Here is the Bridge that turns into a tunnel under the water.
On a sight-seeing break from the Festinord
The YSAs all dressed up.
Kitchen duty
We were able to do a session in the Stockholm, Sweden temple as part of the Festinord conference
Kære Familie,
Last Friday was 6 weeks since we arrived in Denmark. Whew! The time is flying by and similar to time in the states, seems to be marked by large events that we anticipate and then enjoy. We are supposed to write our mission president every 4 to 6 weeks so I guess I am getting past due. He asked us to fill him in on the characteristics of Christ that we are working on. These 6 weeks have all been about survival: driving the car, finding our way to places, learning to shop, learning the language, becoming familiar with the youth, the wards, the stake leadership, learning where we fit in and what the opportunities are, learning how to work together as a couple/companions, figuring out what kind of a schedule will work/makes sense for us, etc. I am not sure there has been time for concentrating on a characteristic to improve – though maybe patience, long suffering, love unfeigned, kindness are all things that come to mind that need help or that come to the surface as a natural result of the work we are doing.
I can tell you that as we crossed the border from Sweden to Denmark last night, there was a tremendous rush of feeling like we were coming home. It was strange, palatable and we all felt it. The surroundings were familiar and the language, though still foreign, was something that we could recognize.
The Festinord:
Crossing into Sweden is interesting from Copenhagen. There is a long stretch of water between the 2 countries. I am guessing 3 to 5 miles. From Denmark you start in a tunnel for a long ways and then rise up out of the ground and cross a suspension bridge which is very long - maybe twice the length of the San Francisco bridge. Coming back from Sweden, you are driving along the bridge and in the distance you can see the road slowly descend down until it just seems to disappear into the water as it enters the tunnel under the channel. The tunnel itself reminded us of James Bond or Bourne movies where the helicopter is flying in the tunnel above the cars. The movies could easily have been filmed in this tunnel.
The conference was extraordinary. 50 years since 1966 there has been a Festinord (party in the north) in Scandinavia for YSA. This year there were 850 youth (18 – 30) gathered from 31 countries. The conference is held entirely in English so they don’t worry about translation. There were dances Mon, Tues, Thurs and Friday nights which all went until Midnight. All had different themes and decorations. 2 had lives bands, the others had disc jockeys. They were also in different locations. The days were filled with outdoor water games, sport competitions in basketball, soccer and volleyball, a day of workshops, 2 days where they could go to the Stockholm temple, etc. There were also 2 lakes nearby where they could go to the beaches and some took the train into Stockholm to see some sights. There was also ample time to mingle and talk to people, which is the focus of the whole event.
Everyone ate in the high school cafeteria. Food was cold cereal, muesli, yoghurt and ham sandwiches with just a bun, ham and cheese – no dressings or vegetables or any fruit and no dessert at any of the meals. The food started out OK but soon got very monotonous with lots of rice, noodles, etc. for every meal, spaghetti, stroganoff with spam, chicken with curry over rice, ham chucks in white sauce over noodles, etc. Salads were more noodles and grated carrots and cabbage. I guess it was easy to fix in large quantities but if food is a key ingredient to a good time, then I think it was lacking a whole bunch. It did not seem to matter much to the attendees so maybe American tastes are more discriminatory. The best meal was a hamburger with potato wedges.
The only responsibility we had was to man an information booth a couple of times and to help out with meals. We were entirely responsible for serving and cleanup so the sister missionaries covered the cafeteria and the men manned the dishwashing. They had very nice equipment comparable the nicest restaurant I suppose. The dirty dishes were put on a conveyor belt in large trays and run through a 3 stage dishwasher that took maybe 4 minutes to finish. There were just a lot of dishes pots and serving trays. We also had to clean the washing area after each meal and break down the dishwasher, clean filters, wash it all down with soap and water, etc. We generally started 30 min before a meal which lasted 90 minutes and then easily had 60 minutes of cleanup after the meal; easily 3 hours + in total. We had about 10 senior missionary couples to do all of this work. It was hot and sweaty and dirty. I don’t know what they would have done without us as they did not plan enough local stake help to take care of this. I understand every Festinord is not like this. There are usually more stake volunteers and the missionary couples are supposed to mingle with the youth. We did not have very much time for that, though mom and I arranged to host the workshops so we got to each attend 5 of those and we had time to watch the soccer final games and after dinner we did not have any responsibilities unless we were in the information booth or helping with the midnight snack. That started at 11:30 for a couple of hours with some cleanup. When we did the snack 1 night, we did not get to our room until 1:30 am.
I don’t mean to make this sound terrible. The kitchen duty was not particularly fun, but there was lots of time to talk to the other senior missionaries and we sometimes had some local people helping out as well to talk to. We were happy to serve to make the conference possible. It was wonderful to see so many of mixed cultures and languages come together in a common cause. They made new friends, maybe found some dating possibilities and there are always some marriages that come from the Festinords. I trust this one will be the same. As we talked to the youth today who attended, they were all very positive. They loved it and will plan to be back next year. I hope that many of them will decide to get married instead but it seems like a lot of them attend 4 to 5 Festinords before they tie the marriage knot.
Back to regular life this week.
Love Dad.
Kære familie,
Crossing into Sweden is interesting from Copenhagen. There is a long stretch of water between the 2 countries. I am guessing 3 to 5 miles. From Denmark you start in a tunnel for a long ways and then rise up out of the ground and cross a suspension bridge which is very long - maybe twice the length of the San Francisco bridge. Coming back from Sweden, you are driving along the bridge and in the distance you can see the road slowly descend down until it just seems to disappear into the water as it enters the tunnel under the channel. The tunnel itself reminded us of James Bond or Bourne movies where the helicopter is flying in the tunnel above the cars. The movies could easily have been filmed in this tunnel.
The conference was extraordinary. 50 years since 1966 there has been a Festinord (party in the north) in Scandinavia for YSA. This year there were 850 youth (18 – 30) gathered from 31 countries. The conference is held entirely in English so they don’t worry about translation. There were dances Mon, Tues, Thurs and Friday nights which all went until Midnight. All had different themes and decorations. 2 had lives bands, the others had disc jockeys. They were also in different locations. The days were filled with outdoor water games, sport competitions in basketball, soccer and volleyball, a day of workshops, 2 days where they could go to the Stockholm temple, etc. There were also 2 lakes nearby where they could go to the beaches and some took the train into Stockholm to see some sights. There was also ample time to mingle and talk to people, which is the focus of the whole event.
Everyone ate in the high school cafeteria. Food was cold cereal, muesli, yoghurt and ham sandwiches with just a bun, ham and cheese – no dressings or vegetables or any fruit and no dessert at any of the meals. The food started out OK but soon got very monotonous with lots of rice, noodles, etc. for every meal, spaghetti, stroganoff with spam, chicken with curry over rice, ham chucks in white sauce over noodles, etc. Salads were more noodles and grated carrots and cabbage. I guess it was easy to fix in large quantities but if food is a key ingredient to a good time, then I think it was lacking a whole bunch. It did not seem to matter much to the attendees so maybe American tastes are more discriminatory. The best meal was a hamburger with potato wedges.
The only responsibility we had was to man an information booth a couple of times and to help out with meals. We were entirely responsible for serving and cleanup so the sister missionaries covered the cafeteria and the men manned the dishwashing. They had very nice equipment comparable the nicest restaurant I suppose. The dirty dishes were put on a conveyor belt in large trays and run through a 3 stage dishwasher that took maybe 4 minutes to finish. There were just a lot of dishes pots and serving trays. We also had to clean the washing area after each meal and break down the dishwasher, clean filters, wash it all down with soap and water, etc. We generally started 30 min before a meal which lasted 90 minutes and then easily had 60 minutes of cleanup after the meal; easily 3 hours + in total. We had about 10 senior missionary couples to do all of this work. It was hot and sweaty and dirty. I don’t know what they would have done without us as they did not plan enough local stake help to take care of this. I understand every Festinord is not like this. There are usually more stake volunteers and the missionary couples are supposed to mingle with the youth. We did not have very much time for that, though mom and I arranged to host the workshops so we got to each attend 5 of those and we had time to watch the soccer final games and after dinner we did not have any responsibilities unless we were in the information booth or helping with the midnight snack. That started at 11:30 for a couple of hours with some cleanup. When we did the snack 1 night, we did not get to our room until 1:30 am.
I don’t mean to make this sound terrible. The kitchen duty was not particularly fun, but there was lots of time to talk to the other senior missionaries and we sometimes had some local people helping out as well to talk to. We were happy to serve to make the conference possible. It was wonderful to see so many of mixed cultures and languages come together in a common cause. They made new friends, maybe found some dating possibilities and there are always some marriages that come from the Festinords. I trust this one will be the same. As we talked to the youth today who attended, they were all very positive. They loved it and will plan to be back next year. I hope that many of them will decide to get married instead but it seems like a lot of them attend 4 to 5 Festinords before they tie the marriage knot.
Back to regular life this week.
Love Dad.
Kære familie,
My new assignment with the mission newsletter has consumed most of my day today. I tried to do what I could before I left for Festinord, but I was missing a lot of information. When I checked the mission email today, there were a lot of new things for the newsletter, so I went to work. I am still missing a few things so I will try to track that down tomorrow. The newsletter is time-consuming, but not hard. I gather pictures and testimonies from all the departing missionaries (this time 3 Elders and 3 couples). I also include a message from the mission president and his wife, plus the new arriving missionaries, calendar and birthday. My deadline is Tuesday so I don’t have much time to get it finished. I have had to rearrange pages that I had already completed now that I have more information. Such fun.
I am still sleep-deprived from our YSA conference last week. I had two 4-hour nights and the rest were between 5 ½ or 6. We were either up early to do breakfast or up late with a dance or to do a midnight snack. We also helped with lunch and dinner, even when we were not assigned that shift. We weren’t in the kitchen all of the time though. On Wednesday, we led groups of YSA to workshops and introduced the speakers. That was probably my favorite day. We worked the information desk a couple of times and during one of the dances and enjoyed both the music and watching the YSA’s. (There was a live band and the music was more to my liking.) Each dance had a theme and I was surprised how many of them dressed to the theme. The first dance was outside with a DJ and the theme was ‘colorful’. The second dance was “A Romantic Night in Paris” complete with a replica of the Eiffel tower. Many dressed as Frenchmen or just dressed up. The third dance was a decades dance—there was music from the decades starting with the 50’s. The YSA’s dressed in whatever decade they wanted to represent. These dances all had fabulous decorations. The last night was the formal “prom-style” night. It was held at a very nice resort on the Baltic Sea. We had dinner and then danced until midnight. The BYU Jazz band played for the dance. They have been touring the Baltic countries for about a month. They are concluding their tour with a couple of performances in Stockholm, including ours. They were very good, but I decided that I really don’t enjoy “Hello Young Lovers” (King and I), “It’s Almost Like Being in Love” (Brigadoon) and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” jazz-style. The band’s jazz vocalist ruined those songs—but maybe others enjoyed it.
The whole object of the conference is to have these YSA’s meet each other—find a companion. On the last night, guys are encouraged to get a date for the Gala. Many did—of course they travel in the busses along with everyone else to the resort and all expenses are already paid, so the only fear is the ‘asking.’ Only time will tell what becomes of it, but we have heard of many couples who met at Festinord. It was totally worth all the hard work on our part to see these young adults have great experiences. For the most part it was well-organized, but like any big event, a few details fell through the cracks like first aid help for the injuries. I also think they just expected to get a lot of help from the senior missionaries.
There were some great workshops, although we didn’t get to go to all of them. Here is the list:
I am still sleep-deprived from our YSA conference last week. I had two 4-hour nights and the rest were between 5 ½ or 6. We were either up early to do breakfast or up late with a dance or to do a midnight snack. We also helped with lunch and dinner, even when we were not assigned that shift. We weren’t in the kitchen all of the time though. On Wednesday, we led groups of YSA to workshops and introduced the speakers. That was probably my favorite day. We worked the information desk a couple of times and during one of the dances and enjoyed both the music and watching the YSA’s. (There was a live band and the music was more to my liking.) Each dance had a theme and I was surprised how many of them dressed to the theme. The first dance was outside with a DJ and the theme was ‘colorful’. The second dance was “A Romantic Night in Paris” complete with a replica of the Eiffel tower. Many dressed as Frenchmen or just dressed up. The third dance was a decades dance—there was music from the decades starting with the 50’s. The YSA’s dressed in whatever decade they wanted to represent. These dances all had fabulous decorations. The last night was the formal “prom-style” night. It was held at a very nice resort on the Baltic Sea. We had dinner and then danced until midnight. The BYU Jazz band played for the dance. They have been touring the Baltic countries for about a month. They are concluding their tour with a couple of performances in Stockholm, including ours. They were very good, but I decided that I really don’t enjoy “Hello Young Lovers” (King and I), “It’s Almost Like Being in Love” (Brigadoon) and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” jazz-style. The band’s jazz vocalist ruined those songs—but maybe others enjoyed it.
The whole object of the conference is to have these YSA’s meet each other—find a companion. On the last night, guys are encouraged to get a date for the Gala. Many did—of course they travel in the busses along with everyone else to the resort and all expenses are already paid, so the only fear is the ‘asking.’ Only time will tell what becomes of it, but we have heard of many couples who met at Festinord. It was totally worth all the hard work on our part to see these young adults have great experiences. For the most part it was well-organized, but like any big event, a few details fell through the cracks like first aid help for the injuries. I also think they just expected to get a lot of help from the senior missionaries.
There were some great workshops, although we didn’t get to go to all of them. Here is the list:
- Accept and handle life’s challenges (my personal favorite)
- God, The Universe and You (Neither of us were able to attend this one.)
- Current Church History—this one was about collecting oral histories from your living relatives. The church actually has missionaries doing this around the world. These recorded histories are then sent to the archives of the church.
- Faith Under Fire (by Terryl and Fiona Givens) You may have heard of this couple. They have written several popular LDS books. I didn’t attend so you will have to ask Dad for specifics.
- Speed Dating—always a popular class.
- Dance for your life—dance instruction. (I really liked this—it was popular among the young adults as well.)
- Last man standing. This was taught by a young man who had just returned home from his mission a week ago. He is a black-belt Judo master and won the Swedish Junior championships in 2014. He asked Dad to participate when he led this group because there was an uneven number. He was wearing missionary attire, but he took his shoes and socks off and wrestled a young man. He has the mat burns on his feet to prove it. The young man complimented him on his strength, saying it took him a little longer to ‘take him down’ than he thought.
- Do you want to rank #1 on Google? This was a class about Memes. Dad went to it. The church wants to flood Google with messages about the Christmas initiative—“The Light of the World.” When you search something on Google, the items displayed on the first page are the ones that get noticed. You rarely go to the 5th or 12th page of your search to see what is there. The Church wants their message to be on that front page. We are to create ‘Memes’ or internet Mormon Ad-type posters around the Christmas theme and submit them to the church public affairs. We will be doing this with our young adults in the next few weeks.
- Sing your Heart Out—this was actually a practice for the Festinord choir which performed at the last Devotional.
- Overcome Stage Fright—a new approach to life. This class was taught by the BYU Jazz band director. He said stage fright is all about you—worried about what others think, worried you are not prepared, worried you are not good enough. The better approach is to think about being God’s servant. Self-doubt comes for feelings of inadequacy. We can run from it, fight against it, or exercise faith to overcome. We are on His errand and He is not inadequate. When we give a talk in church or perform a musical number, or whatever it is, we should think in terms of being an instrument in God’s Hands to accomplish His work. It is not about us and what people think of us. It is about accomplishing the Lord’s work-bringing His spirit into a meeting, or teaching His children. Our goal is to lift and bless others. Besides the redemptive power of the atonement, there is also the enabling power that comes from it—this helps us be equal to what we need to do. Humility is not weak—it is about being confident because you know where the source of your strength comes from.
- If we are not to flee Babylon, then how to attack. This class was taught by Elder Wolfgang Pilz, a member of the 3rd Quorum of the Seventy. He said that for 4000 years the righteous saints were encouraged to flee Babylon—Moses, Nephi, King Mosiah (I), colonization of America, the pioneers. But not anymore. The church will never again instruct us to flee. Now we need to stand our ground. We do not retreat or hide. If we are going to survive Babylon we need to:
- Stand as a witness at all times. “Never check your religion at the door.”
- All our acts and deeds have to reflect that we are followers of Christ.
- We need to take a moral stand with compassion, understanding and charity. We need to be engaged in the community—be the salt, be the leaven, be the light.
Well that is it for the week. We are already looking ahead to the next event, the next assignment. The BYU exchange students will leave Monday morning for a couple of weeks in Norway. We said a tearful good-bye to one of them after church on Sunday. I suppose that is the greatest thing about serving in the church—no matter where you are. You get to know wonderful people. “Each life touches ours for good…” I hope that I can do the same.
Love to you all—have a good week.
Med kærlihed,
Mom
Love to you all—have a good week.
Med kærlihed,
Mom
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