Dad's surprise birthday party
The trophy says, "Best SUV Dad ever." SUV stands for stav unge voksne or young adults.
Pictures of our beautiful view from the 6th floor terrace. looking north and directly east to the Planetarium.
Front of the 800-year old tree. This is at 9:15 at night.
Back side of the 800-year old tree. It is completely hollow inside.
Mom on the beach by Klampenborg Station (Dyrehaven Park)
Kære Familie, July 3, 2017
We had guests Saturday night and Sunday—the Larsens. They have been serving in Aarhus for the past 17 months as YSA missionaries and are going home. Dad took them to the airport this morning at 3 a.m. Their replacements come in two weeks—the Blockers. Sister Larsen is more than ready to go home. We stayed in their apartment when we went to Aarhus last April during our apartment swap. We really appreciate our apartment—or ‘the castle,’ as the Larsens like to call it. We not only have plenty of space, but our kitchen is double the size of Larsen’s; we have a nice bathroom; we have a washer and dryer in our apartment; and we have a dishwasher. We are very spoiled. I know missionaries can do hard things, but about the hardest thing we have to deal with is not being able to buy chocolate chips. :)
We taught our first financial self-reliance class on Thursday at institute. There are some great principles taught in these study guides. I wish we could do the class the way the church wants them to be done—without a teacher. It should be a group with everyone participating equally, and one member acting as facilitator. But we will do it the way our institute director has asked us to do it. In our couple scripture study (we are studying the New Testament right now), we read a parable in Luke 19:16-21 which I thought provided some great insight into the way we look at money. The New Testament commentary said this: The foolish rich man’s selfishness can be seen, where the words I and my appear repeatedly; the man failed to consider sharing his fortune with others. Furthermore, he failed to recognize the source of his riches. In no way did the man acknowledge, as the Savior did, that it was “the ground” that “brought forth plentifully,” nor did the man thank the Lord for creating the earth in which his crops grew. Ultimately, the man was condemned not for the wise practice of storing temporal provisions but for failing to prepare spiritually for the future.
Bruce R. McConkie also said the following about this parable: “In the parable of the rich fool …, our Lord teaches that those whose hearts are set on the things of this world shall lose their souls. The parable itself condemns worldly-mindedness, reminds men that death and judgment are inevitable, and teaches that they should seek eternal riches rather than those things which moth and rust corrupt and which thieves break through and steal.” This is a good reminder of the importance of gratitude and recognizing that all we have and all we earn comes from the Lord. It is a reminder that we do not amass fortunes for ourselves, but to do good and help others. It is a reminder that our most important preparation is spiritual, for that is what we take with us into the next life. The way we use our temporal blessings is one of the ways we prepare spiritually.
We had our last language class on Friday before the summer holiday. July is the month for vacations so we have the whole month off. (We will still continue to incorporate language study into our daily routine so we don’t lose what we have gained.) When we had so few students attending the week before, we thought last week would be a bust. But we actually had a bigger class, as some returned from their vacations of the previous week. I enjoyed the week and felt that we learned some key language nuances—the way they use two verbs that mean the same thing. There is a difference, for example, between a person who is already sitting on a couch and one who sees an empty seat on the couch and sits down. You use different verbs. Or if you are standing and talking with someone or if you are standing up to leave—two different verbs. One is active and one is passive. Similarly, we learned the difference in active and passive prepositions—where you are sitting down or you are going down south for a vacation. This is the nerdy part of me, but I find it very interesting. I have seen these things in writing but never understood why one time you use ned (active down) and another time you use nede (passive down). Now I know. It is like a little light bulb going off in my head. I actually find languages very fascinating and very challenging. The side benefit is that when you learn another language, you learn a lot more about your own language.
We have seen a huge drop in YSA participation in the past few weeks. Many are on vacation already, or there are just many competing things going on—family birthdays, weddings, etc. On Monday night for FHE, we went to Dyrehave (Deer Park). This is a 1,000-acre nature preserve with deer, forests and a palace. We arranged to all meet at the train station just outside one of the entrances to the preserve. When we got there only one other person was waiting at the gate. Three others joined about 15 minutes later. The YSA theme for the month was God’s Nature, so this outing was planned to help us appreciate and enjoy nature. Dad and I had planned an interactive ‘lesson’ where the YSA were to go out in teams and find various things in nature—something unusual that shows God has a sense of humor, something that shows the complexity of God’s creative powers, something alive, something that shows the beauty of God’s creation, etc. Then we would get together to share and talk about it. But that never happened. We essentially never got started because we learned that there was one additional YSA who was coming to join us so we just wandered around until she came. But she didn’t come until after 8:00. Unfortunately, we ‘wandered around’ in the old amusement park that is also part of Dyrehave, not in the actual forest preserve. We didn’t even see any deer and I understand there are more than 2000 of them in the park. It was disappointing. When the last YSA got there (a total of 5 plus the two of us), we ate the snacks I brought. Then the others decided to go on a ride or two so we made our exit. It was rather chilly—we were both wearing jackets. I keep wondering when summer is coming. We have had only 6-7 days of <70˚temperatures. It was really too late to explore the park, so we will have to come back another day when it is hopefully warmer and spend 3-4 hours. We did enjoy the drive to the park—we took the scenic route up the coastline. It was nice to get out of the city. As we walked to the car, we realized we were very close to the beach, so we walked to it. It was very nice and I’m sure is crowded on a warm day—although their definition of warm is probably different than mine. We also saw an 800-year old tree—see pictures. The homes in this area along the coast are quite nice and probably very expensive. For all the talk of equality and sameness in Denmark, they really are just like any other 1st world country with their poor, middle and upper class. Their middle class is just bigger. In my opinion, their socialism has brought them mediocrity. Those who don’t settle for mediocrity (or haven’t bought in to the propaganda of socialism), have worked hard to achieve something in their lives. They are living the ‘Danish Dream,’ not the rest of the people.
Kærlig hilsen, Mom
Kaere Familie, Sunday, July 2, 2017
Our temperatures are averaging a high of 65 degrees and a low of 53. With the wind factor, I still wear a light jacket on most days and it feels very comfortable. We supposedly have 70% humidity and people complain about it, but I do not even notice that. We wish we could have just a bit of your warmth. I remember last year at this time being warmer so I think this is unusual.
Our language class is over for the month of July. Denmark shuts down for a month while a lot of the country takes vacation. We experienced this last year a little bit but didn’t have a perspective on it yet as we were just arriving and only felt like our mission was getting off to a slow start. Now we can see the before and after, for example in our class taking a holiday, Institute and FHE attendance dropping and church attendance being a lot smaller. Our Sprog Klasse turned out better than I expected. I was dreading this week for some reason, expecting a very small class. We had 2 students come back so there were 6 of us for Tuesday and Wednesday but only 3 on Friday. She started new worksheets that were interesting on HC Andersen and doctor visits’ vocabulary and the passive voice with adverbs that follow action or passive verbs.
Our residence cards finally arrived in the mail and are good until August 2018, so we should be set for the remainder of our stay here. It took a long time to be officially recognized and we are supposed to keep these cards on us at all times. Mom has had a temporary card but I never received one, so I guess officially I have been an undocumented alien for 11 months! Now I can say, “I know how it feels” about our immigration system (only I don’t as I am sure this is a lot different than the USA – no one has been threatening to deport me).
Wednesday evening was different and exciting. At 4:30 we left to buy a couple of things for the Hillerød apartment and to drop them off to them. We first stopped at an electronics/appliance type store and purchased a hand mixer and a bathroom scale. We then drove to the apartment to drop the items off and then back to a new hamburger restaurant for a birthday dinner. This was all taking a while and mom began to get a little anxious as dinner took a little longer than we expected. She got phone calls from Gismo and Lea and she stepped away from the table to get less noise. As we got home, she asked me to join her up on our 6th floor terrace as Lea needed some information on its layout for a possible YSA activity later in the summer. We took the stairs up and as we got to the top, winded because of a fast climb, I was greeted by a huge shout of Surprise! 16 - later 18 - YSA were there to have a surprise party for me. They had the terrace decorated with lights, balloons and a banner and lots of food. There were several pies and quiches. It was a total surprise. I had no idea any of this was happening and mom did a very good job of getting me away from the apartment while they came and set up and got ready. We were supposed to be there at 7:15 and made it at 8:00, which was the reason for the phone calls during our dinner. We should have come without dinner as the quiche and pies would have been plenty to eat. They also had several presents for me and sang songs. They stayed until 9:30 and it was 10:00 by the time we cleaned up a bit. Mom spent most of the afternoon making a lemon meringue and banana cream pies, my favorites, but she said they were the refreshments after Institute on Thursday. I missed all the signals and the surprise was complete.
Poem from Hannah and Emma Østergaard:
Elder Shurtliff, it's your day and we will shout hip, hip hooray.The banner had letters on both sides. One side said, "This is not my first rodeo" and the other side said, "Til Lykke Ældste Shurtliff". (Good luck).
We're so grateful that you're here
And brighten up our days with cheer.
Like diamonds your smile shines through,
How you're so awesome, we have no clue.
Because we know you love pies,
We brought some for you - Surprise!
We love your laugh, we love your mood,
And you look really great in a suit.
Thank you for your worthiness and willingness,
We know that God will you bless.
Joyeux anniversaire and xoxo.
from Emma and Hanna. (Hannah served a mission in France.)
For Thursday, we did not know how many to plan on for dinner since the summer schedule is now officially kicked in. Mom had 24 buns for barbecue beef sandwiches. We ended up feeding 11 YSA's + 3 adults and then had 2 more come late and eat at least partial meals. We had 3 in our English class; Miranda Bradshaw, David Borcutti and his friend Sammy. Shantay was there as well but she spent the whole time on the phone with a friend from the states. Sammy is a Muslim, so that added a twist and spark of interest to the class. The Danish class had about 7, so the numbers were down 2/3 +. Our summer course of study is the Finance Self Reliance lessons. They are supposed to be held as facilitated discussion groups but we are finding it hard to approach it like that with so few in our class. It is hard to establish action partners, who are supposed to be the same sex, which is a big part of the design of the material. Nonetheless, we had a good class with lots of discussion. Mom had prepared a PowerPoint with the quotes and we let that lead the lesson direction. David surprised us by being a bit of a scripture authority with the Bible, we haven’t seen that before. He read and talked about at least 3 scriptures that applied to comments he wanted to make. We were also surprised that none of our 3 students have a system for budgeting or good habits of tracking their income and expenses. Brother Andersen’s experience was the same with his larger class. It appears to be a topic that is timely for them. David does have his own business and keeps some business records but he seemed very interested in Mint as an electronic way to keep his books. Miranda has a master’s degree in economics so I expected her to be an expert in this area. Shantay is a RM and is working as an Au Pair and Sammy has a medical degree. It is a pretty diverse class. We cleaned the Center thoroughly before we came home as the stake has a Coordinating Council meeting there on Sunday. We did not get home until about 11:00. Mom gave me my presents then; 2 ties, a cordless mouse and some white earphones that will look nicer in the temple than the large black ones they provide.
The temple was nice as always, except I had a headache I could not shake that lasted until about the 3rd session. It made me very sleepy as well. I did Initiatory as a patron, then led the 2nd session and acted as the veil coordinator on the 3rd session with some training from the coordinator, Per Olsen. That gave me almost an hour free with just the 2 of us and so he told me his conversion story for a good part of that time. I thought it was very interesting. He joined the church at age 24 due to a work colleague who ate lunch with him every day, talked about the church, invited him to watch church basketball and then attend church meetings. I didn't catch if he was baptized after 4 or 7 months, but it was something like that. He did not have any religious upbringing besides baptism and confirmation in the Folke Kirke but he did not smoke or drink coffee and drank very little alcohol. He had never heard of Mormons before meeting his work friend and he was not searching for anything; he had just graduated from school and was working in his first job; life was good. Joining the church was a step process that all went quite steadily forward to a spiritual confirmation as he prayed over the Book of Mormon. He married his wife at age 30. She is Danish but had been in the US for 4 years studying and expecting to marry there. She didn't think there was anyone in Denmark for her, but there came a time when she felt directed to go back home even though she did not want to. She met Per at church almost immediately. He was baptized after she left for her schooling so they had never met. They have now been married 39 years. Another interesting side note, Per was a ward missionary at one time and taught Bent and John Leit the missionary discussions along with the full-time missionaries. Bent was just released as our bishop and both are strong influences in the church here. They apparently sought out the church on their own in their late teens because they liked Marie Osmond a lot and wanted to learn something about the church that she belonged to. The Lord gathers His elect in different ways; 2 from a city and 1 from a family (Jeremiah 3:12).
Saturday evening, we drove to the Mission Home for the going away dinner and testimonial for Elder and Sister John and Linda Larsen. They are leaving after 18 months in Aarhus as the YSA missionaries to go back to Seattle, Washington. It was a very nice meal and evening and lasted until about 9:00. None of us knew the Larsens as well as couples who have gone home from Copenhagen and so there was not as much to add to what President and Sister O'Bryant said about them. As always, they were very complementary about their service, accomplishments and how much they will be missed. The president always uses these occasions to stress how important our role is and how much they appreciate our strength, examples and support for the younger missionaries. He emphasized how much we can help them by our examples of strong marriages and building them up every chance we get as their missions are very hard. He has been listening to recordings of the New Mission Presidents’ Seminar and shared some thoughts with us. Some of the things he said included:
- Our 24 baptisms this year have come from about 2400 new investigators, meaning 1 out of 100 new investigators make it all the way to baptism.
- A new investigator is defined as a person who has received a discussion and has scheduled an appointment for a follow-up visit.
- The mission goal is 60 baptisms for this year. We were on track through May but are falling behind as of June.
- A Zone in Jylland has a goal to make 15,000 contacts during the 6-week transfer period, trying to talk to everyone they cross paths with. They will lead to x number of new investigators and x number (1%) of baptisms – maybe 2 or 3 baptisms. The work can be very discouraging for our missionaries as they meet with a lot of rejection every day. He stressed again how important Elder Nelson’s counsel was that part of the purpose of the missionaries here is to “preserve faith” among the people of Denmark. They will have success if they can share a spiritual thought or even just quote from the New Testament as they contact people.
- All of the key statistics work together because if a companionship concentrates only on teaching investigators they have, they will not be finding and pretty soon their teaching pool will dry up. Likewise, if they are not effective in transitioning contacts to teaching opportunities to baptism challenges, they will never experience the joy of seeing conversions.
- The new mission presidents were told that the real measure of success with their missionaries is not how many baptisms they have but how many returned missionaries and their children and their grandchildren attend the temple on a regular basis. In other words, achieving real conversion that blesses at least the next 2 generations. Baptisms are not as important as the effect a mission will have on the missionaries.
- The new mission presidents began their service on July 1st. There were 124 new ones this year. I think the Houston mission was one of those with a new mission President? I look forward to meeting him. I may come home and volunteer to see if they need help in the mission office or maybe inspecting apartments. That is so fun and it would be interesting to contrast apartments in Houston with those here in Denmark!
- The increase in missionaries after the age change in 2012 resulted in about 58 new missions being created the following year in 2013 (up to around 85,000 missionaries serving) and many missions having over 200 missionaries. That was just too many for mission presidents to effectively deal with and it was wearing them out. Our mission president averages 85 missionaries and we see how hard it is to interview that many every transfer. The # of missions has now contracted a bit and the # of missionaries is a little under 71,000 and holding.
- President commented that the new mission presidents are being instructed to cover and teach so many things. He doesn’t see how it is possible to teach so much. He sees the sisters 8 times and the elders 12 times during zone conferences during a mission. He gets maybe 2 hours to teach in a conference. That does not begin to be enough time to teach and prepare them. We used to get an additional zone training during a transfer as well but the church recently discontinued those to save travel costs. That cut in half the # of opportunities there are to instruct.
- He tends to introduce a new emphasis during each zone conference hoping to build on tools and ability so that the ability of the missionaries is always increasing. What he sees however, is that with every new emphasis the old things are forgotten and the missionaries are only trying to faithfully do the present focus. I thought to myself, “Are we any different? Every 6 months we are instructed and receive the word of the Lord. Don’t we tend to forget the prior focuses and only work on the new theme of the general conference?”
- This training dilemma is enhanced by the constant turnover in missionaries. We have 21 (out of 85) go home next week and only 12 arriving. Another large group goes home in August and we gain a few more back. I can see that it is hard on a mission president to lose his experienced, faithful missionaries and gain a new crop of “greenies” who have so much to learn. He described one mission president who has 20 or so missionaries waiting to visit with a psychologist for problems they are having. We are blessed in our mission to have very few of those. We receive a very high caliber of missionaries (I guess because the work here can be so hard.)
Love Dad
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