I am beginning to think a pattern is developing—this is the second week where I spent several hours preparing for something only to find that it didn’t happen. Last week it was the Sunday School lesson; this week it was our choir number; next week maybe it will be my talk in sacrament meeting? My best-laid-plans went awry several times this week. I had planned on going to the UV center early several times to practice the piano, but something always came up in the form of someone being in the center and I couldn't really practice. During choir practice on Sunday, though, I was 100% better than I had been a week before, although not perfect. It was an arrangement of “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.” Unfortunately, only 3 missionaries (an elder and 2 sisters) and the bishop and his wife showed up to choir practice. The director decided to postpone singing until next week—when I will not be available as we are speaking in another ward. The following week is Fast Sunday and the following week is Stake Conference. So I probably spent a lot of time for nothing and I will not be playing for the choir anytime soon.
We made salt dough creations for FHE---hearts for Valentine’s Day, animals, smiley faces, whatever. I made French bread pizza slices for our treat and many of the youth stayed around and talked for quite a while. Finally, at 10:00 all had left but two young men (one of them was the one who came at 3:00). They were just kicking back and talking. I don’t think it is fun to go home to a small empty apartment, so they just hang around.
Our young adults were off to Sweden this week-end for a YSA conference. The conference was held in Gothenburg—a 3-day event with a Valentine’s theme. That is why our choir was so small. Our ward pianist was also in Sweden, so the bishop asked me to play the organ for sacrament meeting during choir practice. There was no time to practice and I was really missing my organ shoes. I ran through the songs once each for prelude and then found another hymn to play. I flipped open to a song called “Dejlig er den himmel blå” (Lovely is the blue sky) and thought it was probably something like “For the Beauty of the Earth.” I vaguely recognized it as I played, but knew it was a Danish hymn. It sounded good enough for prelude. The Bishop came over to me while I was playing and said that it was really nice that I was playing a Christmas song for prelude. I was so embarrassed. He said it was okay—everyone in the congregation was smiling and it is always good to make people smile at church. Needless to say, I switched to another song after that. Such was my first time playing in church.
I sent a picture awhile back with me pushing a cart for grocery shopping. We take that cart to the center most weeks filled with food for dinner. On Thursday, I was pushing the cart to the center. It had all the makings for Italian meatballs and spaghetti, plus broccoli and Snickerdoodles. It was pretty full. I was by myself as Dad had stopped to buy himself some winter boots. I needed to go straight to the center to open it for another young man who had finished classes early that day and wanted to come to the center. I had already had one accident with the cart when I missed a curb and one of the legs bent. Dad pulled it straight again, but it is weak and has never worked totally right since. I was pushing hard with my right hand to keep the cart moving forward on 3 legs. I was not going very fast and I stayed on the main road all the way to the center. When I was only a block and a half away from the center, my cart hit an uneven brick on the sidewalk. I hadn’t even noticed it. Because of the pressure I was exerting on one side, I could feel the cart start to tip forward. I tried to right it (I had glass bottles of pasta sauce in it, plus eggs), but I also felt myself going off balance. In the end, the cart tipped over and I came crashing to the ground on my knees. I’m sure it was a comical sight. I didn’t know what else to do, but pick myself up and try to salvage the items in the cart. Fortunately, nothing broke—only some milk spilled. I was sore, but I could walk. The cart didn’t fare so well—the entire front wheel fell off. Now, I really had a 3-legged cart. I made it to the center, somehow carried the cart up the stairs, and only had to clean up the milk that spilled. It was only later that I realized how sore I was, but I will survive.
We began our apartment inspections this week—we did four of them and have three more scheduled this week. When Dad called to set up appointments, he asked if there were any needs—he got a whole list of things like a new toaster, 2 new blenders, a tablecloth, a new study chair, a full-length mirror, some hangers, a mirror, a light, 2 white boards, etc. It is amazing how many things we keep buying for the apartments. But what happens is that a missionary gets transferred from an apartment in another area and says, “I had a blender in my old apartment; we should have one here.” So, they ask--and the mission office approves; we do the shopping; and everyone is happy. We now have a mission credit card, so it is even easier to get the supplies. Lights are very important because of our dark winters, so lighting is always approved. One of the apartments went very well. The others were a bit of a challenge.
One apartment had a sick missionary . Their apartment was messy. The ‘well’ missionary didn’t seem embarrassed about this and happily answered our questions about various things in the apartment. I showed her how to get calk off the sink and faucets and how to clean the faucet filter so that the water flows better. I gave my usual ‘how to defrost a freezer’ explanation, and other cleaning tips that I thought were necessary. The missionary was literally ecstatic over such new-found knowledge. “I have learned so much about life on my mission,” she told me. The other apartment of sisters had requested a new freezer. They said theirs wasn’t working very well, just creating a lot of ice. Well Dad took one look at it and determined that the ice-build-up was preventing the freezer door from shutting all the way. I gave my ‘how to defrost a freezer’ lecture and explained that the ice built up because the door wasn’t shut. The freezer was thinking it had to freeze the whole kitchen. So, Dad chipped away at the ice until he could get the door closed and made the sisters promise to finish the defrosting on the next p-day. We will follow up. We have another round of inspections this week, which brings great anticipation of the interesting things we might experience.
The snowy weather does not stop the Danes—they are out with their babies in buggies; the bicyclists are still going to work, including our missionaries; and people are walking on the streets of Copenhagen just like usual, including us. As we were walking home from our language class on Wednesday, we saw three women pushing double baby-buggies, each with 2 babies (9-12 months) sleeping. We figured it was a day care group taking the children out for their morning nap—in sub-freezing temperature. The Danes are a very hardy group.
Have a great week. Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.
Kærlig hilsen, Mom
Kære Familie, Sunday, February 12, 2017
I was impressed with a very positive lesson in Priesthood meeting today. GBH #3. I think a couple of his statements were good both from a parenting approach as you teach your children and from a country/political point of view as we deal with the strife and hatred that seems to permeate our daily interactions with anyone who doesn’t have the same viewpoints as we do. I am ashamed at the marches and protests and the lack of cooperation that is hitting the headlines over here, and so I suppose the whole world. It does not put our country in a very good light and we get questions about it every week. It is embarrassing almost to be an American. The whole world should adopt President Hinckley’s gentle, loving approach.
We are going to be on the High Council speaking rotation again this year. We are speaking with the High Counselor we report to over YSA. He has asked us to take 20-25 minutes between us on a topic of our choice and he will take 15-20. Since we need to have translation, that really means that each of us only speaks for about 5 minutes. That is so short that you can’t really develop a message but it is rather more of a sound bite or two with maybe a personal application and testimony. The intent of course is that we encourage / strengthen the young adults and encourage participation at Institute. Our first assignment is at Roskilde this coming Sunday. Bother Ringheim (HC) is also asking each ward to hold a YSA committee meeting while we are there and he asked us to prepare 15 minutes of training for them. We put the training together this week and submitted it to him for his approval. We could easily train for 45 minutes and use a short video segment with our material so we will have to be very targeted with spiritual direction for each situation. We haven’t figured that part out yet or how we will divide up the training time. It will be hard in Roskilde in any case, as this week is a school holiday (Winter Break), and several members of the YSA committee will be out of town. We are supposed to push ahead and train whomever shows up. We are not scheduled to go back to Bornholm for some reason this year, but we asked and got permission from the stake and mission to go over to the Island with the 2 YSA stake co-chairs, Jonathon and Gismo. We want to go over on a Friday, attend their Institute class that night, maybe have some sort of an activity on Saturday with the 3 YSA’s they have, do some sightseeing, and then the 4 of us will speak on Sunday and come home Sunday evening. We will do this after the weather is nice so we can enjoy the island in the summer time. President O’Bryant is also encouraging us to make a vacation type trip to Iceland sometime this summer. It will be at our expense and the only condition is that we speak in one of the 2 branches on a Sunday. Iceland is supposed to be very beautiful.
We had our monthly DVI meeting on Wednesday night. The meeting went until 9:00, principally because we spent around 45 minutes on Brother Anderson’s spiritual thought. It was on the false doctrine that repentance can be delayed until later or even until the next life and mercy will still have claim on us. He had some good ideas but it seemed a bit overboard for a meeting covering the YSA program, unless he was trying to teach to the 2 young adults who were there. He covered several scriptures and then it seemed like each of the adults had to contribute something to the discussion as well. I couldn't resist, and after the others had spoken, I added the thought that false doctrine is a major problem for the young adults -- they are bombarded with half-truths or the ideas of moral relativism, fairness and tolerance, etc. to the point that the clear doctrines of Christ become hidden or forgotten messages that are often rejected.
The other agenda items mostly covered our Hyttetur in April (weekend get-a-way at a cabin location). Jonathon has reserved a cabin and a shelter and it looks like it will really happen. We need to get into the detail planning of events and activities, though mostly it seems like they want to focus on team building types of events. Brother Anderson suggested, and no one objected, that the spiritual portion be kept to morning devotionals, which could be Friday and Saturday mornings. Therefore, there likely will not be any workshops like we normally would have at a conference.
We also discussed reserving a school for the September Golden Days right away so it is taken care of, Saturday activities with a German and a Swedish stake when they bring young adults to do baptisms at the temple, the Pathways program expanding worldwide and the stake approved participating with the Aarhus stake on a weekend activity over in Jylland.
President Olsen also suggested that we have a Fireside topic soon on of how education and careers need to fit in with the more important role and goal of motherhood. This is interesting. The stake presidency is concerned that too many YSA sisters are planning careers and getting higher education in fields that may not be family friendly. They want to stress that motherhood should come first and it would be best to obtain higher education that will complement their important future as mothers.
Thursday’s Institute turned into a high stress (but good opportunity). We were at the Center preparing dinner for 6:00. At 5:30, Maya, the teacher for the night, called to say she was ill and not able to come in. She asked if we could cover the lesson for her. I knew that Brother Anderson had said he was going to be there even though he wasn't teaching so I gave him a call to see what he wanted to do. I frankly expected that he would teach. He surprised me however when he said he would prefer observing us so that we should go ahead with the lesson. We both felt like that wasn't fair since we had no warning or preparation but what do you say? We had to serve dinner at 6:00 and it was running late and needed mom's help at least to get it ready. We were able to put our heads together just enough to decide on an approach and who would cover each section of the 2 lessons. It turned out well I suppose and I doubt that anyone knew we were not prepared to really teach. Our study each morning certainly helps as we had been over the material but that is still not the same as putting together a lesson plan. We would have liked to show a video clip and maybe do some more interactive stuff but we had lots of comments and mom used 2 pictures (a tornado and a tree being blown sideways by strong winds) that we projected to the TV and she divided the class up into 3 discussion groups to discuss the anti-Christs, Sherem, Korihor and Nehor. The lessons were on False Doctrines and Spiritual Rebirth, great lessons to have fun discussions around. Some of the youth stayed around talking until about 10:30 so we got home late after the final cleanup.
For the temple Friday, I was a patron, then helped with Sealings and then was in the Initiatory. I also did 2 veil sessions. On one veil, I brought 3 sisters through in Danish. It gets a little better every time but I need some more help with pronunciation from a native Dane. My confidence is growing that at least they seem to understand me and some of the easy lines I hope sound pretty good. I suppose that just like we can almost always tell when English is not someone's native language, I will always stand out with an accent, probably a pretty strong one. Some of the Danish sounds are so hard to make and frankly it is hard not to want to sound better than they do, which means we are not speaking like Danes. The joke is that they sound like they have a mouthful of potatoes.
Did mom mention we had our first real snow this week? I had to buy some boots so my shoes wouldn’t be ruined by the melting water and salt they put down liberally on the sidewalks. It is noticeably getting lighter each week but when we see you in shorts and having warm weather, it seems like a distant dream. Our temperatures are hovering around freezing every day and the wind had a real bite to it on a couple of days. Makes for fun walking. We appreciate our heavy coats and scarfs.
Wishing you a happy great week. Have a good Valentines. Dad.
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