We listened again last night to the Worldwide Devotional for young adults with Elder Nelson in a fireside with our UV’s. It is also very powerful and I recommend it as well. We had 16 there even though some of our regulars were traveling back from a weekend in Oslo where they had a weekend YSA conference. There were 2 new faces in the group. Miho, the Japanese girl we met last week, came by herself. She texted us ahead of time and asked if we were going to be there as she was nervous about not knowing anyone. Our visit and efforts last week paid off and I think she is now on her way to being established and feeling welcomed by our youth. They are very good I think at including anyone who comes in. We also had an American from Montana come. She doesn’t speak any Danish. She is here as an au pair to a wealthy family with 3 kids. She just arrived, came out to church, was invited tonight by one of our YSA and she came with her. Nice. That gives us at least 4 UV now who really don’t speak Danish so it might be enough to have an English class, if they all come out regularly. We would teach that. We will be talking about that with Brother Jensen.
I was also impressed as we watched last night that our 4 newest converts were all there, dressed in nice Sunday clothes. 4 new members of the church since August and they all seem to be doing fine. I think Elder Nelson had a powerful message that must have touched them with a deeper sense of what this church is all about that they have attached themselves to. I often wonder as we attend small wards or branches, what a convert must think about a rag-tag bunch of people who present themselves as saints and the only true church of God. Watching a worldwide broadcast with many people their age must make a favorable impression that this church is indeed all that it claims to be, even if most of the world’s population does not recognize it. Martin has cut his hair and found a suit to wear. Eline is wearing more modest clothes, most of the time. Jonas passed the sacrament for the 2nd time yesterday. I think someone helped him with a white shirt and a suit. The pants legs were above his stockings so he needs something else soon, but he seems humble to have the priesthood. David just seems to shine. He was baptized Saturday and confirmed today. He was also interviewed by his bishop and will receive the priesthood next week. He also asked me last night what the cutoff age is for serving a mission. I honestly didn’t think that would be in his plans. He is only 22, but looks more like 30. He has his own business cleaning office buildings and he is in school seeking a bachelor’s and then has plans for a master’s degree.
Monday, we had 21 youth at FHE. Lea led a yoga session so everyone did exercises together. Gabriel had refreshments but he was sick and did not show up. Mom had planned ahead for this contingency and bought oranges and milk on the way to the center, so we had orange slices and waffles. The rest of the ingredients for the waffles, besides the milk, were in the cupboard.
Wednesday, we had to rush from our language class to be at the mission office at 1:00 to meet with the President, the zone leaders and the Amager sisters. The purpose was to review their activities during the last 2 weeks on the Facebook Finding initiative. They each have had some good experiences but unfortunately did not have any responses yet from anyone who received a message from their friend. One mistake they all made, was to not send a message to at least one friend during the meeting so that some action was taken. Instead they asked them to go home and do it and then they had to follow up and remind them. We summarized what went well and what could be improved and then decided on an approach for the MLC (mission leadership conference (zone leaders and sister trainers meet together)) this Friday. The sisters will present to the zone leaders in a role play using the presentation that the sisters had put together. They will refine and add to it before Friday. The approach will be to train the zone leaders, who will train their zones in next week's zone training meetings and then they will follow up in district meetings thereafter. The president invited us to attend on Friday as well.
One key point, the zone leaders wanted to roll this out in small groups so that they could control the follow up better and stretch it out -- not to have it over too soon. President said he was not worried about the timing. These initiatives have a shelf life of a few months and he would like to penetrate deeply as soon as possible. We decided a large group of YSA at the Center would work fine if we had enough missionaries attending so we could break them into groups of 5 or 6 for the actual sending out of messages with media links. We will need to brainstorm how to handle the ward/area issues so that the follow up and teaching can take place better, i.e. our UV’s come from at least 5-7 wards & a branch and the missionaries cannot leave their areas.
On Friday, we drove the Amager Sisters to the mission home, which is about 30 minutes out of town. The MLC was in process when we arrived. They actually start on Thursday night and then train on Friday until a late lunch. We were able to hear about 30 minutes of their training and discussion. The MLC includes all of the zone leaders in the mission, including 1 from Iceland, and the sister training missionaries. There were 2 sets of sisters present. The church has released a new 2-hour training video which we will see in zone training next week and there are some new worldwide mission rules around working hours etc. that are introduced.
The next thing on the agenda was the role play between the Amager sisters and the North Sjaelland zone leaders. We were there as moral support more than anything I think and because of our work with the UV. Nonetheless, we have enjoyed the opportunity to see this from the beginning, starting with the Saturday dinner at the mission home 2 weeks ago. The sisters presented the Facebook opportunity to the elders, playing the part of young adults with their Facebook friends. They did an incredible job. Sisters Nelson and Holbrook put together a Google Slides show with quotes, appropriate questions to stimulate selecting friends to approach and many links to church media that can be accessed by links right from the slide show. President O'Bryant was also impressed as he, on the spot, invited the sisters to attend the 2 zone trainings next week in Jutland to make the same presentation. It is a wonderful opportunity for them to travel and have a key focus with the initiative. This will really help the mission to have a common approach to rolling this out. I would be very surprised if some teaching opportunities do not come out of this across the mission. We then enjoyed lunch with everyone and headed back to Copenhagen.
I had a call from Juan Benito, who lives in Norway. Raine passed away Thursday night. It was so nice of him to think of calling us. It meant a lot hearing some details and this closes a special chapter of our lives with Raine as a suedo-grandmother to our family.
I have been sick this week with another bad cold. The worst day was Friday and I felt so bad that I stayed home from the temple again. I hate that but I can’t see myself being miserable with a runny nose and trying to lead a session or working in the initiatory. I am not 100% today but am feeling a lot better. Mom has been fine so far this time around.
I guess that is it for this week. My preaching is in my baptismal talk and perhaps if you want to share something with the grandkids it would be from that. It is wonderful to see a young person find Christ and the Church and to be able to set old friends and habits aside to join the church. They almost always have to go against family wishes and traditions, start attending church on Sundays, obey the WofW, pay tithing, develop a new habit of praying and reading the scriptures and be willing to serve in the church. That is a lot of change that is asked of them. The only reason a person would make a covenant to do that is that they have read the Bof M and have received a testimony that the church is true. We are on a mission because we have that same testimony. It is a wonderful thing.
Love, Dad.
Kære Familie, 30 January 2017
There is nothing like a full Sunday to know that it is not a ‘day of rest.’ It seemed like we were going from 9 a.m. until almost 11. But then, not all Sundays are like that. Earlier in the week I was asked by a missionary to accompany his vocal solo in church—unfortunately it was in a different ward than the one we usually attend. I play every other week in Primary and this was my week, and I was also needed to play in Sacrament. As it turned out, the mission president's wife and her husband were going to attend our ward and she was delighted to play so I could help the elder. Everything went well. I practiced with the elder on Saturday night and afterwards we drove he and his companion to their eating appointment which was near our apartment. It so happened they were eating with the ward choir director. When she learned I would be coming to their ward on Sunday, she texted me and asked if I would be willing to play for choir practice at 9. Thus our Sunday began with Choir Practice in Frederiksberg Ward, Sacrament Meeting afterwards, a few minutes to say ‘hi’ to the YSA’s in the ward, travel to the Gladsaxe 2 ward where we got the last half of Sunday School, attend the Gladsaxe 1 Ward Sacrament Meeting to see David Borcuti confirmed, come home and do some preparations for dinner, pack it all up, go to the YSA center and finish dinner, listen to the World Wide Devotional (President Russell M. Nelson), clean it all up, visit with the YSA’s and wait until they all left. But it was a good day and everything went well.
This week, with The Banner completed, no apartment inspections, no dinner to prepare, no teaching appointments there seemed to be some unplanned time. We worked on language quite a bit, but I wanted to do more than just that. So one night I tried to pull up some indexing. I spent over an hour trying to get it to work. It is so frustrating when technology doesn’t work. I decided to try again the next morning—and voila! it all worked. I downloaded several batches and was able to complete them. This was on Thursday. I did indexing before our district meeting as well as afterwards. I did not receive a call from anyone saying they couldn’t do dinner, so I confidently spent most of the afternoon doing indexing before heading to the center. It felt good to get something accomplished besides shopping and cooking for a change.
The YSA who was making dinner arrived with groceries and a friend just after 5 p.m. and we worked together to get dinner ready. Dinner was served about 20 minutes late which has been typical of the dinners prepared by the YSA’s. They don’t gage the time it will take to prepare a meal, even with a lot of hands to help. We had baked chicken drumsticks, a salad with arugula and boiled potatoes (tossed with an oil/lemon dressing), and baked eggplant with a honey dressing. It was very interesting. It is rare that the Danes eat bread with their evening meal unless it is soup, or lasagna/spaghetti. I always have bread with my meals—to fill in the cracks. Most of the YSA ate 2 (or 3) drumsticks and would have eaten more. They ate the potatoes from the salad (they love potatoes any way you cook them) and some of the eggplant. I think they were more than ready for the apple crisp and ice cream that I served for dessert after institute. I came early to the center to prepare the apple crisp, but baked it after the dinner was done—during our institute class. So when we ate it, it was still warm—and yummy. There was none left over.
In our district meeting, our Zone Leaders set forth some goals for the upcoming year. Jared may find this interesting as he compares it to his missionary efforts. We have been focusing on the What, Why, and How of missionary work. I think this applies to a lot of things in the gospel and in life. Too often we focus on what we should do, and often we follow up with the how we do the things we are supposed to do. But what often goes missing is the why. Why should we keep our rooms clean? Why should we shower everyday? Why should we obey our parents? I know that when I raised my children, I didn’t always give you a why—I just said, “Because I said so!” I feel like I would have had better results if I focused more on the why. So the what in the mission is 450 Books of Mormon placed each transfer (6 weeks). Those 450 books are to generate curious people enough so that 60 of them will come to church, which will get 15 people on date for baptism which will result in 5 baptisms. The how is to give a soft invitation to baptism on the first lesson and follow-up with another invitation after they teach the Restoration lesson. I guess a soft invitation is, “If you read and study the Book of Mormon and come to know that it is true, would you be baptized?” When someone has agreed to be baptized (is ‘on date’) then we will spread the word to all missionaries so that we can unitedly pray for them. The next question is to ask why we do these things; why we want to invite people to be baptized; why we want to place a lot of Books of Mormon? The answer to the question why which the Zone Leaders shared is because we want to show God that we believe that Faith + Prayer = Miracles. There are probably some other whys that apply here like “we love the Lord,” or “we want all people to come unto Christ,” but we will discuss these reasons at another District Meeting.
It is wonderful to see the change that the gospel can make in someone’s life. I have seen it many times in my life, but we have seen it often in the 7 months we have been here on a mission. The light of Christ is a real thing and can be seen in a person’s countenance. I have known David Borcuti since he first started learning about the church. He has always been a very nice young man, polite, and personable. But I didn’t really think he would join the church. He said he was happy in his Baptist church and questioned some of the basic doctrine that the missionaries taught him. But what David had going for him was his desire for truth. And in the end these sweet, inexperienced, but determined sisters helped him learn and feel the truths of the gospel. It really is a miracle.
One of the new YSA converts gave a talk in the sacrament meeting we attended on Sunday. He has been a member since the middle of August. He didn’t sound like a new member of the church. His talk was thoughtful and showed depth in his study. I have seen his countenance change over the months leading up to his baptism. Some of his change was in the form of a haircut—he cropped off his shaggy, long hair and now looks neat and almost ‘missionary-like.’ He sings in the ward choir, passes the sacrament, and participates most weeks at FHE and institute. He loves to play the piano—mostly by ear, but I am encouraging him to learn the hymns which he can read. I told him there is always a need for musicians in the church. He was the last to leave on Sunday night—we talked with him for 15-20 minutes after everyone had left. He was touched by President Nelson’s message and shared some of the things that impressed him—all very thoughtful. The gospel does change lives; it gives direction; it gives hope.
One last example is a young woman (not a convert) who talked with me tonight about her future. She is the American playing volleyball in Denmark. She would like to stay and get a real job here. Her volleyball season is winding down in a few months and she doesn’t plan on playing next season. She spoke of the ‘heart-to-heart’ she had with Heavenly Father about these plans, seeking direction and confirmation as she moves ahead with her job search. Her faith is strong and she trusts that the Lord will direct her paths. She knows if she doesn’t find work here, that just means that the Lord has something even better for her in the future. She asked the Lord to help her; she is doing all she can on her own—through job searching and sending out resumes; but she is also willing to accept the answer if it is ‘no.’ I agree with President Nelson when he said that the future leaders of the church are these young adults. They have so much potential. I am always grateful to have these ‘one on one’ moments with our youth. I guess that is why we are here.
Kærlig hilsen, Mom
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