Outing to Hundested
Morning walk
We live by 5 lakes; we walked around 3 of them this morning. It was drizzling and around 60 degrees.
Min Kære Familie, June 20, 2016
Week 2 went by quickly.
I can’t believe a week ago we were in classes at the MTC. Now we are far away in a different country
and trying to acclimate ourselves to our new environment. Our first night was spent in a room near the
temple. The temple used to be a church
meeting house that was then converted to be a temple. The building behind the temple is the new
meeting house. The top floor has 8
bedrooms, each with 2 sets of bunk beds and a desk. There is a communal bathroom which two rooms
share (total of 4 bathrooms). There is a
shared kitchen with refrigerator, small table, and microwave. It also has various dishes to use. People who travel long distances to go to the
temple can use these rooms to camp out for the night. You pay a small fee for the rooms, but
because we didn’t pay it, I don’t know how much. We, along with the other 3 couples stayed
there the first night. The floor below
the bedrooms is a church distribution center and some classrooms. The floor below that is the chapel; the floor
below that is the main floor but only an entry (the Christus statue) because
there are driveways on either side of the entry. The basement houses the baptismal font and
more classrooms. A very interesting chapel. The meeting house we went to on Sunday was
the typical LDS chapel which you would recognize all over the world. The chapel was much smaller than ours, but
overall it was similar.
On Friday morning, the other two couples went their way as
they will be serving on another island (Jylland) in Denmark in different
cities. We stayed in Copenhagen. We have a car to use, which is very
nice. So we followed the mission
president to our apartment. He had not
seen the apartment and wanted to check it out. He had heard from missionaries assigned to get
it ready for us that it was good to go.
It was not. The apartment is
owned by a member in the ward. It had a
small bedroom with twin bed mattress that did not look inviting. The living room seemed okay; the kitchen was
small but serviceable—only two pots.
There was another room that was full of old furniture and odds and ends,
covered in sheets. Supposedly that was
to be cleaned out. The bathroom was very
small. There were cobwebs and the whole
apartment was in need of a good cleaning.
This would be a temporary situation as the apartment we are to stay in
for our mission is now occupied by another couple. They have been living there since February
(when the couple we replaced went home).
It is a huge upgrade from their former apartment and the president said
they could stay there until they went home on August 24th. At that time, it will become ours. So we were looking at staying in the ratty
apartment for about 2 months. I figured
that we would make it work, but the president was clearly embarrassed and
didn’t feel it was suitable for a missionary couple—maybe elders, but not
us. He checked on a vacant temple
apartment (held for temple missionaries), but that wouldn’t work because the
new couple is arriving next Wednesday.
He suggested a hotel, but we didn’t think that expense would be worth
it—and we wouldn’t be able to cook our own food. The mission has purchased another apartment
which is not available until July 1st. He said we could have that one—hopefully it
is as nice as the one we are in now. But
that is two weeks away—so what to do?
The couple apartments have spare bedrooms (like we said before they
sleep 6), so they asked the couple staying in ‘our apartment’ if we could camp
out for two weeks. They are a delightful
couple from Orem who are here as Family Search missionaries, photographing old
records in city hall. This apartment has
two floors, with a second bedroom on the top floor. Unfortunately, there is only one bathroom,
but we are making do. There are other
things I worry about—food, toilet paper, laundry soap, etc. I want to do my part. But Sister Brooks is very congenial and said
not to worry. They are used to hosting
couples all the time. When we have
senior missionary conferences, the missionaries from the other cities come stay
in these apartments for a few days. So
they are used to it. Their typical day
is from 9-5. Our days don’t seem as
busy. We get going in the night, so we
may not see much of each other. For right now, I am
trying to stay out of the way and keep our living area to a minimum.
Our last three days in the MTC were spent doing CES
training. We were impressed with the
teachers—I feel they save the best of the best for the senior
missionaries. There were two seminary
teachers, finished teaching for the year, who came and taught us, plus some CES
administrators. The last day we also
had a missionary couple from Salt Lake, specifically assigned to the CES
missionary department. They were
interesting because they explained how we got called to the type of mission we
did. The most important qualifier for
missionary work is health. They look at
the doctor’s recommendation, the meds you take, and then put you in a
category: excellent (go anywhere), good
(be close to good healthcare), fair (stateside). They love seeing the ‘excellent’ missionaries
because they can send them all over the world.
I guess we fall in the ‘good’ category because I needed to have access
to a good gastroenterologist. Then the
various departments (humanitarian, CES, MLS, military support,
PEF/Self-reliance/Public Affairs, etc.) all put in a bid for the different
missionary applications, depending on the availability. If you are ‘flagged,’ which we were, then you
most likely get the one you requested, or the one who requested you. There still can be changes when the
recommendations are sent to the 1st President and Quorum of the
Twelve. Thus the reason I waited until
our call before I told everyone we were going to Denmark.
The CES training was very good. We felt a little forgotten because all the
other missionaries had pre-made name plates for the tables so the instructors
could easily see their names and call on them.
We did not. In fact, we weren’t
even on the list of missionaries who should attend the class. It made a wonder if we should be attending a
different session. But they assured us
that we were supposed to be there.
Technically we are called SYSAP missionaries—Stake Young Single Adult
Programs, which means that our whole focus is to support the stake
program.
One part of our duties may be to teach institute. There are two ways lessons are arranged for
the youth—sequential (chapter by chapter like in Seminary) and thematic
(topical like the new institute program).
The model for teaching that we learned is:
1.
Understand the Context and Content
2.
Identify Doctrines and Principles
3.
Understand the Meaning of those doctrines and
principles
4.
Feel the truth and importance of the principle
or doctrine
5.
Apply the doctrine and principle
This is a good model for doing all lessons in the
church. We had lots of time to practice
identifying each step, then we created our own lessons and gave them to each
other.
Another part of our duties is to work with Priesthood
leaders. We talked about that, but as
each of us have been on the other side of the table, we should be able to
understand this process.
And the last part of our duty is to rescue. One of our trainers told the story of Paul—he
wasn’t such a bad guy; he was just doing bad things. But he was determined, passionate, ‘all in.’ Those are all good qualities. The Lord wanted Paul to change his emphasis
and he brought that about with a miraculous event. One of the outcomes from Christ’s visit to
Paul was that he was blind. We have many
youth who are blind to the truth just like Paul. We are called to be the Ananiases to rescue
the Pauls from their blindness. They
will then go forward, like Paul, and build the kingdom. Good story—read Acts 9:1-18, Acts
26:16-18.
One more story about rescue:
It is about a lost sheep (very applicable to rescuing). Shrek was a sheep that had somehow escaped
shearing for 6 years. Shrek the
Sheep Look it up—you’ll love the
pictures. Normally these sheep get a
haircut once a year, so his owner had lost him for 6 years. We read the story of the man who had palsy in
Luke 5:18-20, 25-26. The people went to
a lot of trouble to lower this man through the roof in order to see
Christ. We need to be like this man’s
friends and bring souls to Christ even when it is difficult and we need to have
faith that Christ can heal them.
We are excited about our work here. It is just beginning and we are just learning
about it, but we will go forward. We had
a busy, exhausting day yesterday, but we love that kind of exhaustion. We love you all.
Love Mom
Min
Kaere Familie, June 20, 2016
With
mom and I both writing, we have decided to split up our letters so we don’t
talk about the same things. That way you won’t judge us on who is more
interesting!
Friday as we met
with the mission president, we found out that we will have a car full-time with
a mission gas card and they gave us one mission dumb-phone. The president’s
instructions to us were a little vague but he said we are to work closely with
the stake through the HC assigned and the stake YSA committee, which is
operating. He would like us to teach an
institute class but we need to meet with the Institute Director to figure out
how that will work. We should also get
involved with the full-time missionaries teaching with them, attend weekly
district meeting and attend zone conferences every 6 weeks. We will be going to the YSA Festinord
conference in Stockholm, Sweden in July and there will be a 2-3-day conference
for just the senior missionaries in July as well here in Copenhagen. There seem
to be about 10 senior couples here in the mission.
Friday night the
mission paid for a dinner at a restaurant with 8 couples, including the mission
president. The food was excellent and was a Danish buffet with lots of
choices. I liked everything I tried. They seem heavy on all kinds of meats with
sauces, excellent bread, and lots of salad choices.
After
we finally made a decision on our housing on Saturday, we had about 40 minutes
to unpack and then the Buxton’s (office couple who live above us) fed us all
lunch and then they invited us to join them on an outing to Hundested. We took 2 trains to get there, about an hour
each way in travel time, and then walked around a very quaint harbor town on
the west coast of Jælland (island we are on that includes Copenhagen). We stayed until the 6:30 return train, ate
dinner at McDonald's and did just a little food shopping to arrive back in our
apartment at about 9:15. It was, of
course, still light as it gets dark about 10:30.
These
2 couples, and sometimes some others, do an outing most Saturdays. They are fun and should add a degree of
sightseeing and excitement to the normal missionary work.
Sunday
was a great busy day. We used the car
for the first time navigating around Copenhagen to church and a fireside. We got lost a couple of times, but mostly
because the Garmin in the car has a couple of “homes” in the Favorites and we
picked the wrong one on the return trip home at night. It took us to the nasty apartment that we
were at first supposed to be in. We
started the work day with a meeting at 11:00 with the high councilor over YSA’s
and a YM and YW who head up the stake committee. They are both returned missionaries (France
and temple square) and they seem to be top notch youth and leaders. Their English is excellent. We met with the 3 of them and then just the
HC until church at 12:30. The program is very well organized. It has actually been good for them not to
have a missionary couple here since February as they have learned to be more
self-reliant and have been running more of the program since then. They meet monthly as a YSA stake council and
then have committee meetings monthly as well.
Committees are organized for activities, sacrament meeting, temple
trips, FHE, institute meals, etc. There are 200 YSA’s in the stake with about
60-70 who attend some events. They have
temple trips 2 Saturdays a month for an endowment session and then a baptistery
session. There are 6 wards and 3
branches so these numbers are spread around quite a big area that we will
cover. It includes one island offshore,
Bornholm, that maybe we will get to visit.
The stake just wants us to jump in, love them, be parents to them when
they need listening ears, support their activities, and help with
activation. They have a stake FHE on
Mondays, institute preceded with a dinner and followed by games on Thursdays
and the Saturday temple days. We will
need to figure out how to fill up the other days of the week.
I
asked them what challenges the youth were facing. It seems very similar to the states, with the
exception that Denmark is known as the beer drinking capital of Europe. Hence, social drinking and partying is a big
problem for that age group. We were forewarned
that pornography is all over the stores and buildings, but honestly I have not
seen a single thing that I would need to avert my eyes to, but it is still in the early days. The government
pays youth a stipend to leave their families and live on their own when they
turn 18 and the university is 100% paid for.
Therefore, kids leave home early and lose the parental influence at an
early age. Many of the youth fall away
from the church when that happens. Too
much freedom and peer pressure. It also
sounds like some of the returned missionaries have a hard time adjusting and
they become less active – not so different than the states either.
Our
ward had a YSA Sunday school which we attended.
There were 15 -20 youth there, a ward YSA couple who bring treats every
week, and it is taught by a young couple who are newly married with no
kids. They translated for us.
For
sacrament meeting, they had headsets for us and a missionary was
translating. We could not get the
headsets to work. After the sacrament
they welcomed us and invited us up to bear our testimonies. We were still fiddling with the headsets and
had no idea what they were saying other than we recognized “Shurtliff”. The mission president was sitting behind us
and he tapped us on the shoulder and said we needed to go bear testimony. Kind of embarrassing. I made Mom go first (of course) so I could
remember how to say “I know”; “Jeg ved
at”. She is doing so much better than me
with the language. She spoke 1 sentence
in Danish, which was original that she came up with and then switched to
English. The bishop translated. I spoke about 4 sentences in Danish but they
were rote ones that I had memorized from my MTC study. In any case we survived
and a lot of people complimented us that we made an effort to speak their
language and said our accents were really good (I am sure they were not!).
We
had dinner with the mission president, the zone leaders and 2 sister
missionaries. It was really nice to be
with them in their home, which is out in the country and very nice. The church takes care of mission presidents,
but then they have a very busy life. Our
president does not have any family with him, so that has to be so much easier
on them both than having children and trying to keep up a family as well. I don’t know how they would do it. It sounds like their life revolves around a
repeating 6-week schedule driven by transfers and zone conferences. He knows just what happens week 1 through 6
of the cycle.
After dinner we found a quiet spot off the
road for a 30-minute nap in the car, and then we went to a YSA ward fireside at
a member’s home. They had dinner there, a lesson, then brownies and socializing. We missed the dinner part. They lesson was taught by the husband of the
YSA couple and was very long and boring.
I could see everyone drifting off and losing interest. They translated for us. It was good for us to get to know everyone a
little bit during the socializing part.
There were 12-15 youth there. The
fun started on the way home. We left the
apartment at about 9:15. It should have been a 20-minute ride home. BUT I set
the Garmin on the wrong “home” and then mom took a few wrong turns after
that. When we arrived at the apartment
after 10:00, I discovered that I had left suit coat at the apartment and it had
our gate and apartment keys. We had to
go back and get them. This time that round
trip got us home at about 11:00. We
still love and are talking to each other! It was a long but good day. We
have a long way to go on learning Danish but I don’t see how anyone could be
effective in our calling without getting some language skills as quickly as
possible.
We
love you all.
Love,
Dad
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