Temple trip with Jonas
Language class luncheon
Kære Familie,
I want to begin with the ‘missionary work’ we are doing—just
to dispel any concerns that some of you--ahem, Jared--have about how we use our time. It is
interesting with senior couples. Not
only are they expected to work a mere 35 hours a week (quite a bit less than
the young missionaries), but quite often their assignments are not specifically
outlined. It is like any calling in the
church. There are some things you are
expected to do: teach a class if you are
a teacher; attend meetings if you are in a leadership position, keep the
records current if you are a membership clerk, etc. But what you do in addition to the required tasks is up to you and your
personal motivation. When Kara made a
personal visit to all the students in her Primary class, that was her own way
of magnifying her calling. When Ariane
makes visual aids for teaching the songs to the children or uses hand bells in
singing time, that is the way she wants to magnify her calling. The same goes for many of the senior
missionaries. One couple who were
serving in Iceland felt there just wasn’t enough work to keep them busy so they
got reassigned to Boston. Another couple
has since replaced them
and the President told them to do what missionary work they can, but to not
feel bad if they are not busy all the time.
He encouraged them to go out and see the country. Office couples or Records Preservation couples
have set hours. It is 5 days a week, 7-8
hours a day, but there is always flexibility.
A typical temple missionary week here in Denmark is 25-30 hours/week—5
hours on Wednesday, 7 hours on Thursday and Friday, and 6 hours on Saturday,
plus any extra meetings or cleaning that needs to be done. UV couples like ourselves don’t have set
hours. The other 2 UV couples don’t have
Monday FHE like we do; they only have institute once a week. They have a monthly activity on a Friday
which they plan, and sometimes they attend an additional institute meeting in a
neighboring city. Both the husbands
speak Danish (served a mission here 40 years ago) so they teach the institute
lesson each week. They have refreshments
for institute and only have dinners at the monthly activity. I’m sure the teachers spend a lot of time
each week preparing the lessons—in their rusty Danish. Their institute classes are less than 10
people (including missionaries). These
other UV couples are serving in the Århus Stake on Jylland. It covers a lot larger area than our
island. They hold their institute
classes by wards (or buildings). We
serve the Sjælland Stake. Our YSA Center
serves the whole stake—but realistically only 5 wards and 1 branch. The other ward and 2 branches
have their own institute program (because of distance to the center).
The other three senior couples in our mission (besides the
church service missionaries) are all MLS missionaries. Our friends, the Halls, serve as branch
president in Bornholm. They do
everything—activation, teach institute, etc.
But they don’t have set hours and some days are busier than others. The other couples are serving on Jylland in
wards and are basically activation missionaries. I suspect there isn’t a lot going on most
days. All these couples do missionary
apartment inspections like we do, but not as many.
They support the young missionaries and attend appointments with them. Some of the couples are now taking Danish
lessons like we are—I suppose that is a good use of time. We would like to do more activation/visits,
get the committees functioning better, organize activities, etc., but our role
is to support our youth in their callings and not take over. We are trying to build and strengthen
leadership, so we support, advise, offer ourselves and our talents, but are also
patient as the wheels of progress/leadership often move slowly.
So—missionary work
this week:
1.
Opened UV Center on Monday and Thursday nights.
2.
Participated in Temple Baptisms on Friday night
and Saturday morning with YSA’s
3.
Attended a volleyball game to support one of our
YSA’s.
4.
Participated in District Meeting.
5.
Had lunch with 8 potential investigators. (Does this count?)
6.
Met a YSA who has recently moved into our
area. She works as an au pair so hasn’t
been able to attend FHE or institute activities.
7.
Participated in a follow-up meeting with the sister
missionaries about the Face Book initiative.
8.
Completed the January edition of The Banner—mission newsletter.
I’m not sure how many hours that represents, but Thursday
and Friday we put in 12- and 13-hour days, respectively. We also had some interaction with other
missionary couples for a little down time—senior couple dinner on Tuesday night
and dinner with the Halls on Wednesday night.
Our second week with having the new food committee prepare
institute dinner turned out the same as last week. We got a text on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. to tell
us that the cook for dinner that night was sick—could we prepare
something. Luckily, I was at the grocery
store getting the fruit for my dessert pizza, when the text came in. I had just noticed that the store had a sale
on the meat used to make frikadellers and had thought to myself, “I would make
frikadellers tonight if I was cooking.” So,
that is what I did. Frikadellers,
scalloped potatoes, vegetables and a couple of loaves of fresh bakery
bread. Dad peeled all the potatoes (10 lbs.)
and prepared the vegetables—such a huge help.
Dinner was ready on time and all gone by 7:00. They also loved the fruit pizza.
We got up early on Friday morning—not just because the Halls
had to leave by 6 a.m. to catch the first ferry back to Bornholm, but to make a
Mexican Bean dip for our language class luncheon. On Wednesday, one of our students had a great
idea to get together for lunch. We
planned it for Friday. We had tried this
once before in December when another student invited us for ‘drinks’ on a
Saturday evening. Only two students
came—we graciously declined. This time,
we thought we should go. Our group has
become quite good friends as we meet together three times a week. We are such a diverse group, but it has been
so interesting. The student who hosted
the luncheon lives 5-minutes walking distance from our school. She has a large apartment in a very nice area
of Frederiksberg. The apartment is as
big as a house—spacious and open with lots of windows. Benedict is French; she and her family moved
because of her husband’s job with L’Oréal.
She has 3 children, 10, 13, and 17.
We were all supposed to bring a dish from our native country. I told Dad we were bringing Tex Mex—which I
didn’t eat. I wanted to bring something
easy that didn’t require a lot of preparation or cooking—especially as I got
home after 10:00 p.m. on Thursday after cooking for institute, so there was no
time to prepare. It also had to stay in
the car both before the luncheon and after while we were in the temple. We usually walk to class, but I didn’t want
to make us late to the temple by walking home to get the car. We were fortunate to find parking at the
school as well as close to her apartment.
So here we were—a most unlikely
group of people—with only one thing in common:
we are learning Danish together.
We had Indian food, Filipino food, Thai food, Spanish cold cuts, French
cheese and wine, and my Tex Mex.
Everyone liked the dip—especially the avocado layer—they called it
‘salad.’ With the informal setting, we could
talk a bit more about ourselves. I explained
our missionary responsibilities with the YSA’s.
We stayed about an hour and then explained that we needed to go work at
our temple. It actually was a pleasant
luncheon.
Today we attended the Amager Branch with the express purpose
to meet one of our young adults. She
moved here from Jylland because she has a job as an au pair. Our friends, the Yates, told us to watch for
her, as she previously was in their ward.
Miho Nakazawa is Japanese and joined the church about 10 years ago in
Toronto, Canada. She met the
missionaries and was interested in their message. She noticed the word Christ on their name badge and was curious. She was not Christian. She was also interested in learning to speak
English better. So, she started meeting
with the missionaries and attending the English classes at the church. They invited her to be baptized and she
agreed even before she understood what baptism meant. As she learned more and prepared for baptism,
her testimony grew. But she was afraid
to tell her parents and the legal age in Japan was 20—the church required her
parent’s permission. She was only 19 but
soon had a birthday. She waited until
then to be baptized. She didn’t tell her
family until she went home for a visit sometime later. At first it was difficult—her parents felt
like Mormonism would brainwash her, but they have come to accept it and respect
her beliefs. She is an artist and was
studying in England before she came to Denmark.
She finished one course and has stopped to earn some money. She would like to go back to school and
eventually go to the U.S. or back to England to study Art Therapy. She doubts she will learn Danish so doesn’t
think she would be able to get work here.
We had a nice visit with her and hopefully established a foundation for
a relationship. We took her home after
church and she showed us some of her artwork.
Hopefully, now that the busy holidays are over, she will get some free
time so she can join our YSA activities.
I hope you all have a great week. We are praying for you and for all the
grandchildren.
Kærlig hilsen,
Mom
Kære Familie Sunday,
January 22, 2017
For the grandkids:
Saturday morning, we went to the temple to be with one of
our new friends who was baptized only a month ago. Now he is being baptized for others who did
not have that chance when they were alive.
It was wonderful to see him all dressed in white in the beautiful
Copenhagen temple. Ask your parents to
show you a picture of a baptism font in a temple. They are beautiful. He was very excited to have this opportunity
and he was baptized for 20 different people.
I was able to give them the gift of the holy ghost and confirm them
members of the church. I did that in
Danish and was nervous about being able to say all the words right. A Danish helper said I did just fine. There is a special spirit in the temple and I
know that these people have been waiting to have the chance to be baptized,
just like Jesus was. I will include a
picture of Jonas and the 2 sister missionaries who taught him about the
church.
Our daylight is slowly coming back! At 4:45 today, it was still a little
light. That is so much better than darkness
at 3:30. The temperatures have been better as well. The highs have been 37-38 and the lows about
30-34. It feels almost warm compared to when it was much colder. We have not had any further snow either. Some have said this was supposed to be a
harsh winter but we have not experienced what we would call harsh yet. I have been thinking of buying some boots for
the snow, but keep putting it off as I have not needed them yet. Maybe I will get through and can save the
money.
I mentioned a letter or two ago, that one or our New Year’s
resolutions was to improve our companion study time in the morning. I can report back, that we are doing great so
far. We have been consistent at 7:00 am
and are really enjoying the study time together. It is hard to quit when we
need to move on to getting ready for the day.
If any of you are looking for a better way to study the gospel by topic
(rather than just reading the scriptures straight through by chapters), then I
recommend the new Institute manuals. Our current one is Teachings and Doctrine of the Book of Mormon. I love focusing on the topic of each lesson
and they all include good supporting scriptures and quotes from the general
authorities. It is nice to pull scriptures
together from several prophets and then seeing them with modern-day inspired
insights. We have been using the
electronic features as well (in Gospel Library) to make Tags, Links and Notes.
Pausing long enough to do that has made the thought process a little more
meaningful.
President O’Bryant
forwarded this note to the senior missionaries this week. He received it in a letter from one of the
missionaries. “...So I actually
wanted to focus most of this email on the Senior Couple Missionaries in this
mission. They are absolutely amazing!! I have just been completely blown away
by the Senior Missionaries that we have in this mission and I am so grateful
that we have them. Every time that I speak to one of them, they are constantly
bearing testimony about the gospel and about how grateful they are for
something and that they have it because of the gospel. They who served missions
constantly tell us about their mission stories and offer ideas to help us in
our work. They give us great advice about how to be better people so that one
day we can become great spouses and parents. And their willingness. Their
willingness to learn the language, to speak to everyone they can, to help us
missionaries whenever possible, to help the wards and the members, and most of
all, to invite other people to come unto Christ. They are all amazing examples
of love and humility and I am just so grateful that they are here in this
mission!” Wow, high praise for us old fogies who are
out to pasture! I would like to say that they were writing about us, but mom
and I both looked at each other with the look of, “Is it I? I wonder if they
were referring to the Halls or the Larsens, etc.” We are blessed to associate with some
extraordinary saints. At least we now
know how high the bar is set and we can strive to improve. Maybe they will say that about us by the end
of our mission.
We
had a small discussion as we were walking to the temple this week. It was about what kind of mission we would like
to serve next time. I guess that means
that we are both thinking that there will be another one in the future. The
blessing of being young and healthy (so far).
I commented that my thoughts have changed about being a temple
missionary. I used to think that would
be fun, but now I wonder if it would be too much of the same thing day in and
day out. I don’t envy the 3 couples that
are serving here as temple missionaries.
They have a lot of free time but they also seem to get very tired towards
the end of the week. We love our temple
day on Friday but honestly it is a nice break from the kitchen and other things
we do. Several days in a row would be
hard. I really like the variety of what
we are doing now and so I would like that in the next one as well. Leaving the temple, we bumped into a couple
who are Self-Reliance Missionaries. They
have served in Dublin, Ireland for quite a while and are now being transferred
to Stockholm, Sweden for the rest of their time to work with the Scandinavian
countries on self-reliance. They are
here to meet with our stake presidency this weekend. That is what they spend a lot of time doing,
meeting with the various stakes to implement or enhance self-reliance
programs. That must require a lot of
self-startedness since their work would seem to be more training and less
actually doing something. Being in an
office would also be interesting – I am sure it has a lot of variety – but
being out of the office doing something different every day seems even more
interesting. Too bad I don’t have
farming or well-digging skills.
A downside I recognized at FHE this week: with
us not being involved as much in the food preparation, it is harder to
find a place to fit in. It almost could
feel like we are not needed if they are truly self-sufficient in
everything? That is an interesting
feeling because we want them to be self-sufficient but we want to also feel
needed. The language is also a barrier
to feeling like we really belong.
Elder and Sister Hall from
Bornholm came this week and spent 2 nights with us. They came to attend a stake leadership
training meeting on Thursday night. He
is the branch president and she is in the primary presidency. We had promised them a dinner for Wednesday
when they arrived from the ferry but they did not get to our place until
shortly after 8:00 as they went to the 5:30 temple session. We ate and then talked until about 11:00. It
is nice to have the distraction of company and a chance to compare mission
experiences with good friends.
They are having some neat experiences
which show that senior missionaries can participate in finding people
interested in the church. They started
talking to the clerk at the grocery store who was helpful and she is now
attending church and branch socials with them.
It looks like the missionaries will have an opportunity to teach
her.
The temple was nice on Friday. I had 1 English and
possibly 1 Danish at the veil at 6:00.
Only the English happened. The Danish speaker went through another
veil. My next assignment was in the
baptistry. Rasmus Sveistrup and Sarah
Lundahl were both there along with 4 other patrons. They are the 2 YSA’s that
are engaged to be married in April.
Rasmus will receive his endowments in March on his 1 year anniversary
as a member. I ended up baptizing the
whole group and we did about 120 names.
It was nice to be with them and they acted so excited that Jean and I
could share the experience with them. 2
of the girls were from Hungary and English was needed for them. I could / should have done the others in
Danish but I chickened out over a couple of harder words to pronounce, so I did
them all in English. I then did the 8:00
veil and received 3 sisters in English and 2 sisters in Danish. I was glad I had the chance to rehearse the
Danish a bit earlier. It
went ok. I have a lot of room for
improvement but it is definitely easier than the last time I attempted it. What the temple is lacking is any opportunity
to learn the ordinances in another language.
Maybe all temples are lacking this.
It was my excuse for not learning the veil in Spanish. It was so hard to find anyone who could help
with pronunciation. It seems it would be
easy to have some recordings one could listen to by a native speaker. They could be checked out just like the sacred
materials are checked out for study.
We went back to the temple
Saturday morning at 10:00. Jonas Larsen
told us on Thursday that he was hoping to do baptisms. He has been a member for about a month and
received the priesthood 2 weeks ago. The sister missionaries were going to help
him find some family names on Friday evening.
We were not sure if he would be in the temple but decided he needed our
support so we went. It turned out to be
the best thing we have done this week as missionaries. He was there with his 2 sister missionaries
but no one else from the ward. I think
it was nice that we could support him and be there for him. I was able to sit by him as he waited his
turn and explain a bit about what was happening. He was last and there were about 6 people
that they took ahead of him. I then was
able to confirm him and did it all in Danish!
He did about 20 names and I got better as it went along. They were not able to get together to find
family names so that experience will still be ahead for him.
We came home and decided to
check on Miranda's volleyball schedule (our American YSA playing professionally
on a Danish team). She is in a national
tournament and played Friday night and would play again Saturday if they
won. I called Buxton's at 1:30 and they
said she had won and the next game was at 2:00.
We went to the game with them.
Her team won the match in 3 games so it was an easy win, but still fun
to watch and it did not take that long.
We were home by about 4:00.
Volleyball has lots of action with rally scoring so it is a good
spectator sport.
We had a chance today to be involved with
the sister missionaries as they followed up on the assignment to experiment
with the Facebook friends finding initiative.
They have put together a PowerPoint with sample questions to help
identify a friend who might be receptive to a gospel message and many
suggestions of media to use for them. We
watched several "90 seconds about the Mormon Church" videos. They are cute and could be good sources of
information about who we are, but I like the Mormon Message videos better in
that they address a topic that could be a need that a person has in their life now. We are looking forward to the further review
session with President O'Bryant, these 2 sisters and the zone leaders on
Wednesday. It will be interesting to compare notes and see what success the
zone leaders have had with it. I think
it is too soon for anyone to have received very much response or feedback but
we can discuss how the approaches went and how receptive the YSA’s are to being
involved. It seems like a harmless way
to share a gospel message with a non-member friend, but whenever we put
ourselves out like this we leave our comfort zones and open ourselves up for
criticism. It shouldn’t be that way, but
I think we are afraid it will be a negative experience and don’t consider as
much the wonderful, positive thing it could be if a friend is interested in
knowing more about the gospel.
David Borcuti’s baptism is scheduled for
Saturday at 11:00. He has asked me to
give the baptism talk. I am thankful
that he is Romanian and the service will be in English!
Much love, Dad.
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