I needed. The overarching message in my mind may be a Little difficult to explain since you all weren't at the talks... but to summarize I feel like I've coasted in my life when I was back home because I've thought that learning and knowing the gospel was enough. I wondered why I was born to the middle of LDS life and why I had never had the option of failing to understand the message. Well my advice from Kurt is that I may be called to do something more than just to learn it. The people I help are still in the process of learning what the message of Christ is, but I should be in the process of making it who I am because I've had the knowledge handed to me from age 0. That Means that I can't just please my mission president and church leaders and then not have a willing Heart to do anything other than show outward commitment, but I need to be doing this for myself when I am alone and for a living being that I pray to everyday not because I want to feel obedient and be a good kid for the people around me but because I enjoy living my life this way. Often the tradition I've felt that has casued the most harm is that often members of our church don't feel like they are allowed to fail or Express doubt. From Elder Obando I feel like I learned that that is ok! We can become the real heroes in life by becoming someone we are happy with and someone God is happy with. Someone who can be trusted to be the right person despite what others say and think and someone who is being the right person not just to please everyone else.

 

When we do all this and pray daily we will feel a literal and physical difference in how we feel and the sensations that we experience from feeling the spirit, and it will make us happier. I know that now. The best part is that we can do it all without worrying what we are going to get in return. The return always takes care of itself.

 

I don't really think any of that made a ton of sense to anyone other than me... but hey! That's ok :) I still have a lot of learning to do so I will be able to explain my ideas and thoughts more simply.

 

I wish I had Pictures to show from eating lunch with some members in Silkeborg again! I miss that place sometimes. Umm other stories.... taught a British guy that is simpathetic with the Quaker religion, slept over with 9 other elders in a tiny Apartment for stake conference, went to the Beach for weekly planning because Elder Willardsen finally turned 19 (horribly confronted by the sight of a very naked and very old man), and yeah... basically a normal week! I wish I had more time to tell you all stuff but this week was a lot of long train rides and travel for Stake Conference and District meeting. On Wednesdays we have to travel FIVE HOURS round trip to go to district meeting. Basically it's the Whole day.

 

And because Dad said he couldn't remember what I look like...

 

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Oh! We also painted a less active ladies house. She's moving to a new Apartment with her boyfriend that she's known for eight months. What??? Everyone here is super quick to move in together... but then again divorce can be carried out online so I guess it's not too messy. Sad. I wish them the best of luck though, they fed us some really good frikadeller (balls of meat and... stuff. Not sure what they are actually) so that was awesome.

 

Gotta go write an essay. But you all just keep on looking beautiful back home ya hear?

 

Silkeborg =)

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Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark​

This Time My Title Will Be Boring

Sometimes I feel like all the pictures I send home are of the times I get to take a break from missionary work so you probably think I just tour castles all the time...

 

But it's already awkward to stop an atheist on the street and ask them about God, it'd be more awkward if my companion was taking snapshots of us the whole time.

Here's one from Zone Training they put on the mission blog... maybe it's a little better?
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It's me and Elder Ockey, he was in my MTC group, and he's serving as one of our assistants right now.

Anywho we're going through a big change in the mission right now trying to switch our pattern to start teaching three short lessons a week to our friends instead of one long lesson. It's hard to get setup and a lot of missionaries including myself were worried about it. This is a part of the weekly letter I wrote to my mission president today, I don't have time to retell it =)

We had a surprisingly (to me at least) successful week implementing the plan with shorter lessons more frequently. The biggest one had to have been Familien Steen. That happened on Thursday I believe. The day started off with a lot of problems and the morning was just incredibly frustrating, then shortly after we started to bike around Sønderborg and my bike had complications that ended up wasting a lot of time and we had to revert back to the car. I was allowing myself to become frustrated and the thought of meeting this family for the first time and trying to set up three short lessons with them each week just seemed to add to my negativity. I didn't like it and I knew my mind and heart wasn't in the right place. I had already knelt down and prayed about the decision to move lessons in this direction, and I hadn't felt some overwhelming peace or anything, like with most of my prayers I felt the answer was that I would see the evidence of my faith in the experiences rather than having the answer handed to me on a golden platter. On the way to the lesson I said a silent prayer to give me the confidence to do this without ruining a great relationship this family has had with missionaries for a long time. I knew I'd have to have the right attitude and so I prayed for something just to lift my spirits and make me happier. Well this was one of the fun times that God answers a needful prayer on the spot in a clear manner - when we were about ten seconds away from the families door a man walking toward us pulled out his headphones and looked at me and asked ''Hey can you guys come visit me so I can learn about your church?'' What the... how often does that happen? Turns out he's seen stuff about the church on the radio and online and is really interested. He's also from Greenland and is incredibly friendly. His name is David. We got his information quickly because he was in a hurry and were able to make it to the appointment on time. You better believe I was smiling ear to ear. We were not only able to have a great lesson with the family in 16 minutes, but we established the pattern that we would come over every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon for the foreseeable future because in their words ''We can always set aside fifteen minutes can't we?''. On top of that we now have Peter on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and a less active man and his wife every Tuesday and Saturday. With this approach we now have eleven lessons scheduled for next week even with Splits and Stake Conference. The planners are pretty full, and I am now starting to see the benefits of holding things short. My experiences are now becoming the evidence of my faith like Elder Bednar said.

That was a fun story, and I love you all, but I've gotta run. Sorry!

Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark​

Bananas From Heaven, Emergency Transfers, An Apostle... Normal week =)

Holy cow. Crazy week. I have like no time but want to write soooo much!

 

We got a call from President while we were on the train to Esbjerg (where the other missionaries in our district live). He told us that Elder Read will be leaving to go up to Aalborg and that the other three of us in the apartment are going to stay together as a trio.

This is my fifth trio over the course of my mission -_-

 

The real sad thing though is that the reason Elder Read had to transfer is because my good friend Elder Ludlow has had some serious health problems and has to go back to the states for a while to get checked up on and possibly undergo steroid treatment. No fun. But now we're smashing our two areas down here into one and wondering what the heck we're going to do with a trio instead of two sets of missionaries to help the branch out. So that's happening.

 

Also we all got to hop on a super long train and head over to Copenhagen on Saturday! Elder David A. Bednar came to our mission conference and talked to us. He's incredible. He looked out at us and told us so many things and I can't really convey it all... Basically he said that the keys that are held within the quorum of the twelve NEVER go anywhere by coincidence. With only fifteen people that hold them every second is needed every day for the world to use them. He asked us when we thought we would ever again be in a room in a group as small as our mission for a  Q&A session with an apostle. Before anyone could answer he said ''Never. It will never happen again in your life.'' O_O Talk about pressure! I raised my hand again and again and only got an opportunity towards the very end. I can't really explain the answer or the question over email... but just know that it was way interesting to talk to an apostle of the lord and have him look straight at me to answer. Basically he didn't really answer my question directly, but the whole idea of his session and the message he brought and the ideas he had allowed me to answer my own question.

 

Elder Bednars whole deal was that in the church we have a lot of false traditions and that we have really become complacent in the way we deal with each other and with learning. We need to actually DO something to learn and not just listen. Teaching shouldn't be talking at someone, it should be talking WITH someone to allow the spirit to teach. He is such a real person, he got up and asked how we were doing to start off. We mumbled something back and he goes ''That was weak! No, that was worse that sad, that was pathetic! How are you doing???'' All with a big grin on his face like he knew that he was scaring the living garbage out of us and that nobody had expected him to joke with us for the opening line. We yelled good back to him and he just says ''Well you don't start off well but you catch on quick, that's good. Now who's ready to get to work?''. Ha he was great! He made us feel a lot more at ease.

 

 Well I'd love to talk about that meeting forever... but know that instead of trying to teach to get the approval of those around us or to play ''guess what's in my head'' to show off knowledge or force people to participate and drag answers out that our learning is much much much better if we are demonstrating faith by doing things to teach ourselves. That we need to tell others what we learned and ask what they learned, and that being real with each other is just so much better! I have a lot of thoughts about it all but no time to write.

 

On the way to the conference we had to leave around 3 o'clock, and we missed dinner. Now I've been told not to miss any meals ever after my stomach fiasco a few months ago. So that was bad. But then it got worse when the apartment we got to was completely out of food and we had no time in the morning to eat because we had to bolt to the conference and almost were late as it was. I was sitting through the whole time just like shaking with hunger almost. It'd been almost a whole day and I had been commanded by a doctor and by president never to let that happen. I said a silent prayer in my heart that I'd find a way to get some food so that I wouldn't risk messing up my digestive system again, but after the conference they didn't feed us like we'd expected! Then to make it worse my companion left his whole splits bag in the apartment we'd stayed overnight in and we had to take an hour trip out of the way to go get it. Well we were walking down the street after the bus and my prayer was answered in a way interesting way - a lady walks up to me and asks me to stop. I look at her and she asked me if I wanted any bananas... Wait what?? I asked her if she was offering me bananas... she said yes and told me to come over by her car. There were three massive crates of bananas sitting there and she said they'd had some sort of hunger drive and that they had no way to transport the last three crates. She gave me one of the crates for free and I walked away with about 200 free bananas :D Talk about a weird answer to a desperate prayer, I mean I think I'm convinced God has a sense of humor. Never have I been offered hundreds of free bananas on the street before until last Saturday... ja tak =)

 

Well wish me luck! We've made some progress here but it's just going to be interesting working in a trio again. It makes contacting weirder but I guess there are some advantages as well. We found a way awesome guy who has a girlfriend that is a member here. He wants to learn about his fiancés church and said they'd probably come together! How awesome is that? He's a way nice guy and we're gonna paint their new apartment

soon.

 

No time to incorporate these into the story...

 

Picture with these weird huge ''white men'' that watch the sea to help ships come safely in off the coast of Esbjerg, big port city. They're weird :)

 

Elder Redd and ''Ali Babba'' a weird camel game we played at lunch.

 

Love you all, stay safe!

 

Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark​

Opposition in All Things

Hey all. Not sure how much time I'm gonna have considering that I need to work on college applications today... How crazy is that? Also how lame? I have to turn my real world brain on, that thing has gotta be pretty rusty by now. When I was going over the essay prompts I kept speculating over how I could tie it in to prayer or the Book of Mormon or something and I had to keep telling myself that it was an essay and not a lesson. :(

 

 

 

Anywho, it's been an interesting first week down here in Sønderborg. The work here is all but non-existent at the moment. Aside from a few recent converts and less actives there isn't much going. That means a lot of knock knock knocking :) I've also had my most avid and furious rejections here in the first week. More specifically on Thursday. The second door we knocked on was a lady who had experienced Amnesia and couldn't remember anything earlier than 6 months ago. We told her we wished her luck and would just go further... which we did. About a half hour later some guy came out on the street and called out to me. He was a little over six feet and well built with tattoos all over. He asked me if I had anything to write with, and I said yes. At this point we'd walked over to each other and he was write next to me. He raised his voice to a yell and screamed at me to look at the number 17 over his house. Then he proceeded to demand that I write down never to come back to that house and let a stream of unrepeatable cuss words and profanities spill out. He moved closer to try and intimidate me because I guess the look on my face just wasn't giving him the satisfaction that he wanted. More than being scared I was just sad... I tried to ask him if he'd had a bad experience but he wouldn't even let me get through a sentence and told us to get out of his neighborhood. I told him thanks for his time, he kept swearing. I told him God loves him, that didn't make him happy =) Well I had no intention of listening to this bag of hot air so when my companion made as if to head toward the car I told him just to follow me and I walked up to the next door. The man screamed from across the road that I was to leave the area or he'd have the police on me. I told him thanks, but that he could stop talking now because what we were doing was completely legal. At this point I think he was just caught off guard that I wasn't listening to him and he left. We didn't get anyone to listen to us, but I was happy I hadn't backed down to him. Literally ten minutes later the same thing happened but with a different guy. Someone on one of the wheelchair cruiser things they have for old people here in Denmark came flying down the street and called out to us. I sighed and turned around. It was a different guy of about the same build and age (35ish) and he proceeded to scream and cuss me out worse than the first one. He pointed to my book of Mormon and started yelling for me to write down never to come back to number five. I sat there and just kind of stared at him a little put out by the amount of negativity we were encountering. At this point I can just tell when it's more a lack of understanding and intelligence raging at me instead of anger that is deserved. It didn't scare me, but it still just kind of sucked my energy out. Well he wasn't happy that I wasn't writing anything down and so he kept swearing... I told him we had never come to his house before and that we were NOT Jehovah Witnesses (they are way common here and have very.... aggressive missionary tactics that people hate.) he said it didn't matter and went off more and more. Eventually he just gave up. As he was driving away I just couldn't resist throwing out one more ''God still loves you!'' to him... he yelled that he didn't ****** love me and my companion. All in all a good day!

 

Just as long as we have someone to point us the right way maybe we can avoid these things in the future...

 

Don't think that statue is the right one though. Someone put a cigarette in his hand.

 

Other than that though it's interesting down here in the South part of the mission. The members of the branch are awesome. Also we got to take a trip down to the border to check on some less actives. If we would have walked down the path this sign is for we would have ended up in Germany a few hundred meters later. No worries we didn't leave the mission :)

 

 

Basically the message I want to explain with these experiences is a little hard to explain simply and quickly, which means that I don't think I've learned it well enough yet. But like we all know, there is opposition in all things, and sometimes I just feel like we accept when people act in opposition to us because we're used to it. Often though I think we fail to realize that we need to act to counter that. We can't just bend our heads down and get kicked in the face. Faith is demonstrated when we have an assurance that our actions will be in accordance with Gods will and therefore Gods will can happen. If we don't act, we never have that verified and then our faith doesn't grow. Your testimony will grow more by using andsaying it than it will by just praying for it and doing nothing. Just as there is always something working against the good there is also always something working against the evil in the world. Opposition in ALL things. That opposition is us, and so we need to act just as boldly as the people working against us are.

 

We've had a bit of success while I've been here as well. No need to think it's all bad. Our potential pool for people to teach has according to Elder Willardson increased dramatically more this last week than it has during the rest of the time he's been here in the area. I mean if you know enough doors eventually you find some nice people. One lady said (and this seriously made my whole day) that she used to consider herself as a Christian but realized that it wasn't something she could just say but that she had to actually do stuff!!! Ding ding ding we have a winner! Becoming a Christian is now her project and I explained the Bible to her briefly and the Book of Mormon and she said we can come back soon to help her more. I wish more people were like her!

 

Well I guess I wrote a lot... I need to get going on my essay now. But have a good week everyone! Remember to do something so that you learn from yourself. Sometimes we are our own best teacher.

 

Ældste Durrant                        

Borups Alle 128 1.tv                  

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark​