Dinner at the Institute:
Ice Skating FHE
Kære Familie, December 18, 2016
Tuesday night a select group of missionaries put on a Christmas concert for our Stake. It was an opportunity for members to bring their friends and enjoy an hour of Christmas music by some very talented kids. Evidently the President chose two missionaries, an elder and a sister, to organize the concert—pick the music, arrange practices, etc. The Elder was from our island (Sjælland) and the sister was from the other side of the mission (Jylland). Missionaries who were interested in participating, filled out a questionnaire and they selected 16 additional missionaries and 1 technical missionary to do sound equipment (19 in all). Most of the missionaries had taken choir or band in high school, or had a musical background. The elder in charge, plays the piano and organ very well and directed the missionary choir. If you played an instrument you were also considered. One girl played a trumpet--she and an elder played a trumpet/organ duet of ‘Joy to the World.’ There was also a violin duet and one elder played a guitar accompaniment for another elder who sang ‘O Holy Night.’ There was a piano solo as well. All the sisters sang ‘Cradle Hymn’ and the elders sang “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.’ The whole chorus sang a medley of Danish Christmas carols and other Danish Christmas songs. It was very well done. It was a bit tricky to put it together as the missionaries only had Saturday, Sunday and Monday to practice together. They were brought in from wherever they were serving in Denmark late Friday night. Of course, they had received the music ahead of time. They just doubled up sleeping in missionary apartments near Copenhagen. Transfers happened the same Friday, but because of the Christmas concert, many of the companionships couldn’t actually hook up. There was some fancy shuffling and a few ‘threesomes’ created until the concert week is over and everyone can get back in their rightful area. The concert on our side of Denmark was Tuesday. Then they traveled to Fyn and did a concert on Thursday night in Odense. The last concert was in Århus on Saturday night. I’m sure they got better with each concert. The mission van was used to transport a few of the missionaries and the sound equipment, which the mission rented. The rest of the missionaries went by train. It was no cheap affair. I’m sure the missionaries enjoyed this break from regular missionary duties, as they shared their talents.
Dad and I were asked to organize a dinner for this performing group the night of their performance (Tuesday). They asked for taco soup. That was easy enough. I just had to have everything ready by 4:30 when they finished their rehearsal. I cooked at the church. I made Christmas sugar cookies for dessert—that took a little time, but they enjoyed them. I made enough cookies for dessert on Thursday night as well.
We have such great missionaries in our mission—it is hard not to assume that they all have idyllic homes. But it is not the case. Some have parents who do not support them (probably they are not members of the church); others come from divorced families. The mother of one of the young missionaries died a year ago—grandma also died that same year, and her father remarried and moved back east with his new wife and seems to have washed his hands of his former family. The young missionary was living in her home by herself at the tender age of 18. Ward members helped her to prepare for her mission. Surprisingly, she is doing okay as a missionary. That’s a lot of baggage to bring with you on your mission. My heart goes out to them—a mission is hard enough without having all that to deal with. On the other hand, some of these missionaries come from large families—with 8, 9 and 10 children. Their families are very supportive and they receive regular letters each week as well as extra funds when needed/wanted.
I had some soup left-over from Tuesday, so I invited the two other senior couples to help us eat it up on Wednesday. It was nice to visit with them. Normally, we have a stake YSA meeting on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, but it was cancelled due to lack of availability from most of the adult members—too close to Christmas. So, that freed us up to have dinner with our friends. We also met them again on Saturday afternoon to watch a professional women’s volleyball game. One of the YSA’s (Miranda Bradshaw) plays on a team here in Denmark. She is from the states—attended the U of U and Utah State. She is very tall—maybe 6’ 3” and played volleyball in college. As there are no profession women volleyball teams in America, she decided to come play for Denmark. There are professional volleyball teams all over Europe. She went on a mission and has a master’s degree, and then decided to do this adventure for a year. She can’t attend all our YSA activities, but she comes when she can. She can’t always attend church, either, because of tournaments or practices. This weekend was a championship tournament against the 4 top teams. They played on Friday and won, then played for the championship on Saturday. We were pleased that so many of our young adults also came out to support her. She lives in the Amager Branch, which is where the Buxtons and the Jensons attend church, so they have gotten to know her a little. That’s why we were all interested in watching this championship game. It was like watching a college game—very good volleyball. They lost the 1st and the 3rd game, and barely squeaked out wins in the 2nd and the 4th games. The final game is quick—only 15 points for the win. The other team looked really good, but our team got an early lead and never lost it. It was very exciting to cheer them on for a win. How is that for missionary work?
We are writing our letters late again this week. Our YSA’s decided to have a Christmas social tonight—dinner and a white elephant game. Fortunately, I did not have to plan this meal or even go shopping for it. The young adults took care of that, but I helped in the kitchen anyway. We got home from church today at 1:30 and went to the young adult center at 3:00. We got home at 11 p.m.—a long day and one where we worked. The meal was a typical Danish Christmas meal (which we have eaten several times already): Flæskesteg (pork roast with rind), rødkal (red pickled cabbage), mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, and brune kartofler (brown candied potatoes), and pickles. (The Danes really like their potatoes and their pork.) I peeled a lot of potatoes—luckily there were three of us peeling. The pork is baked in the oven in a shallow roasting pan with water. The ‘cooks’ cut shallow slits in the rind and put bay leaves in the slits. After baking for 2 hours, the roast was done, but not the rind. They like this crisp, so they cut off the fatty rind and put it back in the oven to broil it. This picture shows the rind still attached, which is the way we ate it at the ward Christmas party. But to get the rind just right, you usually end up getting the meat too done and it is dry. The juices from the meat (mostly fat) were then made into a sauce (thin gravy). They Danes like their sauces as well. Don’t worry, I don’t plan on making this for Christmas dinner when we get back. It is just interesting to study what traditions they have. We had 30 YSA’s attending tonight. That is a big group. After dinner, they played the package game (rolling a die in turn and putting on winter gear to open a package) and really had fun. The kitchen was a mess, so we tackled that during the package game. One other girl came in and helped. Some of the YSA’s left after dessert (risalamande) but a few just stayed around to visit. It really is a good place for them to get together and we were pleased with the turn-out. The kitchen seems to be the place a lot of them congregate, so we get to visit with them as well.
Kærlig hilsen, Mom
Kære Familie Sunday, December 18, 2016
One of the things a mission president has to do is recruit senior missionary couples. I am beginning to understand how important they can be for the work. Iceland is in our mission. It has 2 or maybe 3 small branches, 8 missionaries, 2 senior couples who do MLS work and a set of record capture missionaries (genealogy picture taking of commune historical records). One of the senior missionaries acts as a branch president and is set apart as a counselor to Pres O'Bryant (the only counselor he has) so he can administer some mission business there. Pres O’Bryant goes there once a quarter for zone conferences. The Michaelsen's have been there almost 30 months and he has been serving as the branch president/mission counselor. Their call was for 23 months and then they got church permission to stay another 7 months. The O'Bryants have only been here for 18 months (they are half done with their mission) so the Michaelsen's have been taking care of Iceland for a long time. They go home in March or April and president has no one to replace them. His wish list is for someone who speaks Icelandic (quite a bit different than Danish even though Iceland is sort of a protectorate of Denmark (they got their independence fairly recently)) and someone with bishopric or preferably stake presidency experience so they are experienced with member leadership and giving temple recommends. He has joked at two different times about sending us to Iceland to finish out our mission - he only needs us to speak Icelandic or at least Danish better. I think he has been semi-serious. He also quickly adds that our stake president would shoot him if he tried to move us.
Well last week the Halls (our Bornholm couple) gave him the name of a couple from their stake in Idaho who used to be in a stake presidency. They thought he served a mission to Denmark. Pres O'Bryant called him and caught him at work. He is a doctor and runs a small clinic that employs several doctors; he is about 60 yrs. old and hence is a few years away from retirement. He took the call at work and the president explained who he was and why he was calling, i.e. he needed Danish speaking senior missionaries in Denmark or maybe Iceland in the very near future and had they or could they consider a mission at this time in their lives? As the call progressed, the doctor stopped him and asked if the president knew where he had served his mission. He didn't but assumed it had been Denmark. It turned out to be Iceland. He was never in Denmark and was actually one of 2 missionaries who established one of the branches. Coincidence? He promised to think about it, talk to his wife and see what he could do about his medical practice for 2 years. He called back later in the week and said that he and his wife went to the temple to pray about it and they feel like this is what they need to do. They will come and be ready when the Michaelsen's leave, if the church can process their paper work that fast! We think this is the way the Lord works to accomplish his missionary work. He works behind the scenes to prepare people and maybe inspire others to be part of a chain that leads to what needs to be done. In this case, a new couple to serve in Iceland when they would not have thought about it on their own at this time.
I think you know our story of how we got to Denmark. Perhaps it is worth repeating a part of it for the Grandkids. There are often times in a month when mom and I look at each other and ask why we are not speaking French. We are both positive that we would be fairly fluent in French after 6 months. These are usually discouraging times when the Danish language is not going so well – which is almost anytime we try to speak it. It all comes back to our mission application that was sitting in the stake president’s computer from Jan 1st to mid-February. My friend, Nathan Pieper, received an email from his father-in-law, President O’Bryant of the Denmark Mission, seeking suggestions for a senior missionary couple to serve in Denmark with the YSA. They did not need to speak Danish. Nathan had a strong impression that he should forward the message to his stake presidency. I received the message on a Saturday morning and had a strong impression that I needed to act quickly on this. I texted Pres. Bertoch for permission to check into it further, since my mission papers technically had been submitted to him. He said of course. I immediately wrote an email to President O’Bryant explaining who we were, giving a little background to our church experience, and asking whether he had any interest in us. We then immediately jumped in the car and headed to our family FHE activity in the park at Forest Oaks. On our way there, roughly 20 minutes after having hit send on my email message, President O’Bryant called me on my cell phone. It was 10:30 pm in Denmark. We chatted for a few minutes. He indicated he had been on his knees during the day asking for a solution to this problem. As he received my email, he immediately felt like this was the direct answer to his prayers. The rest is just part of the story as he pulled from his side, and I pushed from ours to get us to Denmark in June. We are confident we are supposed to serve our mission here despite the difficulty of speaking the language.
This is something that came up in our District Meeting this week. I can’t remember hearing about it before in quite these terms. It is the concept of a forty day fast, but not a real fast as in missing food. It does start with a Fast however. At the completion of the fast, you are supposed to make a list of the things you need to do to improve or change. Then for the next forty days, pray about and work on each item so that they are in front of your mind and in your heart for those forty days. It is important to be accountable to the Lord and others for the complete 40 days. I think the idea must be based on the notion that anything that we do for that long becomes a new habit. It is at least a good idea of how we can acquire a new Christ-like attribute.
I was asked to give training from the White Missionary Handbook in District meeting. I chose the section on finances, budgeting and using missionary funds appropriately. It turned into an interesting discussion. The district leader had never read that section in the last 18 months. A zone leader confessed that he ran out of funds every month and quite often needed to borrow from his companion, while a sister said that she had a good trainer who showed her how to budget and she had money left over every month. We also went over expenses that should come from mission funds and those that should be personal funds. I think there were a couple of items that were surprising there as well, though no one confessed to breaking the rules.
We had a sister come to institute Thursday who we have never met. She has been less active for a while but came with her cousin, a recent RM. Courage is needed to come back. She stayed around until everyone had left and requested a blessing. Mom and I had a chance to talk to her a bit. She is struggling to set aside her recent past and come back to the church. I hope she can continue to act on her new desires and keep on trying. She is going to meet with her bishop on Sunday. I assured her he could help and would not judge her for whatever she needs to tell him and that this is an essential part of repentance. She will feel much better as she continues to move forward. She is also having a hard time in school and may get expelled for not passing with adequate grades.
We also learned at institute that Jonas was baptized on Wednesday evening. It seems like it was sort of a rush job to get it done after last weekend, when he backed out at the last minute. He wanted a small baptism without a lot of fuss. I think Eline’s big production on Friday night may have scared him off. We were never notified about it, which hurt just a little that no one would think of us. There was a small contingent of YSA’s there as Jonathan made some phone calls Wednesday morning and some of them were able to come. He learned about it at Volleyball on Tuesday night and I am glad he had the sense to marshal some support. We are very happy for Jonas. He was also at institute and he seems to have a brighter glow about him.
Brother Andersen made the sealing session special with his comments and approach. One thing he said, was that we were in one of the most sacred parts of the temple doing the most important work of sealing couples together, and he said how lucky we were to be kneeling across the altar with our brides. It made me really appreciate Mom for all her sterling qualities. She has put up with me for 40 years and I could remember the first time we knelt together to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple.
Our week will be fairly normal. We have FHE tomorrow night and are going Caroling along the walking street near our Center. We thought Institute was finished for this year as we had the last lesson in the manual last week, but Brother Andersen wants to meet again on Thursday, even though the numbers will be down a bit because some of the YSA’s are traveling home. So we have a meal to prepare for that. Tuesday, we have a zone conference and it is supposed to be extended to take up most of the day. One of the members is catering that meal but mom still needs to bake 4 dozen rolls and we need 50 bags of microwave popcorn. They are going to let them watch a Disney Movie and they will show the slide show that I prepared and set to music. I think the president has also collected a letter from each of the missionaries’ families and they will have time to read those.
We are keeping our personal plans sort of loose. I think we will spend Christmas Eve with the Buxtons and maybe have some missionaries with us if they don’t have other plans. On Christmas Day, we plan to have the missionaries over so they can call their families and have a place to settle and eat if they need it. We haven’t extended any firm invitations yet so we will see what develops this week. The missionaries are not expected to work on the 24th or the 25th.
We have learned that the Danes celebrate Christmas on the 24th. Santa Clause comes in the night on the 23rd. They might open one present in the morning but mostly they wait until Christmas Eve to open presents. The children have to stare at the wrapped packages all day. We think that is really smart of the Danish people and it must help Santa get around the world when he can do Denmark early. Maybe some other countries do that as well. I guess Christmas is much more low key and they don’t seem to have as many traditions around it – just family time I guess. Our building is having a combined meeting on Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. This is another Danish tradition on Christmas Eve. They have like 2 speakers and some music and the 2 wards meet together. Then on Sunday we will only have a combined Sacrament meeting at 11:00. The next week is also a combined Sacrament meeting at 1:00 pm. I guess they need to sleep in longer after New Year’s Eve partying.
This has certainly been a low-key Christmas – much less hustle and bustle than normal. We have enjoyed the lights, decorations and Christmas markets but there is certainly less to look forward to and we will miss all of you. The upside is that perhaps our days are focused on serving someone and we love being representatives of Jesus Christ. We are proud to wear our name tags which proclaim who we are. We love the Savior and testify that he lives and that this Christmas is all about him.
Love, Dad.
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