August 7, 2016

The 2 of us did a walking tour Saturday afternoon starting at 3:00.  We wanted to see Vor Fraue Kirche.  The church is not remarkable on the outside, really subpar as far as churches in Europe go, but the inside is very pretty with lots of white stucco and it houses Thorvaldsen's original statutes of the Christus and the 12 apostles around the main chamber.  They are all very beautiful. 

 Peter's statue is well known because he clutches a large key in his hand signifying for LDS members, the keys of the priesthood that he held as the chief apostle.  The 12 apostles do not include Juda Iscariot, who is replaced by a statute of the apostle Paul.  This could also be symbolic of the calling of new apostles when one dies or is replaced so that the priesthood keys continue today as the church's original organization was restored.  Too bad the Christian churches of today don’t recognize that need.

 "Bertel Thorvaldsen was commissioned to sculpt statues of Jesus and the apostles for the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen. The statue of Jesus was completed in 1821. The Christus was not well known outside of Denmark until 1896, when an American textbook writer wrote that the statue was "considered the most perfect statue of Christ in the world." The statue is 3.2 metres (10.5 feet) high."

Lego store after visiting the cathedral

Kære Familie,                                                                                                                                                                           August 7, 2016

We can’t believe how fast the time is going.  This week we said ‘good-bye’ to a missionary couple from Parowan, Utah.  Their advice to us was to make every minute count because it goes by so fast.  They served an 18-month mission (went home a little early after 17 months due to health issues) in Bornholm—a small Denmark island that is in the middle of the Baltic Sea, south of Sweden.  We have a small branch there, one senior missionary couple and a set of elders.  The Senior missionary is the branch president and the two elders serve as his counselors.  We hear it has a beautiful countryside and is a popular vacation spot in the summer, which brings up church attendance to 35-40.  The rest of the year they average 15-20 at church.  But the saints are strong and there has been 4 baptisms this past year after a dearth of 7 years.  Sister Johnson (returning missionary) is a go-getter at 68.  She taught YW, Primary, institute and planned activities for the young adults.  In her previous life, she was a forest fire fighter and paramedic.  Her skills are needed so much, her former employer has begged her to come back and has a job waiting for her.  Brother Stanley Quentin Johnson is a gifted artist/sculpture, whose works can be found on the Internet.  (His career, however, was the reason Sister Johnson felt she had to work and still needs to work—can’t always count on an income from creativity.)  Brother Johnson had a stroke while in the mission field—luckily during a mission conference in Copenhagen where he could get some good care.  After that, he never trusted himself to make the long trip from Bornholm to Copenhagen so he stayed on the island the rest of the mission.  Sister Johnson would travel occasionally, bringing missionaries for zone conferences or transfers.  She also attended our senior conference.  It is a long enough trip that it has to be done in two days.  I hope Brother Johnson made it home safely with the long flight to the U.S. 

At the same time that we said ‘good-bye’ to the Johnsons, we welcomed the Halls from Rigby, Idaho.  Brother Hall served a mission previously in Denmark.  They have had their mission call since last Thanksgiving and were supposed to come out when we did in June, but the President asked them to delay a couple of months so the timing worked out with the Johnsons whom they are replacing.  When our office couple goes home next April, the Halls will become the office couple.  This is all confusing to me a bit because it seems that President O’Bryant had other missionaries waiting in the wings to serve in Denmark, yet he really wanted us to be in Copenhagen.  The others that came out with us also received their calls much earlier than we did.  I’m sure as we serve, this will all be made clear, eventually. 

I spent Monday working on the mission newsletter.  The newsletter contains a page of pictures from each returning missionary as well as any baptisms, so there are a lot of pictures.  The copy machine in the office does a great job of printing colored copies.  I also included a message from each of the returning missionaries, one from the mission president and his wife, pictures of the arriving missionaries, plus calendar and birthdays. 

We didn’t have district meeting on Thursday because our district leader had an emergency appendectomy on Sunday.  He wanted to postpone one day to get a little more rest.  So we had a free morning on Thursday.  After some language study, I went on a walking shopping trip.  It is something I have wanted to do for some time, but just didn’t feel I had the time.  Dad insisted on coming with me, but I was sure he would be bored.  I wanted to get some yarn for a RS project we are doing to make newborn hats for the hospital.  I have some yarn with me, but the instructions were that it had to be 100% cotton—which I don’t have. So we took off on a walking tour up the street.  It is amazing how many shops and restaurants there are—and grocery stores!  

Just a note on cooking.  I have my recipes and a lot of things turn out just fine, but I have to adjust for the things I can’t get here.  On the top of the list of things I miss:  Lipton onion soup, Ragu, albacore tuna, sharp cheddar cheese (yes, that should be #1), chocolate chips (#2), sweet pickles (to go with the tuna), and cake mixes.  I finally found maple syrup (would have settled for maple flavoring to make my own syrup, but no such luck).  We can now have pancakes and French toast.  I found Kellogg’s Al-bran, but it is the flakes instead of the bran.  Still I think I will try to make brownie rolls. 

One of the youth taught our institute lesson (in Danish) and did a great job.  The lesson was Neil A. Anderson’s October 2015 talk, “Faith is Not by Chance, but by Choice.”  Dad and I had prepared to teach just in case the teacher didn’t show.  We enjoyed dissecting the principles taught in this talk.  If we always put in such preparation before a lesson, we would get a lot more out of it.  We especially appreciated our preparation when we couldn’t understand the lesson.  Favorite quotes from the talk:

“Faith in Jesus Christ is a gift from heaven that comes as we choose to believe and as we see it and hold on to it.  Your faith is either growing stronger or becoming weaker.”

 “How we live our lives increases or diminishes our faith.  Prayer, obedience, honesty, purity of thought and deed, and unselfishness increase faith.  Without these, faith diminishes.” 

“There is an adversary who delights in destroying our faith!  Be relentless in protecting your faith.”

 “Faith never demands an answer to every question but seeks the assurance and courage to move forward, sometimes acknowledging, ‘I don’t know everything, but I do know enough to continue on the path of discipleship.’”

“Give Brother Joseph a break!  In a future day, you will have 100 times more information than from all of today’s search engines combined and it will come from our all-knowing Father in Heaven.  ….  I testify that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.  Settle this in your mind and move forward!”

We were in the temple twice this week—our usual Friday shift and then again on Saturday, which was for our Young Adult Endowment session.  Dad had mentioned to the temple president on Friday that we would be there for the noon session on Saturday, so when we walked in at 11:45 we were told that we were leading the session.  They were short-handed.  Unfortunately, none of our young adults showed up—there was a wedding reception at the church which is directly behind the temple at the same time as the temple session.  It seems that our young adults come out in mass to support one of their own who is graduating from young single adult status.  We dropped in on the reception (daughter of the institute teacher who happened to see us on Friday and asked us to come), but stayed only a few minutes before walking over to the temple.  It was still nice to be in the temple. 

We attended the Allerød Ward today.  It is a small ward about 30 minutes north of our apartment.  We met two of the YSA’s who attend that ward, went to their Sunday School class (which had 5 visitors today besides us) and then met with the Bishopric Counselor over the YSA’s after the block.  Because of the distance to the UV center, we have not met these young people before.  It would take nearly 2 hours by public transportation to get there—and therein lies the problem.  It seems the only feasible way to involve the YSA’s from this ward is for someone to drive them.  The whole purpose of having a YSA center is to bring the youth together.  Here they see and make friend, get fed spiritually, and have wholesome activities.  This is the vision Elder Perry had for these centers.  But it only works in the big cities where there is a large concentration of YSA (because of school or work).  Those who live and work in outlying areas have a more difficult time.  It doesn’t make sense to have centers for only a few people, so they are invited to the city center.   Our missionary friends who are SYSAP missionaries in the other Denmark Stake (on the big island) don’t have a center like we have.  So they choose a church which is central to the whole island and sponsor an activity once a month.  They have institute classes and other activities on a smaller basis in the town where they live.  Those that have larger wards are able to do something more often with the YSA’s and are organized within the ward.  So as we visit these wards, which are a good distance from Copenhagen, we recognize that we need to find a way to include their youth.  Our visit with the counselor helped us identify those in the ward that are active and those who we should reach out to and invite.  We will also work with the missionaries in the area to help us contact some of these individuals.

A first for me was having flute accompaniment for our opening song in RS.  The flautist played the introduction to the song and we all sang.  Very nice.  You use the talents you have. 

Have a wonderful week. 

Med kærlighed,

Mom

Kære Familie                                                                                                                                                                       Sunday, August 7, 2016

This week has flown by in hindsight even though it seemed slow as we went through each day.  Mom is writing you about her efforts with the mission Banner for the first couple days of the week.  On Tuesday, at 6:00 we had a dinner at the President's home for 3 senior couple missionaries:  the Johnsons (Barnholm) and Brookes (camera operators) who are going home this month and the Halls who just arrived today to take their place in Barnholm. (Barnholm is an island closer to Sweden than Denmark but it is part of this mission.  It’s well known as a summer tourist location.  The dialect there is supposed to be quite different and hence difficult to pick up from just normal Danish.)  The evening was very nice.  President had a few things to say about each couple going home and then he had them bear testimonies.  They dragged on a bit with stories and some tears. It is hard to leave when you love the service you have rendered. Elder Hall started off with a very long dissertation even though he is a new arriving missionary and that set the tone for the rest, who seemed to feel they needed to match his length.  It was nice to hear about their experiences and feelings about coming or leaving Denmark.  It is hard to leave the people and the work.  The president also surprised us and had us bear testimony as we didn't have that chance when we arrived.  (We had a dinner at a restaurant for all the senior couples on our first night, maybe because there were 3 of us arriving at the same time.)  We had less to say it seemed, perhaps being new, so our testimonies were shorter.  I did not feel inspired to say much beyond what a privilege and blessing it is to work with YSA's.  We see clearly that they are the future of the church and we feel the weight of helping them in any way we can to be strong and faithful. In District Meeting earlier in the day, I commented that one of our roles is to get the YSA's married so they can have eternal families and lead the church.  Mom later pointed out that is not really our role.  We can only help them prepare for marriage, life, and to being faithful, contributing members of the church.  The rest is up to the Lord and themselves. That is so true.  It reminds me of the conference talk about the 2 YSA's in Russia both taking the train to the temple.  They each felt inspired to read their BofM's and to approach the other about the church.  Of course they did, found out each was already a member and they eventually dated and were married in the temple.  One of our early impressions, is that this group of young people just need to be more anxiously engaged in looking and dating, much like YSA’s around the church I think.  They just seem content in having fun and putting off life decisions as long as possible. 

Wednesday, we studied in the morning and then went to the office at 10:00 to get our assignments for apartment checks, something new that we get to do. It includes installing a CO2 alarm and smoke alarm in each apartment as we inspect, so we had to pick up those as well.  This is a new church wide requirement for all missionary apartments.  They must have had some issues in some mission.  We will be doing checks on 10 apartments every quarter, plus our own.  I installed the alarms in our place on Saturday to test them out and get a process down so I can do them quickly during the inspections.  I found an electric drill and screw driver in our apartment in a tool box so that will make the process fairly easy. 

We also visited Elder Howes in Torborg and took him a Domino’s pizza for their lunch.  We were surprised that their apartment was 27 km away, about half the distance to get to Roskilde.  He had his appendix out in a Danish hospital on Monday and is in recovery mode.  I would hate to be him. He seemed in good spirits but still in a lot of pain when he walks or laughs.  He will be home-bound for a few days before he can get out again and work. 

In the afternoon, I drafted up a suggested agenda for our next YSA committee meeting.  I tried to include everything that is in process or that we have talked about.  Some of these items are getting critical as the Kickoff for Institute is only 3 weeks away and the buddy assignments are not made, no assignments are out for the games and the dinner and no announcements or flyers are distributed.  It was well received by Jonathan and helped him realize what needs to be done for the program.  I hope I am not being too pushy but only helpful.  We are supposed to be in a support role and that is hard when it would be easy to jump in and do some things for them. But they wouldn’t learn and we would be counteracting the learning from the sheep and pig video that mom sent home last week about self-reliance.  We later learned on Thursday night, that Jonathan was turned down for both universities he applied for. He wants to be a dentist.  Under their system, admittance is based on grades and experience.  If you don’t get in, then about all you can do is wait a year and apply again or leave the country (and pay for it yourself instead of having a free education.)  He took this pretty hard and my reminder letter at least gave him something to focus on and kick started some action on his part as the stake YSA chairman. He does see time marching on and you can see why.  He waited a year for school before his mission, served 2 years and has now worked for 2 years.  He was ready to get started on his university training and this was a hard blow for him.

We led the 10:00 session in the temple again.  It was sort of special for me for some reason, maybe because we saw the B Movie which I have not seen for a long time, and maybe because of the spirit of those attending.  We had 13 sisters and 7 brethren.  I took 4 Americans through the veil.  I really felt the love of the Savior for each of us during the session and tried to express that in the prayer circle.  I had tears in my eyes during the latter part of the session but I was fine during the prayer circle, for which I was grateful.  There was one brother from Germany attending who struggled putting his robes on.  His hands shook a lot and I knew he had some sort of ailment.  I did not help him the first time as he seemed to be keeping up with everyone but the 2nd time I felt prompted to assist him and so I quietly asked him if he would like some help.  He smiled and was very grateful for some help tying the bows.  Later in the dressing room, I found out he has Parkinson's disease (he probably is not more than 50) and goes to Berlin next week for an operation which he hopes will delay the progression of the disease, but not cure it.  He is here for 3 days and has been attending the temple every day for the first time with his 12-year-old son who was just ordained a deacon.  He does an endowment session and then a baptistery session with him each day.  What faithful saints!  Perhaps I was feeling the love of the Savior for his family during this time of hardship for them.  [Both German temples are under reconstruction right now.]

After the temple we had district meeting from 2:15 to 3:45. Elder Howes had his appendix taken out on Monday but he was there today, though obviously walking very slowing and a little hunched over.  The meeting focused on getting members involved in teaching situations.  The zone goal is 60% members present in sit-down discussions.  I think they isolate the "sit-down" criteria because they count as discussions street or door contacting if they have a substantial discussion and get a call-back appointment.  We also talked with the Amager Branch elders about 2 focus YSA's that we think they can help us with.  They will try to drop in on one of them and set up a dinner appointment with another. 

Today was only a partial P-day as we had the YSA temple endowment session at noon and a wedding reception for Jen Andersen's daughter at 11:00.  Before that, we cleaned the apartment thoroughly.  We are now trading off the bathroom, kitchen and mopping versus dusting and vacuuming.  Jean is faster than me and she did the kitchen as well today while I did the bathroom and mopping. 

The reception was almost a non-event as the couple did not arrive until just before we had to leave at 11:40. They were sealed the night before in the temple.  The reception was in the Frederiksberg chapel which seemed strange by our standards, but this and many of their chapels here are small and combine the chapel with the cultural hall.  They do not have benches but just stackable chairs.  The stand is at one end.  They used it for the organ and piano and a screen which showed a video of the couple with American music in the background.  It was very similar to a reception that we would have with 2 tables of assorted finger food and a table for gifts.  They had brought in some small trees for decoration around the floor.

We arrived at the temple and found out they had assigned us to lead the session in English.  We made it to the endowment room at 5 min to the hour.  We also had no YSA attend, so there was not a need for us to actually be there after all.  It seemed they needed us however, so other temple workers could attend the wedding reception. We did see many of the active YSA's at the reception so that probably drew many away from the temple.  We will need to see if there is some way to discern ahead of time whether there is a conflict with any of our scheduled temple trips as the two that we have attended so far have not been well attended.  I had a “Dad-moment” in the session. It is a hard time for me after lunch.  I thought I was doing fine with regards to staying awake.  It was the D movie.  Towards the end of the film however, I started awake and realized the lights were on and I was supposed to be standing at the altar.  Everyone was staring at me and smiling.  Mom later said she had whispered my name twice trying to wake me up!   I don’t know how much time had gone by, I hope not long, but I was so embarrassed.  You would think this would be enough that I would never fall asleep again in the temple or in church!  However, sometimes it is just overwhelming for me and I don’t even know I have drifted off.  I continue to use the C-Pap machine and get a shot every 3 weeks which is supposed to help me with the sleepiness, but honestly we have not seen much, if any improvement.  Mom says I don’t snore anymore (I never really have!) and I feel rested when I wake in the morning, but I still crave a nap if I can find time for it each day, especially right after lunch.  More sleep may help, we are getting 6 – 7 hours every night, but I seem to wake up at 6:00 am no matter what time I go to bed, so getting 8 hours does not seem realistic.  Like the apostle Paul, I think I have a cross to bear through life and this is mine.

There is the week.  We see progress every week and feel like the UV’s are more at ease around us.  We had several good discussions with some of the regulars this week and they seem to welcome us into their mix.  Not enough progress with the less actives however and we need to get some things organized on that front.  The visits with the wards will help identify some targets for love and attention.  We appreciate your prayers and feel them.  Thank goodness for FaceTime as we love to see the pretty faces of our grandchildren.  Know that we pray for you every day as well and sometimes water our pillows with prayers of love and pleading for you. 

Love, Dad.