Sunday afternoon stroll in Fredensborg Castle
Hamlet
Kronborg Castle before Hamlet play. Notice the jackets and blankets. It was cold.
Sand sculptures in Hundested
Senior couples at the Zoo as part of the Senior Mission Conference.
We came home last night from the Senior Missionary Conference so happy and content We are so thankful for your efforts to get us together. You organized so many fun adventures with the zoo and the castle. It gave us time to strengthen established friendships and begin new ones as we walked and talked. Even the bus rides were new and fun! The food, speakers, President's training, and the temple experience were uplifting and motivating. You thought of everything. We appreciated being with you in your home again. You do so much for so many! Thank you for all you did to being this conference about. We needed it. We hope in all the work involved, you both also got to refill your spiritual wells. We are grateful to know you and appreciate your friendship and caring. Best wishes on Golden Days and a new Institute year ahead!
Love, Elder and Sister Yates
Kære Familie Sunday,
20 August 2017
This has been a
strange week and my letter will probably be short because there has not been
time to write much in my journal. The
week started off on a different note as Monday morning, our au pair YSA asked
us to be a support to her and act as witnesses as she met with her au pair
family for a final settlement of her separation after 8 months on her 24-month
contract. She was really worried and
stressed about it but we found the couple to be very nice. They had invited a
neighbor to come over as well so they had a witness when they heard we had been
invited. Maybe both sides had battle lines drawn? The meeting seemed calm and
to the point however. They paid her over
5300 kroner for some wages and her flight home.
It didn't seem like we were needed but Shantay said the meeting would
have been very different if we had not been there. We can only accept her word
but it seems she has blown this beyond what it needed to be.
There were 17 at
FHE for a game of ‘Got to Work Late’. It
turned out to be 4 people doing charades about why a person was late to work. 3
people knew the scenario (dog ate my shoes, etc. We all put in 3 different excuses that could
be acted out). The late person, who was
the one who didn't know the scenario, had to explain to his boss why he was
late as 2 people acted out the reason behind them. The boss could help out a
bit by asking leading questions. I tried
it once as the boss and did not do well with questions as I really didn't
understand the scene that involved a Gnu and a neighbor in Danish. Just about
everyone left at 9:00 to see a movie one of the communes was showing. We thought we would get home early but Morton
and Emilie stayed until around 10:30 talking in the kitchen, so we puttered
around waiting for them, and then got involved in the discussion at the
end. Morten was trying to make sense of
his own philosophy about women and dating them.
I fear he needs some more reflection before his thoughts make much sense
to us. The sad part is that I think Emilie likes him because she has offered
him so many times to be a sounding board, but he can’t see it and eventually
will talk himself out of any sort of a relationship.
This week we had
our senior missionary conference that I was in charge of planning. It is nice to have that behind us as it
occupied some time and brought some stress with it. The conference started
Tuesday by meeting at Nitivej at 12:15 so we could walk and bus together to the
zoo. Parking for cars is tough to find
in the area. Before that, mom and I
arrived at the chapel at 10:30 to set up and prepare. She went shopping for
breakfast and lunch foods while I moved chairs, set up tables and chairs and
set the table. Mom bought some flowers
for table decorations. We kept it simple
with just a colored paper table cloth and the flowers.
We had 10
couples with the president and his wife. 7 of us were on the bus and the others
met us at the zoo entrance. We had to walk a couple of blocks to the bus stop
and a bit further up a hill to the zoo. It was a little bit of herding sheep with
walking wounded. Sister Ravn has a bad
leg and got a wheelchair to go around the zoo.
Others had bad legs, backs or hips so there were varied speeds of making
our transitions and getting around the zoo.
The zoo was quite nice. We saw
about all of it from 1:15 to 4:00 at a leisurely pace. The wounded took lots of
breaks on benches. The animal displays were nice and we felt closer to some of
the animals than I have ever been before.
The tour of
Frederiksberg Palace turned out to be very nice. Our guide, only by coincidence, was LDS and
he did a very good job. I think he
enjoyed escorting missionaries around.
It was supposed to be a 90-minute tour and we had to cut him off after
110 minutes so we could get to dinner.
He said there was more to see and invited us to request him for another
tour to see the rest of it. I was afraid
that this slot/palace would be less interesting than the more well-known ones,
but I think everyone enjoyed the commentary and some very picturesque rooms. I asked our guide, how many church members
were in the Danish military. He thought
a moment and then said there used to be 3 but now he thinks he is the only one.
Thus the apparent coincidence with him being selected as our guide. I don’t know how many of the officers or
cadets conduct them. That must be lonely
with his different standards. He is a captain and I think he is in the special
forces as he asked us not to take his picture because of the kind of work that
he does. He did not want it to appear in
social media pages. We came back to the chapel where Brother Knudsen and Elder
Bryner had prepared a nice dinner for us.
Then President O’Bryant talked to us for a few minutes and shared a
video of President Uchtdorf teaching at the mission presidents’ seminar. We had Elder and Sister Yates stay overnight
with us. On Wednesday, we started with an
8:00 breakfast. Mom of course was up
late making cookies and cutting up fruit and vegetables and up early making an
egg casserole. I am sure she will give
her perspective on the food she prepared.
President and Sister O’Bryant trained us from 9 to 11:00 and then the
temple president and his wife talked to us from 11 to 12:00. We had lunch, a picture on the temple steps
and then a 1:30 temple session just for us which ended the conference. It was nice to be together with the other
couples and share experiences and to have the focus of the president on how we
can do better. He mostly emphasized our
role in working with the young missionaries and how much influence for good we
can be to them. This is one of his favorite themes. He reminded us to keep our
dinner appointments to an hour and to not try to be moms and dads to them, even
though it is natural to love them and try to ease their pains and
stresses. We actually do more harm than
good when we treat them in that way because we are inhibiting their growth and
getting between them and the savior and may be counteracting messages that the
president has sent them. He also
encouraged us not to talk about the end of their missions, after mission plans,
girlfriends, etc. I like to think I am
pretty good about those things but some of his comments stabbed me so I know I
need to do better.
President
Uchtdorf’s video was very powerful and something that I need a lot. His theme was overcoming fear to bear
testimony of our unique and powerful message to the world. He used the Apostle Peter to illustrate his
points.
- Christ's resurrection changed the apostles into a united missionary force willing to die for their testimonies. They changed from followers to doers of the work, willing to bear remarkable hardships as they preached the gospel.
- What do we see in Peter? Fear. He denied Christ 3 times in one night. The Easter morning was a refiner’s fire that transformed their hearts. Peter and the other apostles turned away from fear to testify with faith. He could not help but speak the things he saw and felt. Nothing could keep him from raising his voice to testify of the resurrected Christ.
- What has this to do with our callings? This is the core of our calling. Our badge declares that we are disciples with the good news of the restoration. Every day of our mission we face the same question. What kind of missionary will we be? We want to be fearless missionaries. Will we give only a portion of ourselves to the work? Will we hold anything back? We need to serve with all our heart, might, mind, and strength. We should not fear what men can say or do to us. As we are disciples of Christ, we should be bold but not overbearing.
One other
thought I took away from the messages was that missionaries get along for 2 reasons. Either they are unified in serving valiantly,
or they are choosing to both be slothful.
If they are not getting along, they are not equally yoked. One of them is choosing to be afraid and not
work in the right way. Christ can make
us great missionaries if we will set aside our fear and talk to people. He will take care of things at home. If we
ask, he will send angels to surround us.
I think these underlying principles apply to our marriages and other
facets of our lives as well.
I made this note
from what the temple president taught us.
Understanding
the eternal nature of the family will draw you to the temple.
Understanding
the temple, will draw you to your family.
When you seal a
mother and father, it secures their posterity so that they cannot be lost.
Time is on our
side. The sealing power will bring them
back. Wandering children will need to
repent in mind and heart but the sealing power is powerful enough to pull them
back.
Well on to the
next week. Steph and Ali arrived this
week and we are enjoying their visit. We
will try to work some sightseeing with them around our other work. We both spoke in the Allerød Ward today and I
was asked to teach the HP quorum again next Sunday. We also have our last lesson on the
self-reliance class on Thursday. Then we
start on the Book of Mormon for the next semester of Institute.
Love to all of
you. Dad
I long to
be able to take my own names to the temple. Somehow whenever I get on the
computer, I come up empty-handed. We invited one of the senior missionary
couples to dinner awhile back in exchange for some family history help, but
after more than 3 hours, we still hadn’t found any names. Tonight, I
spent 2 hours with Ali and I have 47 ordinances which I can do for my distant
relatives! She is a great teacher and very patient. I’m not sure I
will remember everything we did, but it was sure fun to discover people, attach
them to families, and prepare ordinance cards for them.
I took
advantage of my sister’s visit and asked her to play a duet with me in
church. Dad and I spoke in the Allerød Ward this week. When the
high counselor checked with us last Sunday to verify our assignment, he said
the Bishop asked if I could also play a musical number for the rest
song. I am not a great pianist and don’t like to play solo.
There was only one week to prepare. So, I emailed Stephanie and
asked her to play with me. She readily
agreed and I found a duet arrangement of “I am a Child of God” on-line so
we could both practice separately. I am limited in my practicing to times
when I can use a piano, but I managed to find 3 times this week when I had
access to a piano. We put it together
for the first time on Saturday morning, and again today when we practiced
before church. It turned out pretty good and was
a nice change for a musical number in Sacrament Meeting. But it was most fun to play again with
Stephanie. It brought back some great
memories of yesteryears.
The first
outing we had with Stephanie and Ali was to the sand sculptures in
Hundested. I love this quaint little
town on one of the north shores of Sjælland.
The sand sculptures were amazing, although most of them are done to make
a political, environmental, or societal statement. There was a group of sculptures that
represented the rise of pop music—with sculptures of The Rolling Stones, Elvis
Presley, Janis Joplin, The Yellow Submarine (Beatles) Madonna, and Kiss. The sculptures take about 14 days to complete
and last all summer—through rain and shine.
About the only thing that can destroy them is the human hand so it is
‘hands-off’ all the sculptures, even though you are just itching to touch
them.
From there
we visited Kronborg Castle in Helsingør—and what better way to see Hamlet’s
castle than to conclude with an outdoor production of Hamlet. We all thoroughly enjoyed the play—even to
the bitter end when all the characters (except Horatio) were strewn across the
stage in various poses of death. The
play was set in modern times, from dress to the use of cell phones, to the
invasion of Norway’s Prince Fortinbras with the sound of Black Hawk
helicopters. But the acting was well
done and it was fun to be outdoors with the castle looming in the
background. It was quite chilly—we were
all in layers of sweatshirts, jackets and blankets, but the rain held off,
although there were a few drops during intermission. It was a late night.
I did not
get to language class at all this week.
We had the Senior Missionary Conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, and on
Friday I was at the airport picking up Stephanie and Ali. Even though the conference didn’t start until
noon on Tuesday, we went over early to set up the Nitivej chapel for our
dinner and devotional later. I also did
some baking and shopping for last minute things. It was wonderful to meet with all the senior
missionaries—there are a total of nine couples plus the mission president and
his wife. We don’t get to see the four
couples who serve on Jylland very often so it was nice to catch-up on what is
happening in the mission on their side of Denmark. We had one couple stay with us, one couple
stayed with the Jenson’s, and two couples stayed with the President.
The
afternoon activities included a visit to the zoo and a tour of Frederiksberg
Palace. They are right next to each
other so it made sense to do both activities.
The zoo was quite fun as there were many baby animals who had been born
this year. We saw many of these baby animals nursing—the
baby hippo (under water), the baby elephant, and a baby monkey (looked like a
newborn). We saw joeys in their mothers’
pouches and lion cubs wrestling with each other. You could walk right in to the kangaroo
exhibit as long as you stayed on the path.
The kangaroos hopped across the path right in front of you. It was a ‘real’ experience. It was a great zoo, but I would probably not
have seen it if it hadn’t been for this outing, so I’m glad we went.
Dad did a
great job of planning the event down to every detail. The only hiccup came as he tried to solve the
problem of transportation to and from the zoo.
There is not enough parking for visitors and by the time we went (early
afternoon), all available spaces were taken.
So, we decided to meet at the church and take the bus over. This was not only expensive but quite the
scene. Only 7 couples took the bus, but
still that meant 14 people, plus the other 5 or 6 people waiting for the bus,
loading at the same time. The president
had to pay for each person which took a few minutes before the bus could get
underway again. There were not enough
seats for all of us, so we were crammed in the aisles—especially on the return
trip—there must have been more than 20 people standing in the middle aisle. It would have made for quite the picture if
anyone had thought to take one. But it
worked and we were able to get where we wanted to go.
I enjoyed
the training for both days of our conference.
It is like any special conference or meeting in the church—we go and
drink deeply of spiritual things and fill our lamps with oil. Some of the training was specific to us as
senior missionaries. The president told
us how much he appreciates his senior couples.
Many mission presidents have very few couples or have problems with
them. He has couples who are willing to
serve. His job in supervising couples is
to help us see the vision of the great missionary service they can
perform. We are not required to meet the
same standards as the elders and sisters in the number of work hours. We should set our own goals and schedules,
determining how we can best serve the Lord.
He also encouraged us to catch the spirit of the missionary (white)
handbook. We used to study this more
when we went to district meetings, but have since let that slide. We need to be well versed on the principles
taught in the handbook so that we can help the young missionaries keep the
standards. He cautioned us about talking
with the missionaries about ‘how much time they have left on their mission,’ or
‘what kind of music they like to listen to,’ or ‘what is your favorite
movie?’ Our conversations with the
missionaries need to be up-beat, encouraging and focused on the work, so that
they stay focused on missionary work. We
don’t need to know about their girl/boyfriends or what they were studying
before the mission. We focus on the here
and now and help them grow.
One of the
things we should do with missionaries
is to let them learn by failure. We let
them teach the lessons, even if we could do a better job. We let them lead out as district and zone
leaders, even when we know a better way.
That is how we learned to be leaders—through experiences of failures and
successes. We don’t want to take away
the ‘cracking out of the egg’ experience for the baby chick or it won’t be
strong enough to meet the rest of its challenges in life. We are to see the missionaries as the Savior
sees them—we should also do this with our family members, friends, and all of
God’s children. We should set high
expectations for the missionaries as well as for ourselves. I truly believe in this and is the way I
raised my family. Finally, the president
encouraged us to know about and celebrate the missionaries’ successes. This is actually my favorite topic with the
missionaries. I love to ask them about
the work and share with us the things that are going well. I love to hear about their teaching, their
investigators, their progress. The president
also told us that our ‘white handbook’ is the counsel the Lord gave to Joseph
Smith in D&C 121—which includes persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness and
meekness, love unfeigned, kindness and pure knowledge, without hypocrisy, and
without guile. We must also be full of
charity and have the Holy Ghost as our constant companion.
We had most
of lunch catered—meaning I ordered frikadeller and chicken-on-a-stick from the
deli section of the store nearby. I had
to leave during President Olsson’s talk to pick it all up. Besides that, we served pasta and green salad
and had two kinds of cookies for dessert. The mission president’s wife
volunteered to make a salad so I gave her the green salad. She decided to make wedge salads and dished up
individual servings of lettuce wedges and put them on the table. They were quarter wedges of iceberg
lettuce. She also had bacon bits, red
onions, blue cheese and balsamic vinegar to drizzle on top. I love wedge salads, but frankly they were a
meal in and of itself. None of the Danes
ate the wedge salad, but the American
missionaries enjoyed them. But then
there was not enough room for the rest of the lunch, so we ended up with quite
a bit of left-overs. I froze the chicken
and the frikadeller and took them to the mission home Monday morning to feed
hungry missionaries who will be going in and out of the office for
transfers. The other left-overs
(including 12 chicken breasts from Tuesday dinner) I used for our institute
meal. The young man in charge of the
meal cut up the chicken and had ‘build-your-own’ shawarmas. We ate the rest of my pasta salad and called
it good.
The last
part of the conference was a temple session.
We always enjoy a chance to spend time in the temple, but it was
particularly nice that we were all missionaries. The prayer circle included everyone and Dad
particularly prayed for the missionaries serving here in Denmark. Most of the missionaries had to go home right
after the session which left Dad and me to clean up. But there wasn’t too much to do. One of the missionary sisters commented as
we were leaving the temple that I could now go home to relax a little after the
conference. My mind was already spinning
with the next things I needed to do—institute lesson, dessert for institute, 2
more apartment inspections, The
Banner newsletter, my talk for Sunday and the musical duet, not to mention
the preparations for Stephanie and Ali.
I also threw in a language homework assignment which Dad turned in for
me while I went to the airport on Friday.
I am trying to keep up with the days I missed at school. But somehow it all works out, and I have
especially enjoyed spending time with my sister and Ali and am glad we could
arrange our schedule to spend time with them.
In the end, it won’t be how well I speak Danish, how many newsletters I
prepare, or even how many meals I prepare for the YSA that matter. It will be the relationships I have
made—including the one I have with my Savior, the people I have served, and the
Christlike characteristics I have developed that really matter.
I love my
family. Those relationships are most
precious to me. I hope you can feel my
love through my letter as I share my experiences with you. I feel the same as I read about your experiences—your
woes, your joys, the lessons you learn.
My greatest desire for you is to be happy.
Have a
wonderful week. Happy Birthday
Caleb.
Med
kærlighed, Mom
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