Our family of swans
Map to find the giants
Kære Familie, 6 August 2017
There are a lot of birthdays this week—so a very Happy Birthday to Zane yesterday, and Happy Happy Birthday to Sam and Alex this week. In Danish, we would say Tillykke Fødselsdag. We are thinking about you and wish we could celebrate with you.
This week we were back to normal missionary work. We even started back to our Danish class. We began our next round of apartment inspections—we did three this week, attended the ‘30-day-in-the-land’ temple session as well as our usual temple shift, and taught our institute lesson. I didn’t make dinner for Thursday night, but I was responsible for dessert that night and refreshments on Monday for FHE. We had the sister missionaries to dinner tonight and they said they had heard I was the person to ask if they couldn’t find some food item. I would know just where it could be purchased. I laughed and said that is because my mission is shopping and cooking. It is also because my YSA tell me where I can find things or what I can use for substitutes. I think back to a year ago when I couldn’t find a lot of things—I didn’t even think there were black olives in Denmark because I couldn’t find them. Now I have learned a lot about Danish grocery shopping. Because there are grocery stores on almost every corner, they are small and don’t carry large quantities of things. It is not unusual to find an item out of stock—and I’m not talking about sale items. These smaller stores don’t carry everything and often only have one or two brands of certain items—the named brand and the no-name brand. There are other larger grocery stores, that you don’t find on every corner, which carry more items, including household items such as clothes, toys, kitchenware and appliances. If I am looking for an uncommon item, I can usually find them in those stores, but they are more expensive. The malls also have one of the bigger named grocery stores in them, along with the department stores and specialty shops. It is very nice to have all the stores so conveniently within walking distance.
We had dinner at the Mission President’s home last night to say farewell to a church service missionary. Elder Bryner works part time in the office and is over the apartments and the mission bikes. He has served for two years. He is a widower and I think has enjoyed having this responsibility, but he is ready to move on to something else. Originally when we started doing apartment inspections, we split the apartments on our island evenly between us. Now we are doing ten apartments and he has four. In one case that is because there are sisters in what once was an elders’ apartment. We have also helped in cleaning out three apartments that the mission closed, as well as given a lot of ‘emergency’ service when something went wrong, like unclogging a drain, buying a new bed, or fixing a cupboard door. We are glad this isn’t our only job, but we are happy to help and it fills in our days as well. It is also an excuse to bake more cookies as we always drop off a treat during our inspection. The greatest advantage is just meeting the missionaries. This is the way we get to know them, especially as we no longer attend district meetings. The mission is not replacing Elder Bryner. Instead, the other office couple (the Koch’s) who are part-time church service missionaries, will take on the duties of mission bikes and apartments.
President O’Bryant told an interesting story at dinner. They were in Iceland last weekend for a Zone Conference. A new missionary couple arrived to replace a couple who are going home after 27 months. The replacement couple is a distant acquaintance of one of our senior couples. The president is always asking for recommendation from us and this is one that worked out. What he didn’t know is that Elder Ericksen (the new couple) not only served in Iceland on his mission, but he opened the country after missionary work had been shut down for more than ½ a century, due to persecution. Elder Ericksen is a practicing physician with offices in Utah and Idaho and at first didn’t think he was ready to quit his practice. But after going to the temple a few days later, he called President O’Bryant and said they would come. When Elder Ericksen turned in his papers 40+ years ago to go on his first mission, he was originally turned down. The missionary committee considered his application and said that they were not to assign that young man at this time. He had no idea why, but waited patiently for nine months. Then the call came with no prior communication of the whys and wherefores, and now he was called to serve in the Iceland Mission, which had not been opened before then. Iceland was reopened for missionary work in 1975 when he and his companion were called there. Since then the church has been established in Iceland under the direction of the Denmark Mission. There are two branches in Iceland and there have been baptisms recently after a long dearth. The Mission President recently sent one couple to Akureyri on the north side of the country, to join the two missionaries there. They are trying to locate a place for worship so that they can organize the third branch there. Originally, they only had 10 members attending the small service each week; now they have as many as 25 in attendance.
Well, if that is not enough of a miracle, a week ago Sunday the Ericksen’s witnessed yet another tender mercy. It was their first Sunday in Iceland, and they introduced themselves in Sacrament meeting. There were several visitors that day. The couple sitting directly behind the Ericksen’s tapped Sister Ericksen on the shoulder and asked her name. It turns out that the visitor was the missionary who taught Sister Ericksen the gospel many, many years ago when she joined the church. They had lost touch through the years. The visitor’s husband was also a missionary companion to Elder Ericksen. What are the chances of that happening? If they had been on vacation one week earlier, they would have missed this reunion.
Besides hunting for trolls (giants) one afternoon this week, we also went back to Fredensborg Castle to hear the last Summer Concert. This time the guest artists were an organist and a tenor. Again, the music was fabulous, and the setting unique. The tenor sang something from Beethoven which I recognized, “Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur.” He sang in German, of course, but I enjoyed the music.
We are gearing up for a couple of big YSA activities. The Copenhagen Stake sponsors the next YSA weekend conference, Golden Days. The chairmen of this activity are a couple of young adults who have been planning for a few months. They have secured a school where we can hold the conference, but have yet to get a confirmation on a food chairman—always the hardest job. We had a planning committee meeting on Tuesday night. The stake YSA chairman offered to make dinner for this meeting. He made quiches which were very good. The meeting was all in Danish—you can tell that our young people are just more comfortable speaking Danish. We understood some of what was said, but we missed a lot. I was pleased that they brainstormed ideas, accepted assignments, all the while involving everyone in the planning. I really like to see the YSA being responsible for their own program. I enjoy watching the planning that happens before the big event almost as much as the big event itself. The other activity is a Musical Fireside put on by our YSA. I don’t know how that is coming but should get a report this week.
It was nice to be back in the temple this week. We had some pretty large sessions because there were some people receiving their living endowments on the session. I was responsible for the veil on one of the sessions. We had 18 women, 4 veils and 4 languages. The session was in German because the young woman receiving her endowment was German. But the majority of those in the session were Danes, so there were a lot of headsets. We had English and Swedish as well. I went as a patron on the last session where one of our YSA received her endowment prior to her wedding in a week. It was nice to be with her as well. I was pleased that several of our YSA girls also attended with her. I really like that they support one another.
Our foundation principle for our institute lesson this week was on time management. When I asked the group to write down all their tasks for the next day, one young man just laughed and said ‘nothing—absolutely nothing.” I can’t remember ever having a day where there weren’t many things on my daily to-do list. It is good to have a list of things you need or want to do. The hard part comes in prioritizing. The lesson also pointed out that we should pray to know who might need our help that day, so that we could include a visit/phone call or a plate of cookies in our plan for the day. There should always be room for service. I find my days go much better when there is a plan. I can’t always follow the plan and I need to be flexible, but it is nice to start out with a plan.
One of the workshops I attended in Festinord was on the science of happiness. The presenter was an Area Authority Seventy from Norway, Elder Tom-Alte Herland. He used a study from a university in California to talk about what is happiness. The study found that things like wealth, youth, and education do not bring happiness. The things that make us happy are: 1. Pleasure (least consequential), 2. Engagement (the depth of involvement with one’s romance, work, hobbies, etc.) and 3. Meaning (using personal strengths to serve some larger end). The study also found that gratitude, kindness and service have a great impact on our personal happiness. These are some things we can do to become happier.
- Keep a gratitude journal
- Perform acts of altruism or kindness—five acts a week, especially when you do all 5 in one day
- Make a gratitude visit—write a testimonial to someone to whom you owe a debt of gratitude, and then visit them and read it to them--every three months.
- Write down three blessings each day.
- Figure out your strengths and find new ways to deploy them.
He also said that what makes the heart sing is religious faith, friends and family. I agree with these findings—at least they work for me. I need to be reminded of them often and I need to act on them.
I hope you all have a great week. We love the pictures! It is also fun to show off our calendar when people come to visit.
Med kærlighed,
Mom
Kære Familie Sunday, August 6, 2017
In FHE this week, Thrina gave the spiritual thought. I had a hard time understanding anything she said. I get constant measures of my improvement in Danish in little tests like this and it seems like I am making very little progress.
Our activity was watching the Disney Movie, Vaiana, which in English was Moana. It was in English with Danish subtitles. It was surprisingly good. The UV’s had a choice between that and La La Land. They voted and made a good choice to choose something that was totally G rated. I brought my tripod, projector and laptop and hooked it up to the Center's stereo speakers so it was a pretty good setup with a large screen on a wall. We had major problems however with spooling pauses with the WIFI until Thrina let us use her Hotspot. It worked great after that. I guess the WIFI download speed in the Center is not very good. The turnout was about 24 and included a YM we hardly ever see and 3 guests visiting friends or the temple. The announcement did not go out on the activity until early this morning on the FaceBook page but they heard about the movie night and came out with not much notice. Refreshments were popcorn and watermelon.
A couple of the UV’s had some good news to share. Jonathan, our UV chairman, was accepted into Dental School in Copenhagen. He has waited a year for a 2nd chance and the school was only accepting 10 applicants, so he was feeling good that he made it. It will be a 3-year program and he will live at home for maybe the first year. He can continue in his chairman calling and his part-time job as the temple maintenance guy in the mornings. Gismo, our co-chairwoman, was also accepted into the university but I don’t have the details on that. This should mean that our stake UV leadership will stay the same for the remainder of our time here and I think that will be nice.
Wednesday, we made an outing to find The Forgotten Giants (trolls) #'s 4, 5 and 6. Mom sent you the treasure map and some pictures. They were a bit easier to find than our previous search for #’s 1-3 as we knew better what we were looking for and could interpret the simple maps a bit easier. 2 were by lakes and the 3rd was on the side of a fairly significant wooded hill. It was the hardest to find as it was off the beaten path and impossible to see from the top of the hill. The areas were pretty and quiet away from the city and the weather was beautiful, though we got a spatter of rain coming back from the first one. It passed over however and we were fine after that. Trolls 4 and 5 were close enough together that we walked between them, maybe 20 minutes. The climb up the hill was fairly steep and it was humid enough to make it just a bit sweaty. The path was muddy in one spot and mom slipped one foot into some muddy water. We were dressed in missionary attire as you can see from the pictures so it was not the best way to go treasure hunting.
We made a pit stop at home and left again at 4:45 to hear the last free concert at Fredensborg Slot Chapel in Hillerød. It featured a tenor and organ solos. The songs were in German so we didn't have to worry about translation! As we were leaving, we each discovered that we went only to please the other person and that neither one of us was that excited to be there as we had things at home weighing on us. How often we make mistakes like that because we fail to communicate enough?! The music was nice however and was performed exceptionally. We had dinner at the Chinese buffet next to the slot as nothing was waiting for us at the apartment. It was nice, quick and the food was ok. I have yet to find a Chinese restaurant with the same expected flavors as our favorite one at home.
For our companion study this week, we have watched the S&I Annual Training Broadcast that was given earlier this year. All of the talks are very good, are very deep about teaching the gospel effectively and I recommend them for your listening or reading. One talk is by Elder Kim Clark on deep learning. It defines what deep learning is and the obligation we have as teachers to engage our students in the process. I would summarize it by using the theme of the Duty to God program - Learn, Act and Share - only the share would be replaced by becoming more Christlike as we understand gospel principles, act to put them into our lives and thereby acquire more of the attributes of Christ. A later speaker recharacterized these steps as Learn, Feel and Do. The important thing is to build faith to act as we acquire knowledge of gospel principles. Faith must be accompanied by action to be of any worth to us.
We had our 30-day in temple session today for the new and departing missionaries and Jean and I led the session. I got emotional in the prayer as I thought about these valiant missionaries who work so hard with not a lot of success. I felt deeply that the Lord loves them and recognizes their hard work. I prayed that they may have joy in their work and learn to love completely their time as missionaries.
At Institute, David Borcuti did the dinner and we helped in the preparations. He tried awfully hard but the dinner was not to our tastes. He made Soya as a topping (meat substitute) over pasta. I did not like the flavor or feel of it. Some of the YSA's were playing a guessing game about what kind of meat it was. They all lost as it is a vegetable. The tossed salad should have been fine but it had too many onions and radishes in it and that seemed to be all I could taste. It also had a strong oil dressing that I did not like. We think we fed about 13 and had upwards of 17-20 for the lesson.
We taught the entire class again, pre-arranged a few weeks ago this time. We tried to cover 2 lessons: Sticking to a budget and Protecting your family from hardship (carry necessary insurance protections) and the Foundation Principle was Using Time Wisely. Anne Marie Fredricksen was there for the first time this summer and she proved to be something of an expert in financial matters. It turned out she has studied it a lot this summer and has developed a bit of a habit for it. She followed up this week with resources on U-Tube she has used and books from the library. Her comments added a lot to the class. I am afraid the topic of financial self-reliance is wearing on a few of the students. They seem less interested and Nicolai came right out and asked us to teach something else. (He is a special case, living I think on the government.) For the most part however, I think the class is finding it interesting. I was surprised that the insurance portion was as relevant as it was for them. They do recognize that most kinds of insurance can apply to them.
Our language classes started up again on Friday. Once again, we will have class on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. We had 8 in the class for the first day - others should join next week. 6 faces are carry overs and we have 2 new ones. Anne Mette is our teacher again. It was a bit of a reunion after a month away from class. It went by very fast and I did not do near the study or reading I intended to do. The teacher did a good job of scaring the class right off as she described this level 4 as being very hard with a difficult test at the end of it. There will be a concentration on speaking. This level is 4 months as opposed to the others that have been 3 months long. The first day of class went ok but I feel like I have forgotten a lot in the month layoff and need to do some catch-up. I lose the language very fast when I am not using it every day and the truth is that we had very little chance to use Danish in July - we can always talk at CUV activities in Danish but I seldom do.
We started yesterday with apartment checks in Slagelse. An hour drive to the west. Both apartments were in good condition. We did some mold clean up with the elders and showed them how to polish the faucets and clean out the filters. They were dressed for a funeral and 2 baptisms so we did the work for them. At the sisters, I worked on the cupboard door that had broken off its hinges. It took me about an extra hour to fix it with bolts through the door. They had to leave for the funeral as well so they left us working in the apartment.
We had a good Friday at the temple with 2 young adults receiving their endowments. Kenneth Pedersen is preparing for a mission call (he is from Espier in Ryland so we know him as only Mark Pedersen's younger brother) and Victoria Klein, who is getting married next Saturday to her fiance from Norway. Victoria has been very involved in the CUV on the Golden Days and FHA Committees. We will miss her enthusiasm and creativity but she is moving on to that next stage of young marrieds. The Yates came to the baptistry with a new member for the first time. It was good to help them out and they had 6 sister missionaries with them that were each baptized 6 times. Jean was in the Celestial Room and some of the patrons stayed there a long time. We did not get home until about 10:30.
We also heard that Maria Kudelijic came back to Bornholm from Festinord and announced that she is ready to be baptized. She said one of the reasons she has resisted is that she didn’t want to give up her friends, but after seeing so many YSA’s having fun at Festinord she knows having new friends will not be a problem. I think the fellowship of Anya has really helped her as well. The two of them traveled up and back to Stockholm together and I suspect that time together had to make a difference. Anya is the type of person who just slips into your heart with lots of love. She is someone who does not seem to have any guile.
Love, hugs and kisses to all. Dad
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