Absalon—founder of Copenhagen in the 12th century
The Round Tower
The ramp leading to the top of the round tower
The view from the round tower
The church adjacent to the round tower
Kære Familie, Sunday,
October 16, 2016
So sorry there is so much sickness going around in at least
2 families. It sounds like it has been a
tough couple of weeks. Hopefully, this
week will see everyone back to normal after just a couple of days. We have both been healthy since we have been
in Denmark, so I think that is a tender mercy.
The cold weather set in with more bite this week and I have tried out
wearing a scarf around my neck, something I would not have done in Houston (too
sissy looking) but here almost everyone wears one. I guess survival takes precedence over
everything else. The stocking cap feels
really good as well at times. Mom does
not want to mess up her hair, so I am not sure what she will do to keep
warm. We keep asking ourselves if we are
going to be able to keep up walking to the CUV when it gets really cold, windy
or wet. We are ok right now, but it is
going to get a lot colder, they tell us.
The AP's called at 2:00 on
Monday to see if we could join them in a discussion with Eline at 4:00. It
messed up our plans to be at the CUV at 4:30 but we made it work. The discussion was interesting. She was feeling depressed and a bit
overwhelmed with school and I think just wanted to feel the warmth of the
spirit that she feels when she is with the missionaries. It was a good opportunity to talk about the
Holy Ghost and the gift of the Holy Ghost and his constant companionship that
she could receive with her baptism. I
shared a bit about Pres Eyring's conference talk about gratitude and how that
can shape our feelings of self-worth. She
did not watch any of the sessions of general conference but said she
might. We also discussed the good
feelings that come with service to others.
I later related the story from the September Ensign about a father that
was baptized when he realized he was looking in on the church from outside
through windows and it was time for him to come inside and join his family in
the church. I also offered her a priesthood blessing and she was excited to receive
one so Elder Murphy gave her a nice blessing (I assume) in Danish. I worry a bit that I talk too much during
discussions so I tried to hold back more today.
It is hard when I feel like I have inspired thoughts and want to share
them. The ones today seemed to fit in
well with what the elders were saying. I
think they were surprised when I suggested a blessing. One of them almost seemed to be trying to
talk her out of it by saying that she needed to have faith for it to work and
questioning whether she was ready for that.
She came back very strong that she had seen or heard about them but
didn’t think she could qualify without being baptized. She was excited to have
the experience! (Maybe not the right spirit but I felt like it
was something that we could offer her.)
For FHE we had 12 there + 2
assistants + us, then 2 more youth came as some were leaving to go home. There was a good feeling of comradery. There were also 3 non-members there. Eline came with a friend and Sarah Stewart
brought a friend. We also had a new face
join us in Ana from Ghana, who is working on a masters in finance degree. He did not speak Danish and Gabriel
translated for him. They played a speed
dating game in English for his benefit. They called it wacky speed dating. We started out playing, mom and I with the 2
elders as a 4 some, but then the questions turned us off so we dropped
out. The questions were something like: If you were given a million kroners, what
would you do with it? (not too bad a
question). Would you rather have your
breath smell like pickled herring or something else equally as gross? What would you do if you were on a deserted
island with only a match, a stick, a shovel and an eggplant? Trust me, the questions
went downhill from there. I guess these questions were supposed to
elucidate the deeper thinking capacities of potential dates?????? No wonder they don’t date each other, they
know too many intimate details! Mom made pigs-in-a-blanket for
the refreshments, which were good, but their sausages taste more like hotdogs
and are missing the flavor of cocktail sausages like we have.
Our
District training this week was on using the BofM more effectively in
contacting and teaching investigators. I
think some of the things we discussed could be helpful to you to consider in
FHE, etc.
One way to reach non-members is to address
questions of the soul from the BofM. It
has more clear answers than any other source. Page 107 in Preach My Gospel lists
many of these questions and references answers from the BofM. These are questions that most everyone
considers at some point in their life.
One of the missionaries also mentioned advice they
had received from an investigator on the best way to reach Danish people. This had to be from someone who was getting
ready for baptism I think, as the questions are good.
o
Tell them what is different about you.
o
Be passionate about it - what is your passionate
pitch.
o
Emphasize you have new scripture, the BofM
o
Discuss a living prophet who speaks for God
Not bad ideas I think, to get people’s
attention. The DL also asked us to
consider a couple of questions. I have
given my answers in the bullet points. How
would you answer them?
How
has my study of the BofM influenced my testimony of Jesus Christ?
·
It is a witness of Jesus Christ every time I
read. I feel the spirit testify of Him every day.
·
It illustrates through stories the power of
Christ through conversion.
·
The appearance of Christ to the Nephites
illustrates his love and compassion but also the order and authority that is
necessary in the church.
How
is the BofM helping me right now in my reading?
·
It provides a daily dose of spiritual feelings
·
It increases my gratitude for the gospel
·
I receive direction for life’s decisions; I feel
closer to the spirit and thus can receive direction for even mundane questions
·
We read Ether 6:3 in this morning's reading; I
was reminded that God never meant for us to cross this ‘great deep’ alone. I need
His help in this missionary work we have taken on.
Our institute lesson this
week was on improving our temple worship. Brother Andersen taught the lesson
and did a great job. Eline (our
investigator) was there and asked why she needed to be baptized now if we do
the temple work for the dead. Why
couldn't she just wait and repent later after she was dead? I think he did a good job of turning to Alma
34 and discussing its teachings, "do not procrastinate the day of our
repentance / that same spirit which possesses your body in this life will be
with us in the next." I
think I would also have referenced Elder Bednar's conference talk using
scriptures from the New Testament, "you never knew me." I thought that talk was really good and
emphasized that we have the responsibility to come to the Savior so that we
will be comfortable in His presence.
Michael Wilcox also likes to say, that the Savior will be begging us to
stay but that we will be begging for a lower kingdom because we will not be
comfortable with those who have been more faithful than we have been. D&C 76 on the degrees of glory would also
provide some good answers as it describes those that will qualify for each
kingdom. I have been especially aware
recently of the need to be ‘valiant in our testimony of Christ’. Someone has
suggested that may mean daily repenting of our sins of omission so that we
strive daily to be more like Him. Good
food for thought. I keep thinking that
these experiences with Eline are bringing her closer to realizing that she
needs baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost.
It looks like the temple can
use us Friday afternoons as well as the mornings, at least they were light on
temple workers today. There were 7 women
and 8 male workers in the prayer meeting. That is not enough to staff
everything. I did Initiatories in the
first session and again in the 3rd, only I was the coordinator for the 3rd. We
did not have any patrons in either session.
It turns out that being the coordinator doesn't mean much when there are
no patrons. My duties included getting names from the recorder and turning on
the lights and the dripping water.
Otherwise the 3 workers assigned split the chance to be patron and we
each did 4 names. Mom and I were both in sealings for the 2nd session. I also did 2 prayer circles and received 1
person through the veil in English. We
finished up at about 9:00 pm and then came home for dinner. I think I will actually like
this shift a lot better than the morning because there are 3 American senior
missionary couples who I can talk to.
They are really nice and I enjoyed talking to them about temple and
mission things. Jens Andersen (our
institute director) is also normally the sealer on this shift, though he wasn't
there today, and we really respect him.
I felt pretty isolated on the morning shift because none of the workers
spoke English that well and I usually just felt ignored, though they were nice
enough to us. One of the very special parts of working in the temple is the
friendships we have developed with the other workers. I don’t think that would have happened with
the morning shift workers but we already have a special bond with the other
missionary couples, even the temple missionaries, from the outings we have had
together.
Yesterday, we stayed in until
11:30 working on our talks and mom wrote a poem for a baby shower that Lindsey
is giving someone in her ward. The
weather was cold and windy, but dry.
Temperature was about 9 degrees Celsius.
At noon, we had arranged to join a walking tour of downtown
Copenhagen. It lasted 90 minutes and was
quite enjoyable, despite the cold. The
guide did a good job of being animated and making it interesting with stories
of disease, fires (the city burned down twice), British bombardments of the
city, a stolen navy, and the lives of several famous Danes over the
centuries. She also talked about the
long reign of King Christian the IV, who built many of the finer buildings and
palaces in Denmark, but also bankrupted the kingdom so that he had to pawn his
crown to the Swedes. The next king had
to raise money to buy it back so he could be coroneted.
After the tour, we visited
the inside of a cathedral and then climbed up the round tower to the
observation deck. It provided a good
view of the city. Instead of stairs climbing up there is a wide inside ramp
that winds around the core tower. At
certain times of the year, they have races on bikes, unicycles, etc. to go up
the ramp.
We then had a late lunch at
Hard Rock Cafe for Mom’s birthday and made it home by 4:00. Mom needed to work on her talk some more and
did that until about 7:00. I worked on
setting up home visits with less active YSA's. At 7:30 we went up to Buxton's apartment
for a movie night along with the Ottleys.
We did not get home until 11:00 with the usual chatter we have when we
are all together. I can’t help but feel
that we sometimes have an unusual mission experience! Our YSA visits turned out quite well today
(mom is talking about those) so we try to do good every day and every
week. It is a wonderful experience and
we love the young missionaries we work with.
They make life interesting and we hope that we are good role models for
them.
Give special hugs to all of
the grandkids. We miss them so
much.
Love, Dad.
Kære Familie, October 16, 2016
Mondays always seem to dawn cold and drizzly—at least it has
been that way the past two weeks as we walked to our language class. It is hard to complain when I see so many
people out on their bikes which must be twice as cold as walking. I am always amazed to see so many young
children riding on their parent’s bike, all bundled up. To them it is a way of life—rain or shine,
they bike. I thought maybe the bad
weather would drive people to the busses, but I haven’t noticed a difference in
the bike traffic at all. The weather
hadn’t changed at all during our language class, so our walk home was the
same—only worse. We were expecting our houseguests
to arrive just after we got home, but because we had been out of town over the
weekend, I had not shopped for some needed groceries. So I wanted to shop on the way home. I had a
list and thought I could accomplish the task in a timely matter. Dad went in another direction to get some
yogurt at a different store—the only one where he has found yogurt he
likes. I went to another store because
they had some things on sale which I needed for our institute dinner this
week. I thought I would just get a few
things—but they were heavy things—bag of potatoes, 5 lbs. of sausage (for
institute), juice, milk, apples. I
didn’t have my cart with me, so I stuffed everything into four bags to carry
home. The handle on one of the bags
broke, but I had to make do. It was a
long walk home. Because my hands were
full, I couldn’t hold an umbrella and the wind kept blowing the hood of my coat
off my head. I had to stop every half a
block or so just to adjust my bags. I
made it back just as our guests arrived—looking completely drenched, my arms
having had their workout for the day. Solution: Take the shopping cart.
The Yates, their daughter and grandson (3 months) were our
houseguests. Sister Yate’s birthday is
the day before mine, so her husband and daughter planned this surprise
visit. The baby had been born shortly
after they left on their mission (came out with us) so this was the first time
for them to meet their grandson. It was
nice to see them. They spent two days
seeing the sights of Copenhagen—as much as they could with a baby. The weather was still cold and windy, but at
least it didn’t rain again while they were here. On Tuesday night they insisted on taking us
out to dinner with them for a birthday celebration. We went to a buffet—the same one we went to
on our first night here.
My birthday was uneventful—that is until we got a call from
the mission home to go help some sister missionaries in Slagelse. They asked us to come at 3:30 so we left
about 2:30. We didn’t expect the
construction delays on the freeway so we were almost an hour late getting
there. They had another appointment, so
they just left their apartment open.
Their bathroom sink was clogged—they couldn’t get the stopper to come
up. It turned out that there was so much
hair and guck in the pipe that the stopper was stuck. Dad had to completely take the pipes apart,
drain the sink and clean all the pipes—not a pleasant task. The whole trip took over 4 hours. I had put some taco soup in the crock pot
before I left so we had dinner ready when we came home. We had another meeting that night—or so I
thought. It is our monthly YSA stake
meeting with a member of the stake presidency, high councilor, YSA
committee. The meeting was at 8 p.m.
instead of 7 and had changed from the usual location. I should have known something was up. When we got to the location (one of the YSA
committee member’s apartment), there were 16 of our young adults who greeted me
with a surprise birthday party. I was
surprised that so many of them had come just for me (and because it was a party
with their friends). One of the girls
had baked a chocolate mint cake and had fruit.
Another girl had made some homemade fudge for me. Everyone had signed a card and they sang
happy birthday to me. I couldn’t believe
they had done something so nice for me.
We ate and visited and then we played a round of ‘Telestrations.’ Everyone had to write something about
me—Sister Shurtliff doing something in someplace. Here are some examples: ‘a dragon is picking up Sister Shurtliff from
the roof’—that one changed to ‘a flying wolf is eating Sister Shurtliff stuck
on a cheese. Or ‘Sister Shurtliff is
riding on a duck boat on the Copenhagen Lake’ changed to ‘Sister Shurtliff
rides on a kangaroo on the sidewalk next to the road.’ We all had some good laughs. We got home late only to find that the Yates
had also bought me a birthday cake from the bakery—and apple cake. I also received a beautiful plant from our
neighbors, The Buxtons. I also got to
talk to a few of you, so it made for a very nice day. I also received a new sweater and beautiful
scarf from Stephanie which I wore on my birthday, so I even had something new
to wear.
We had a little success in our rescuing attempts today. Our original plan was to work with a young
adult and go out together visiting our lost sheep, but we weren’t having any
success in getting another youth to go with us.
I don’t know if they are too busy or just not interested. So yesterday Dad decided to text a few of the
youth we have selected as our focus group (suggestions from the stake president
and bishoprics). We were almost surprised when two of the youth
wrote back and set up a time to meet today.
(Others responded, but couldn’t meet with us—we will follow up with
them.) One was a young man, Mattias, who
has been home from his mission for about 3 years. He served in Chicago, Illinois. I guess it wasn’t a very good experience for
him. His mission president didn’t
enforce rules in the mission, so the missionaries had become very lax. He said it was difficult to get his
companions to go out and work. He did
have some positive experiences with teaching and baptizing, so I suspect it was
not as bad as he says it is now. His
friends told us that part of the negative experience he had was because he was
the only foreign missionary serving in that mission at the time. He felt different. There are probably only 30 Danish
missionaries serving now in the whole world.
I’m sure it is not much different with Norway and Sweden. What are the chances he would meet up with a
fellow Scandinavian missionary, let alone one from Denmark? There have been three Danish sisters who
served at Temple Square on their missions, but they were never there at the
same time. I can’t imagine what the
young Danish missionary going to Zimbabwe must be feeling.
Mattias has only been to one or two of our YSA
activities. He attended the big
conferences like Festinord and Golden Days, but we haven’t seen him in quite a
while. Some of his good friends are now
married and have ‘graduated’ from Young Adults.
Others have moved away. He
doesn’t seem very motivated as he stopped going to school and is basically
working as a receptionist at an immunization clinic. He says life is much easier now. It also sounds like he doesn’t get to church
often. When we met with him today about
3:00, he was relaxing and watching a movie, but hadn’t gone to church. He is allowing the adversary to ‘steal his
testimony’ out from under him—which was the message of my talk in church
today. So we talked to Mattias about
that—he even answered our question about what do we need to do keep our
testimony strong. He called them ‘the
standard answers,’ almost dismissing them as trivial. But the reason they are ‘the standard
answers’ is because they are true and they work. There is no fancy formula, or profound
solution. It is like Naaman who wanted
something greater than bathing in a dirty river to cure him of leprosy. Or the children of Israel who only had to look
at Moses’ staff to be healed from the poisonous serpents. Are we also guilty of turning away because of
the easiness of it? So the simple but
true answer is always to pray, read the scriptures, attend church, study the
words of the prophets, keep the commandments, attend the temple. I promised Mattias if he would do this he would
be blessed. I said that he will gain
direction in his life again.
The second visit was with a young woman named Lisa, age 22. She attended school in Cedar City (SUU) and
just happened to have a Mormon roommate.
Lisa’s family is very religious—her mother is a priest in the Danish
church and her father does humanitarian work with the church. The Danish state religion is Lutheran. Lisa wanted to attend church while living in
Cedar City, but hadn’t found one that seemed right. (She tried the Church of England and a
Baptist church.) So her roommate invited
Lisa to go with her. Soon she was
meeting with the missionaries. She said
she was not at all interested in reading the Book of Mormon until the
missionaries challenged her. “How can
you say you don’t like something if you haven’t even tried it?” So she tried it and it felt right. She started meeting with the missionaries in September
2015 and was baptized in November. She
didn’t tell her parents because she worried about their reaction. When they found out, they were not
happy. They can’t accept Mormonism
because we don’t believe in the Trinity.
They think the church is a cult. Any
discussion about the church turned into an argument. They are all well versed in the Bible so
there was also a lot of Bible bashing as each would bring up scriptures to
support their position. After the spring
semester, they cut off her funding and brought her home in April. She attended church a few times and even came
to institute, but the arguments at home were not worth it and she didn’t want
to lie about it. She went to Festinord,
but the cost was that she didn’t speak with her parents for three weeks (the
week before and after the conference).
So she has stopped going to church to keep peace in her home. When she agreed to meet with us, she said we
could not come to her home. She said she
would come to us. We had never met her,
so that took a lot of courage to come to us.
She told her parents she was going to visit with friends. My heart goes out to her. She still reads her scriptures, which she has
hidden in her closet and studies Preach My Gospel. She wasn’t able to view conference and
doesn’t have phone capabilities to get Gospel Library. How does a new convert stay strong without
the support of the church? I could tell
she still has a testimony. She said she
often went to the temple while she lived in Utah and had been able to go here
once, but there has been nothing for about 4 months. I told her we would be happy to study with
her and help her in any way we can. The only
solution is to move out and it sounds like she has looked into it. Unfortunately, cheap apartments are hard to
find here in Copenhagen and she doesn’t have the money to support herself. I suggested that she try to get one of the
LDS girls to share an apartment. She has
a job and has recently been accepted into midwife school but that won’t start
until next spring or next fall. She
would still like to get back to Utah and finish school there. We had a nice long visit and we will keep in
close touch with her.
I hope you all have a good week. Love to you all!
Kærlig hilsen,
Mom
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