Town square in Eskilstuna, Sweden. We went to dinner on the square Monday night. The conference started the next morning.
1st Dance and Grand Opening. We sat in the bleachers upstairs because there were no chairs on the dance floor. Each participant received a puzzle piece to wear around their neck when they came in. During the night they were to find the match for their puzzle piece (one puzzle was given to a girl and the match was given to a guy). The Grand Opening included a live band who played a popular song as each of the 21 countries were introduced. The screen showed the name of the country with pictures of the participants in that country. The music (mostly American songs) were crowd favorites and really got everyone pepped for the dance.
Dragon boat on the river in front of the fountains. The fountains were lit up at night.
Girl Gang
Relaxing at a lunch hour
Yates and the Blockers with us at the Gala Event
The obstacle course
This week was all Festinord so I think both mom and I will be talking about it. It was a wonderful experience and I am so glad we have been able to participate in the conference this year and last. This year’s conference was better than last year in many ways but a part of that is likely that we have a relationship with our single adults and we could observe them, talk to them and share in their experiences. That made it much more interesting for us. Last year, we had only been out about 6 weeks and we were still struggling to put names and faces together and there were no relationships yet. We had a great week and every YSA we have talked to has also said it was “the best” with lots of neat events that included both spiritual and fun activities. Alexander Kjeldsen commented today that “where else can you have some competitive sports like volleyball and football at this time of our lives?” He obviously enjoyed that a lot but there was something for everyone. Jennifer Christoffersen loved the church video workshops. A team came from SLC HQ and did 2 workshops. In the first, they put foreign subtitles on church videos/Mormon messages so they can be searched and located online in their languages. During the week, the youth were able to do 181 of these in 19 languages which is 150% more than the leaders thought could be accomplished. They also had a workshop where they created videos and then they had prizes for the video that received the most hits by the end of the week. There were 20 videos made. The winner got an iPad.
We worked a lot during the week - that is why we go there to be part of the support staff – but we did not feel abused like we did a little bit last year. We spent time in the kitchen, but not washing dishes. This time we served food or made sandwiches for the late-night snacks. It felt more like service and we had fun interactions while we did it. We did that 2 nights and did not get to bed until 12:30 or later. I also must comment on the family who took care of the food. I was so amazed with them. The mother planned the food and she was there for every meal overseeing the work, etc. There were 3 school employees who did most of the food preparation. The senior missionaries helped with stocking the food lines and making sandwiches. The family had 3 young girls who helped us make sandwiches or I saw them manning the commercial dishwasher at times. The dad was there a lot also and he handled the late-night snacks while his wife went home to get some sleep. She was back to get breakfast started. It wasn’t until Friday that we learned that he is the stake president in the Stockholm South Stake and he called his wife to be over the food. I was amazed that he was so involved in the “dirty” end of the conference and they both served with smiles and laughter and lots of compliments and gratitude for our help. Here is just some detail on how the sandwich making went each time. [At 9:30, we walked back to the school's kitchen from the dance and helped make turkey wraps until about midnight. There were our 3 couples plus the Swedish sister in charge of food. We made about 1000 sandwiches and they had a small carton of apple juice to eat as the dance ended. It is always fun to give service and accomplish something so large. We had an assembly line to put cream cheese on a large rectangular tortilla like thing, 4 slices of turkey, some basil and lettuce, roll them up cut them in half, load into trays, cover in plastic, and put in a rolling cart. The sandwiches were then rolled to the court yard. We walked back to the hotel at that point and got to bed by about 12:30. (The stake president stayed up to serve them and clean up afterwards.) (If I had known who he was, we might have stayed up longer to help!)]
I am getting ahead of myself however. The conference was held in Sweden again in a town named Eskilstuna. It is about 70 miles west of Stockholm or an 80-minute drive from there. Due to the distance, the planners decided to not include any temple activities this year and the conference was 1 day shorter than last year. We drove up on Monday in the mission van and had the Yates and the Blockers with us. (The Blockers are the new couple who just arrived the week before.) It is a 6.5-hour drive from Copenhagen and we enjoyed the ride up and back as we had a chance to all visit together. We stayed in a nice hotel which was much more pleasant than the hostel we stayed in last year. It was less than a 10-minute walk to the school. The town is smallish and very beautiful with a large river running through the center of it. Many of our activities were based on the river; kayaking, swimming, boat races, etc. The school had 7 buildings that we made use of and a large courtyard that was used for a dance, a dinner and the obstacle course. They also made use of an indoor sports facility, soccer fields, zoo and arena that were all within walking distance.
The Dragon Boat races were a lot of fun. I will include some pictures. We formed a senior couples team and competed but we were pretty bad and came in a distant last in our heat of 3 boats. Some of them got tired and rested during the 200-meter race! I guess they are not as competitive as I am. It was fun though and we showed we were good sports. Each boat had 12 rowers, a drummer and a professional steerer provided with the boats. 13 of our girls planned ahead. They got matching white T-shirts with a pseudo name on the back and ‘Girls Gang’ on the front. They also had two French braids in their hair and put black marks below their eyes. They looked adorable and won their heat, took 3rd in their semi-final bracket of 5 boats and so had a spot in the final heat of 6 boats. Unfortunately, they came in last place in the finals. We also had a Danish men’s boat in the finals and they were competing for 2nd or 3rd place when their oarsman suddenly took a veered course that took them out of the running. They were pretty upset over that turn of events and didn’t understand what the steerer was doing. Of course, they thought they had saved energy for the final 50 meters and would have pulled ahead to win!
Friday morning featured a blow-up obstacle course. It was huge, supposedly 200 meters (down, back and down again), and filled the courtyard. They started assembling it at 4:00 am. It rained a bit early morning and the plastic was wet and slippery. I ran the course before the competitions started to try it. At first, I was determined to try for a good time, but I was running with 2 other senior missionaries, and when I could see that I was way ahead of them and I was getting winded, I slowed down and went back to join them at their pace. At one spot, there was a wall that was about 8 feet tall. It seemed impossible to get over and there was no grips or ties. I finally went around it. On the other side, were the missing steps and pull straps - they had assembled that section backwards and everyone was told to go around it in the races. My time was about 10 minutes, but that was not at all representative because I stopped racing (don’t know if my heart would have survived if I had kept on trying hard). The average time as the competitions started was between 3 and 4 minutes. The winning times were below 3 minutes and #1 being just below 1:59. That is incredible given how hard it was. We were timers for the event and had to hurry from the start to the end to record times for each of the heats and then go back to the start again for another heat. That went from 10:30 to about 1:00 pm with individual competition, relay races (4 people on a team each did 1/4 of the event) and team races (4 YSA on a team all went at once and the time was the last one to finish. They could help each other, etc.). It was a big hit with everyone. Many were hanging out of the school windows to watch if they didn’t want to compete. Many who did not register ahead of time as they were supposed to, wanted to get in when they saw how great it was. They were allowed to enter. Then from 1:00 to 4:00, it was open for anyone who just wanted to try it out without racing.
Here are some thoughts from our morning devotionals. They were excellent and I was glad we decided to attend this year. We let someone else do the early morning kitchen duty as we were doing the late ones every night, except for Saturday morning when we were in the kitchen from 8:15 to 11:00.
Institute Class
2 Kings 8:7-13
3 Nephi 14:24-27
The wise man built his house upon a rock to withstand the rains and wind.
True conversion means we must do 3 things: (sometimes we may forget the 3rd step)
Understand the doctrines
Act on the principles of the gospel
Become like Jesus Christ
What does it mean to rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ?
What about our sins?
What about our inadequacies?
In His strength, I can do all things. Most of us will fall short in our understanding and therefore using the atonement to progress in life. We know it can correct sin with repentance, we understand He can succor us in our trials, but do we also recognize that the atonement can help in any way that we feel inadequate or less than we can be?
Brother Andersen shared his feelings about the temple in a way that was different than any thoughts I have had before. The temple is a sacred symbol of my goals to be with Heavenly Father. It is a symbol of my consecration to Him. It is a physical symbol and evidence of why I want my family to be together forever.
It is the Lord's invitation to come home. He tells us who we really are and why it is important for us to come home. It is a steady reminder of our purpose in life.
At the first session of the newly dedicated Copenhagen temple (2004), Pres Hinckley was the first person to go through the veil on the first session. As the veil parted, Jens Andersen who was the stake president at the time and was sitting in the witness seat, could see a picture of Christ through the veil. The spirit whispered to him at that moment, "Jens, if you will follow that man, he will lead you straight back to me."
Love you all so much! Dad.
Kære Familie, July 30, 2017
There is no such thing as singing only one verse of a hymn in Denmark. And if a hymn has 10 verses, we sing all of them—such as we did today. I love it! It was a Danish hymn so no such song exists in the English hymnbook. We attended another ward today in Roskilde. We went to hear one of our young adults, Adam Borup, give his mission farewell. He hasn’t been very active in our YSA activities, but I think it is because he has a girlfriend who is a non-member. He is a good kid, though, and his sister is the co-chairman of the Stake YSA committee. She is very involved and is the one who invited us to come. She also wanted us to come to her home afterwards for lunch. She told me that Adam likes Jello, even though she personally thinks it is disgusting. So I decided to make rainbow jello. We didn’t get home from Sweden until 8:00 last night, so it was late before I got started making the jello. I only had 5 flavors of jello on hand so it was only 10 layers. But it seemed to be a hit at the party. Dad got the last piece and I didn’t get one. They served it for dessert. The Borup’s home is out in the country and was a nice change from Copenhagen. It poured down rain right after church, forcing the luncheon indoors, so it was a tight fit. But the sun came out later and although it was a wet and muddy, people could mingle outside. It was nice to be included in this special gathering of Danish saints. These are wonderful, faithful members.
We had a wonderful week at Festinord. The best part was seeing our youth and being part of their activities. When they arrived, and spotted us at the registration tables, they greeted us warmly as if it was nice to see a friendly face. That happened throughout the conference. There were probably 50 of our YSA from Copenhagen Stake who attended. We had one non-member (Marie whom we helped move a few weeks ago), our newest YSA convert, Anya, and several inactive YSA that we don’t know very well. But it was good to see all of them. It was wonderful to be part of such a big event—we love the youth, we love the leaders, and we love the other senior missionary couples. There were 750 YSA and at least 100 more people who just helped with the event. We felt that this event was well organized with something for everyone. Here are some of the things in which the YSA could participate:
Special Activities: Minute to Win It games, Dragon Boat Races, Obstacle Course, Competitive Sports (soccer, volleyball and track and field events). We were each in charge of a Minute to Win It game the first afternoon. It was fun to see the teams compete in these silly contests of skill and agility.
Other Activities: Swimming—either at the pool or at the river, kayaking, Paintball, Krav Maga (self-defense) Scrapbooking/Cardmaking, Speed Dating, Bowling, and Yoga. These activities were available every day, all day until dinner. One afternoon we manned the kayaking activity, but Dad didn’t get a chance to use them himself because the YSA kept them busy the whole time.
Workshops: Presented by 4 Institute Directors, an Area Authority Seventy, Area Self-Reliance Services Director, a Stake Presidency Counselor from Stockholm, Bruce C. Hafen, and Johanna Davidsson. The latter two were also featured speakers at the Wednesday and Thursday evening firesides.
Dances: There were 4 of them. There were live bands for two of the dances and a DJ for the other ones. On Thursday night, the YSA came dressed up as favorite characters, celebrities, etc. They did this in pairs or trios—so two characters from Star Wars, or from Harry Potter, etc. This dance was held outside in the courtyard, carnival-style. There was cotton candy and popcorn, a wild bull ride, various carnival games as well as dancing, of course. The last dance was the Gala Dance where the dress code was formal—tuxes or nice suits for guys. It was fun to see what everyone was wearing. The girls especially like to dress up. The venue for this dance was the Zoo. The zoo park has two sides—the animals (which was closed off to us), and the amusement park where we were. There were mostly kiddie rides. There was a nice conference room where we ate and later danced. The dinner was a buffet (not that great) and then we stood up around small ‘hors d’oeuvre/drinks’ tables to eat. The YSA’s enjoyed just meandering through the park to get fresh air when they weren’t dancing. The weather was nice all week for these outdoor activities—perfect spring weather. There is no such thing as summer weather in these Nordic countries.
Another dance was held in a big sports complex. This was a fun evening because there were lots of things to do besides dancing, like miniature golf, ping pong (more than 20 tables), boules, and sumo-wrestling. We spent the night helping in the miniature golf area and the boules area. There was a large gravel/sand pit where up to 10 groups could play boules. It was not a hard job, but we were there from 9 p.m. to midnight when they sent everyone back to the school for their midnight snack. We skipped the snack and walked back to our hotel and bed.
Morning Institute: Each morning at 8:00, one of the Nordic Institute directors taught a lesson. We went to these each morning and were surprised that 150-200 YSA also got up early to attend. Breakfast was from7:30-9:00, so that meant they had to get breakfast before they came. The lessons each morning were inspiring and set the tone for the day. The teachers also taught workshops during the day which often built on these morning lessons.
Firesides: On Wednesday night (when we met at the sports complex) we had a guest speaker before the dance. She was not a member of the church, but her life adventures fit well with the theme “Never Give Up.” She was voted Adventurer of the Year for her feat of being the fastest woman to ski solo from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole. She did this just last winter (summer on the South Pole). She is Swedish (nurse by profession), but now lives in Norway. Her story was very interesting and was certainly positive and encouraging for people who think they can’t do hard things. She has had other adventures which she shared during her workshop that I attended the next day—skiing across Greenland—with her sister, and kayaking around the coast of Sweden.
The Thursday night fireside was with Bruce C. Hafen and his wife. Our YSA octet sang the musical number for this fireside. (That meant finding time for extra rehearsals both Wednesday and Thursday, and me having to haul around our music notebooks which were heavy.) Elder Hafen specifically addressed same-sex attraction, gay marriage and the Family Proclamation. He talked about the doctrines of the gospel, the Lord’s plan and how we, as members of the church, stand up for our beliefs.
Testimony Meeting: The conference ended Saturday morning with a testimony meeting. We were split up into three groups, not just because we were too large to fit into one auditorium, but to give more people a chance to bear their testimonies. The testimonies were heart-felt and inspiring. Each testimony was limited to 2 minutes, again to give more people a chance to bear their testimonies. There were two blind young men from Finland who attended the conference. They both bore their testimonies. But the real heroes were the young men who helped behind the scenes. They were with the two blind YSA the whole time—even accompanying them on the obstacle course and helping them through it—no small feat. Several of the testimonies commented on their selfless service during Festinord. It certainly prevented them from doing everything they wanted to do. The testimony that touched me the most was our good friend, Anya Johansen (convert of 2 months). It was so good to have her attend this conference with so many LDS young people. (I guess that is really the whole point.) She told how the gospel had filled a hole in her heart and that she is glad she never gave up.
One of my favorite workshops: Prepare to Build a Family After the Pattern of the Lord. This was taught by the Norway Institute Director. He doesn’t look old enough to be a director and have 6 children. He and his wife taught the class. She comes from a divorced family. She determined early on that she didn’t want to marry someone who didn’t plan on keeping eternal covenants. When her husband proposed, he said something like he didn’t want her to say ‘yes’ if she wasn’t planning on being in it for eternity. What might have scared off another potential partner, was just what she needed to hear. You only have to make the commitment once. He said that the source of his peace is my commitment, not the other person and the choices she might potentially make. If he keeps his covenants, then he can be at peace. They talked about the roles of husbands and wives and shared counsel from the prophets about calling the wives to come home from the workplace. That is not a very popular doctrine in today’s world, especially in Europe. They said that we shouldn’t try it the world’s way first and then do the Lord’s way. We should trust that the Lord’s plan for families is the right plan. (There are always exceptions according to individual circumstances like single parents, etc.) They also talked about bringing children into the world (obeying the commandment of ‘multiply and replenish the earth.” President Kimball said that it is extreme selfishness to not bring children into the world. He asked us if we thought it pleases the Lord to get married without raising up seed unto the Lord? After graduating from school, the husband didn’t get a job right away. But they chose to remain firm to doing things the Lord’s way—they had 3 children at the time. They had followed the commandment to have 3-months of savings and food storage and they found that they were able to survive because they had been obedient to this commandment. In fact, the Lord had blessed them so that their savings and food stretched to provide for them 6 months, double the amount they thought they had. Only then did he get a job that provided for them and they were very grateful. When they looked at their situation logically, they saw a gap. But if we only focus on the gap, that is all we will see. Instead we should focus on following the commandments. That requires work and faith and understanding the Atonement of Christ, whose grace makes up the difference. We should fast for our spouse and pray to understand her/him better. That will strengthen our marriages. They closed with The Law of Faith: If you live God’s laws, you have sure promises.” That is good enough for me.
Med Kærlig hilsen, Mom
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