Lights/decorations at Tivoli
Kære Familie, December
26, 2016
It was nice to visit with all of you on Christmas. We loved hearing about your Christmas and the
Christmas Eve activities. One of the
highlights of my Christmas was hearing my mom’s voice. I wanted to FaceTime, but Peter couldn’t get
an internet connection, so we just talked on the phone. She acted like she knew who I was so that was
also a blessing. She joined Philip and
Peter’s families for their Christmas Eve celebration and probably had Christmas
dinner with Stephanie’s family. I am
grateful she was surrounded by her family this year and am grateful for the
support they give her. How I wish I
could do more for her.
We went to the Bryde family for Christmas Eve. Brother Bryde is the 1st Counselor
in the Bishopric. Sister Bryde’s first
marriage was with an American. She lived
in California for 25 years. When she
remarried, she returned to Denmark. One
son was already in college so he remained in America and is now married, living
in Dallas, TX. Her other son was 16 at
the time, so he returned to Denmark. He
has been on a mission, married a Danish girl and has twin children—a boy and a
girl. They also joined us for Christmas
Eve. Another family also joined us—can’t
remember their names. They also live in
our ward. The husband is from Denmark,
but the wife is from Lithuania. She was
an au pair in Denmark when she met her husband.
They had two children, both girls, ages 2 ½ and 4 ½. We came at 5:00, but we just hung out for a
couple of hours while they finished preparing the food. They wanted to wait until the twins went down
for the night to begin dinner and the festivities, so we could have
adult-time. We visited with all the
adults for a time—it seemed like they did a tag-team, sending someone into the
living room every 20 minutes or so to entertain us. I felt bad.
We should have just come at 7:00.
But it is always interesting to hear people’s stories—so we weren’t
bored. The kids were cute—they reminded
us of our grandchildren, so we weren’t too lonely.
When we came, Sister Bryde took us on a tour of her
home—which was built pre-1900’s. She
said they bought it at the top of the market and had put a lot of money into
remodeling it. It originally had two
bedrooms downstairs, but they removed walls to make more living space. So the only bedroom is on the top floor. The upper floor has a low vaulted ceiling so
you can only stand in the middle of the room.
There is a large bedroom and a bathroom besides a small family room
area. The stairs wind up and remind me
of Jared and Kari’s stairs in Rotterdam—wicked winding stairs. The kitchen was good-sized and decorated very
nice—the downstairs bathroom makeover was also very spacious and nice. But what was most lovely were her Christmas
decorations. There were three beautiful
Christmas trees on the main floor. She
had some nice manger scenes, especially the extra-large Willow Tree nativity on
her baby grand piano in her music room.
She is a music teacher and has over 100 students, including 30 private
piano students. She does not teach out
of her home, but has a studio nearby.
She has twelve pianos so that she can teach 10 students at one time. She also teaches basic musicianship—rhythms,
playing by ear, and basic music knowledge.
She has some very young students who can then go on to specialize in any
instrument if they choose, or piano, which is her specialty. They have a large backyard (which houses a
30 ft. Christmas light tree right now).
During the summer, she has a recital outside in the backyard. She transports 10 pianos into her yard for
the recital. She says she easily has 400
people attend the concert. She is quite
a pianist herself—she played a solo last week in church—and will be doing a
concert/fireside for the YSA’s in our ward next month. We don’t want to miss that event! She has taken the ‘music teacher’ to a new
level. She taught music in the schools
when she was in the states and when she returned to Denmark, she started this
new music business. I guess she is pretty
successful. Her children are also
musical. Her son plays the saxophone,
the guitar, the piano and was at one time going to be a professional musician,
having been accepted into a prestigious music conservatory in Denmark, but
decided to pursue mathematics instead.
Our dinner was the same as last week, except we also had
roasted duck and gravy. All of it was
very good, although I couldn’t bring myself to eat the hardened rind on top of
the flæskesteg. She also served a red
cabbage, cranberry and fruit salad, with a cinnamon dressing. It was quite tasty. They seem to eat red cabbage a lot. We just left everything on the table and went
upstairs to open presents. There was no
tree upstairs, but they had a beautifully decorated tree vine which was hung
from the ceiling so the twins couldn’t get at it. It is traditional to dance around the
Christmas tree, so we held hands and danced around the coffee table. Then we opened presents. We had been warned to buy a present for the
two little girls (the twins were asleep).
It was fun to watch the two girls as they opened their presents. The younger one seemed content with the first
present she received and wanted to play with it—a flying horse figure—rather
than open other presents. They gave us a
box of chocolates.
We went back to the dining room for dessert. We were able to help clear away the dinner
dishes; the food was finally put away; but the dishes were just stacked and
would wait until the next day. We
lingered some more over dessert and finally took our leave about 10:30. We
really enjoyed their hospitality and were grateful they included us in their
family festivities. It reminded me of a
few years when we had guests for Christmas Eve—some senior sister missionaries
one year, John and Diane Larsen, and Mary and Randy Petrakovitz. But that was back in the day when we just had
our own family or only a few grandchildren (who were babies at the time). Now the festive chaos is probably not very
appealing to outsiders. But it still makes me think we should
sometimes look beyond our family to make sure everyone has a joyous
holiday. We would have been fine alone
on Christmas Eve or with another missionary couple, but it was nice to be
included in a Danish celebration.
Our missionary week was a bit taxing due to our coming down
with colds. I got it first—by Sunday
night I was miserable—lots of sneezing and runny nose. I did
my best to stay away from dad and to prepare food without any
contamination. I respond well to cold
pills (pseudoephedrine) and to ibuprofen and can mask my symptoms. So I went to our language class on Monday
morning, entertained Elder and Sister Hall from Bornholm for lunch, made 4
dozen dinner rolls for Zone Conference and went to FHE that night. We went caroling along Stroget (the walking
street). Afterwards we came back to the center for hot
chocolate, waffles (which was a last-minute thought) and just-baked pain-au-chocolate. Tuesday was Zone Conference—I made it through
a 12-hour day with the help of drugs once again. Wednesday, we did some much-needed cleaning
in our apartment and went shopping for the institute dinner. We also walked around Tivoli and enjoyed the
Christmas lights—a nice break from two very busy days. It was cold and probably didn’t help my cold
any. On Thursday, we had our last
language class of the year. Then I did a
meal for institute—the last of the year.
We fed 18 people—much to my surprise.
Even though a lot of our youth have gone home for Christmas, many have
returned to parents here in Copenhagen, so we had a different crowd this
week. Both Monday and Thursday night we
stayed until after 10:00 at the center.
Many of the YSAs just like to hang out and enjoy some down-time with
their friends. It was only a handful of
YSAs both nights who stayed, but I really felt Thursday is when Dad came down
with his cold in earnest. For some
reason, the cold pills don’t knock his runny nose and he can’t ‘hide’ his
symptoms, so everyone knows when he is sick.
Me—not so much. On Friday, we had
the morning free and then I went to the temple—Dad stayed home, slept and
nursed his cold. Our ward had a special
Christmas Eve service on Saturday afternoon (as do all the Danish churches). It begins the Christmas Eve festivities—go to
church and then go home and party/open presents, etc. Dad stayed home from this service as well,
slept and nursed his cold. Luckily, he
didn’t fare too badly at our Christmas Eve invitation at the Bryde’s. I know my sickness was a result of too little
sleep and just getting worn down….
Luckily, I am finally feeling better.
I’ll close with a couple of things from Zone
Conference. The APs did most of the
training. They talked about goal-setting, but with an emphasis on setting goals with the investigator in mind
rather than themselves. So many of the
things they have to report to their district leaders are focused on their work,
i.e. # of 1st lessons taught, # of member present lessons, # of
return appointments, etc. But now the
missionaries were encouraged to set goals like what they want their
investigators to understand, things they can do like praying in a lesson,
reading scriptures, etc. Another thing
the missionaries were encouraged to do is to push forward to receive promised
blessings. They referred to the story of
Jared. The Lord promised them that he
would lead them to a land of promise. The people of Jared traveled in the wilderness;
they built barges to cross ‘many waters; and they were ‘continually directed by
hand of the Lord.’ But the Lord ‘would
not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would
that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was
choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a
righteous people.’ And yet they
stopped. They came to a great sea and
they pitched their tents and stayed there for 4 years. What were they thinking? The Lord had promised a greater land and had
made it pretty clear that it was pretty special and that anyone He guided to
this promise land also had to be pretty special. So why did they stop and tarry there on the
seashore? Well after 4 years the Lord
felt He had to intervene so He talked to the Brother of Jared. Sometimes we settle for less than our
promised blessings—we stop on the seashore and don’t keep pushing forward to
receive the greater blessings. We have a
plan; we even know how to execute it (the Jaredites already knew how to build
barges); but we don’t press on. It is
important to continue to follow the plan.
Our stake president also shared some comments and then
President and Sister O’Bryant shared a message.
They shared a Christmas message and showed this video, the
President played ‘O Holy Night’ on the harmonica—with his wife accompanying him
on the piano, and then they showed this video. I really liked the videos so I thought I
would share them. I meant to do it
before Christmas.
We watched the Christmas slide show of all the missionaries
which Dad put together—this was the highlight of the day. All the missionaries tried to guess the
missionaries before the last picture identified him/her. It turned out very well. Then Elder Buxton donned a Santa Claus
costume and delivered the presents that had come from home to all the
missionaries. Most of the missionaries
saved their presents to open on Christmas Eve.
We ended the day with watching Zootopia.
Thanks again for talking with us Christmas day. It really made our day merry and bright. I hope you will continue to create memories
this week. I can’t wait to hear what
Clayton has on the menu for New Year’s Eve.
He seems to be quite the connoisseur when it comes to food. You will have to keep hitting the gym and
playing basketball if you keep up your food fetish.
Love to you all,
Mom
Kære Familie, Monday,
December 26, 2016
I will start with our day today. We slept in until almost 8:00 this morning
due to our not feeling well and being up late last night. We then had to
hustle. We both exercised by my jogging
around the lake, as much as my stuffy head would let me, and mom walking to
find a grocery store open. She had to
visit several before finding a small Føtex open across from Tivoli. She wanted more eggs and some yoghurt. We then had to prepare the house for a brunch
with the Copenhagen district. 10
missionaries came at 10:30 for a Christmas party, 6 elders and 4 sisters. They were a lot of fun and they really seemed
to enjoy the day of getting away from their normal work and being able to relax
and talk to each other. They were not
supposed to proselyte today as it is the 2nd day of Christmas, a national
holiday. Some of them did have teaching
appointments this evening. Mom prepared
waffles and a breakfast casserole with the leftover ham and an apple cider
wassail. They visited awhile during and
after breakfast and a lot of the conversation seemed to be on what they were
going to do after their missions with work and life. It was rather interesting to listen to their
talk about education, money and married life. Most seemed not to have a
well-defined plan for what they are going to study. This generation accepts that there is not a
lot of company loyalty and they are interested in lots of money with the least
amount of work. Side hobbies are more
important than a career. This is what we
also see with our Danish Young Adults, so it is not just a U.S. problem. One of the AP's, Elder Murphy, was especially
vocal and he was interesting as he is an exceptional missionary but is really
nervous about going home. He said he was
willing to get some schooling but would rather find something that would just
make money and allow him to paint and write music, accepting that he wouldn't
be able to support a family on those hobbies.
I suggested he find a career-minded wife who could make the money and he
could be a stay-home-dad and do his painting and song writing. That made everyone laugh but it seemed like
the perfect answer for his concerns, other than he couldn't see himself raising
the kids.
We then played 3 games: the open the
multi-layered wrapped package game with dice rolling doubles to don coat, hat
and gloves and open the packages (we had wrapped a 200 kr gift card to a local
steak house); the white elephant game and a variation of Charades with 2 teams
where we had 4 rounds on 4 names we each put into the hat of people or cartoon
characters. Round 1 was using a max of 3
words to describe them, 2 was charades about the person, 3 was "Star Performer
(from Cranium)" = acting and talking like the person, and 4 was striking a
pose that represents them. It was hilarious. All the missionaries had a fun time and
thanked us profusely for hosting and feeding them. Before we jumped in with our
suggestion to come to our place, they were going to use the kitchen in the
mission office. That would not have been near as much fun and I don’t know what
they were going to do for food. They then
turned their attention to emailing their families. Some left to go use the office computers and
some stayed here on our laptops. The
last pair left at 4 :00 pm, so this took almost our whole day and we fed the
last two a ham sandwich before they left. For us, this little activity did more
to bring the Christmas spirit into our lives than anything else we did this
weekend. It was special to serve them
and hopefully we made a difference in their holiday.
Our Christmas dawned early for us as
we had arranged to pick up the office elders at 7:00 and bring them to our apartment
to Facetime their families. Mom prepared
a scone breakfast for all of us while they talked to their families. The president has set a policy of only 1 hour
for the phone calls. Of course, it was
midnight to 1:00 am back with their families.
After breakfast, we watched Mr. Krueger's Christmas. Neither missionary had seen it before – that
was surprising to us. We then dropped
them off at the Nitivej building and we went on to our ward, where I was able
to doze 10 minutes before the meeting started.
Sacrament meeting started at 11:00 and that was the only meeting. Both wards were combined and the attendance
was still less than either ward normally has on a Sunday. Both ward choirs sang and we had 3 short
talks around Christmas. It was not a particularly inspiring meeting. We would
have loved to attend with you and see the kids sing or the piano and organ
numbers. Where is the talent? Thank
you so much for sharing your videos with us.
We loved watching you perform and seeing those hours of practicing pay
off.
We opened our presents after church (sweater
and tie for me, temple dress and perfume for mom, and a waffle maker for the
apt.) and then prepared to go to the Buxton's for dinner at 4:00. The Jensens were also there along with a couple
whom the Buxtons happened to run into. He is a
member and she is a NM from the Ukraine.
Sisters Nelson and Holbrook also came.
Dinner was turkey and ham with mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and a
vegetable plate. Much more to my liking,
I must admit, than a Danish dinner.
We stayed there until we needed to take the
sisters to their apartment at 9:15. The rest of the night was sort of jumbled, as
the sisters Skyped their families, the Buxtons kept getting calls from family
which they took in the bedroom, leaving us to visit, clean up the dishes and
play a little Uno. It was a rather
boring night, and did not add much to the Christmas spirit. We did get a nice
fireworks display from Tivoli for about 15 minutes. They are shooting them off at 9:00 every
night this week and the Buxtons have a nice view of the aerial ones from their
windows.
With the cold and changing weather, it
is not surprising that both Mom and I have had colds this week. She caught it first and it hit me on
Wednesday with worst of it on Thursday and Friday. Mom of course soldiered through every day
doing what was necessary. I am more of a
baby about these things and hence, laid low except for some necessary errands
and did not go to the temple Friday. It
was really slow so they did not miss me at all.
They did not do any endowment sessions during our shift. Mom did initiatory twice, sandwiched around a
sealing session. All of those just had
temple workers on them and she came home at 7:30. Can you believe it, not a
single patron in the temple!
Dinner for institute started slow with
only 1 boy there at 6:00. It looked like it would be a very low turnout but
they trickled in and 16 finally had dinner. We prepared stroganoff, peas,
vegetables and garlic bread for the meal.
We had 15 plus 5 (office elders, us and Brother Andersen) for the
lesson. It was a wrap up assessment for
the semester and he had them write a letter to their future children about the
importance of families, children and eternal marriage based on the doctrines
taught in the semester. He promised to save the letters and return them when
they get married.
For an activity, he had 25 questions
about the birth of Christ from the New Testament. Everyone who answered a question got a bag of
chocolates from the pocket of an advent calendar.
On Monday, the activity for FHE was
caroling. We had about 15 YSA and 10
missionaries come out. It gave us a
pretty good choir with some parts. We
ran through several Christmas hymns and then headed to a plaza in the middle of
the Walking Street. There were a lot of
people who stopped to listen to us, took pictures and clapped. A couple of the missionaries worked the crowd
with pass-a-long cards, I assume about the Christmas initiative and being a
light to the world. They have really been
concentrating on that.
In our language class this week, we
spent quite a bit of time discussing Danish culture, political parties and
governance, retirement systems, welfare benefits, etc. It was very interesting to learn more about
how Denmark works, especially as we have been here long enough now to have some
perspective on what we have seen and heard.
It turns out that this teacher is center left and is quite active in
local politics. She is some sort of
representative for their union. It was
sort of fun to see her bias and perspective on social programs. As we have said, many here are concerned
about Trump’s presidency, especially what it will mean for the environment
accords and the world economy. They
expect him to be pretty disruptive on those key issues for them.
The Danish government seems to be
similar to England’s since they have their Queen and royal family, who are
mostly figureheads, and then a parliament and prime minister who run the
country. There are 9 political parties
in the country. 3 on the left, 4 on the
right and 2 in the middle. Members of
parliament are elected with elections every 4 years. None of the parties is large enough on its
own to get a majority of the seats in the Parliament. Thus, the party with the most seats in the
parliament gets to name the prime minister from among its ranks, but only if
they can form a coalition government with support from the other parties to get
a majority of the seats in their coalition.
This means that they have to work closely with the parties most like
them in ideology and strike some deals that they can all agree on. Sometimes a coalition can fall apart during
the 4-year cycle, and a new coalition is formed, so the prime minister can
change even though an election is not held in that year. On the left are the
communists, socialists and social democrats, moderates are in the middle and
the parties are more conservative towards the right. The largest party right now is the social
democrats and the next two biggest are on the right and they are governing
right now. The prime minster is from the
3rd largest party, so there must have been some interesting
maneuvering to get him into power. Our
teacher termed his party somewhat liberal towards social programs but they want
lower taxes, no immigration and no welfare.
This last stance doesn’t seem to square totally with what she called
liberal views but it was apparent that she was not in favor of this new shift
in politics. They have just come into
power this year. Like the USA, the government tends to shift back and forth
from liberal to conservative every few years.
The queen has been in place since 1972 and she has two sons. The oldest will be the king when she
dies. We mentioned early one, that we visited
the Domkirke Cathedrale in Roskilde, where many of the kings and queens have
tombs, and they have glass caskets on display for the Queen and her husband,
when they die. They are very modern in
appearance. (Sort of morbid, I
think.)
Love, Dad
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