Kære Familie Sunday, September 10, 2017
Here is a quote from Elder Neal A. Anderson’s visit that is making itself popular in our mission. “There is a power that can cause things to happen that need to happen. There is a spiritual force that can stir a mortal soul toward the spiritual.… Faith is a power, and it can cause things to happen that need to happen.” Faith is an action verb so we need to be on the move but as we are acting, our faith can lead Heavenly Father to open doors for us, unlock hearts, advance a time table, open our eyes to see more clearly. We may perceive the results as a miracle or a tender mercy but they are also the result of our faithfulness, obedience and prayer. God blesses the faithful and the obedient.
Our summer is certainly over, but most of us are wondering if it ever arrived. I can only remember 2 days where I got a little uncomfortable and sweaty walking to the center with a food cart. The rest of the days have been mild and often mom would have a sweater on or close by. Our highs are now 60-62 and the lows are 50-52. A jacket feels good most of the time with a light wind blowing. We are also having a lot of rainy, cooler days. Saturday, we made plans to drive to South Jylland with the Jenson’s to see things around the city of Svendborg. The forecast was cold and 80% rain so we revised those to just see an indoor museum in Copenhagen. Then it seemed too wet to even go walking, so we just stayed home all day, except we ventured out to have dinner with the Jensons and Johnsons at a local Mexican restaurant. It was nice to have some Tex-Mex food that was excellent. We had fajitas that were as good as Papasitos, except that the beans and rice were better here. I just had some leftovers for lunch and it was great! We came back and enjoyed a movie night with my projector and watched “To Catch a Thief”, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelley. Lots of fun. Some movies just get better with time.
Maria came home from Bornholm last Monday and used us as her personal taxi service. We were happy to help her but she goes a little far sometimes in depending on the missionaries. We picked her up from the train station at 9:45 and drove her to Valby where she had a doctor's appointment. Then we picked her up at 1:45 from there and took her to a bus stop close to the train station so she could travel to Aalborg. We are also holding a couple of bags with us until she gets settled into a new apartment. Talking with the Halls on Bornholm, they also helped her quite a bit and she stayed at their apartment a few times overnight during her summer there. While we were at the bus stop, I parked behind a bus to let her out. It took a few minutes to unload her bags and suddenly the bus in front of us backed up and hit the front of our car, then he pulled away. I waved my arms but he never stopped. I don't know that he could see us at first because the car was directly behind the bus and probably where his mirrors would not have picked it up, but I think I had left 8 -10 feet between us and him. I feared the worst, but when I got it home and washed off some black marks, the worst damage seems to be a dent in the license plate. I think we were very lucky. I would have hated to confess we dented the car on loan to us by the mission.
FHE was at the stake center and these two weeks will be dedicated to decorations for Golden Days. I thought the work went much better this year than last. They divided into teams and each team had a leader that understood the task they were doing. There were 6 or 7 activities taking place and we had close to 30 youth helping. I started out helping with the drink bar they are going to construct but that had plenty of help so I moved over to join mom and some other girls making flowers out of newspaper. It was a very manly activity but the conversation was good around me. All things for a good cause. They want something like 50 flowers to hang as decorations.
Here are a couple of thoughts from our Zone Conference training on Tuesday that I liked.
We don't ever help an investigator by helping them avoid the blessings of following a commandment. Bear pure testimony of the principle and the promised blessing. Be bold and testify of truth. Often, we try to soften the message by saying something like, "in our church we believe that …" instead of saying, “God has restored his church on the earth today."
“The Savior was always calm despite the hectic life that he must have lived. He must have had many things to do at one time, but he was calm and addressed the needs of others around him as He served them.” We are sometimes so unlike that. We let the needs of the moment dictate our demeanor and our control, thus losing patience very easily, raising our voices, shouting, crying, etc. As we try to acquire Christ-like attributes, ones that we likely overlook are calmness and tranquility.
As a follow-up to the baptismal interview I gave a week ago, I talked to President O'Bryant for his advice on tithing welfare payments. He suggested that his approach is that a person should tithe welfare payments unless they have paid into the system with their taxes, etc., for example like social security. He has advised his stake members in the past not to tithe SS when their gross pay was tithed. He doesn't think a person gets more back more than they pay in. I personally don't think that is true and that most people will get back more than they pay in. (This should be a fairly easy math exercise.) But he also believes new members need to learn the principle of tithing and act on it and that they need the blessings of tithing in their lives. It would be a wonderful lesson for a new member to learn early on as they join the church. Hence, quibbling over what is an increase often is a way to soften the message when we should be bold and testify of promised blessings from a commandment of the Lord.
My efforts at Danish are at a low spot this week. Any extra prayers will be appreciated (but I don’t think they will help until I find faith again.) The class on Wednesday was very discouraging. We took a sample test like the one we will have at the end of this Module 4. These tests are very hard. We did 2 sections. For the first, I got 5 of 5 correct, but I was just listening for some key words and then picking up a number, date or name that preceded or followed it. The voice read a short text and we had to answer a question. I was not understanding the text and sometimes wasn't sure what the answer meant. It struck me as a silly way to take a comprehension test. It seemed like most of the class was experiencing the same thing however. The 2nd part was listening to a long text and then answering 6 questions at the end. Again, I was just listening for key words that seemed to apply to the questions but with the long text it was much harder to remember specifics. I thought I was doing OK until the 6th question, when the logical answer had already been used, so I knew I would miss at least 2. I actually only got 2 correct. Mom and another student got them all right - I don't know about the others but it seemed like they were not as discouraged as I was. Our teacher could tell that we were frustrated with the level of difficulty so she tried to cheer us up but it failed with me. She encouraged us to watch Danish TV with subtitles and to listen to even more Danish texts from the lesson book, i.e. invest more time into the class. I had two thoughts as the class went on. Either I should finish the course and do the best I can but not take the test at the end to avoid the embarrassment and stress of failing or else I should just drop out now. Quitting when I have signed a contract seems defeatist so another related thought I had was that the first option fits in better with my purpose in Denmark. This is likely just excuse-making, but it did make me feel better. (Talking to myself: “I am not on my mission to learn Danish but I am here to bless people and bring them to the gospel. It does not feel right to spend more time on Danish when there are other opportunities that we should be doing as missionaries.”) Hence, I will push on but not spend additional time on study beyond the 12-14 hours we are already spending a week in class and on homework. Someone told me last night that Danish was among the hardest 10 languages in the world. I don’t know if that is true or not but we certainly have taken on a challenge. I also have concluded, that my problems with hearing clearly are not helping. I know I am at the point I need some hearing aids – mom tells me that all the time and I know I must ask her to repeat things or speak up quite often. I struggle to hear in class sometimes and I am fairly certain that it has some impact on learning the language. Final thought on this -- the temple was nice on Friday. It brought some peace to my soul and I felt more relaxed over the language thing. There is always a rainbow after a storm.
Well, I am out of time for a Monday and you’ve got the highlights of the week. We met with the President this morning to start planning the Christmas parties for the December zone conferences. He is leaving a lot of it up to us this year. We also have the Golden Days YSA Conference Friday – Sunday, so this will be a fun week (except for 3 days of stress in the Danish class!)
Love to all. Dad
Kære familie, 10 September 2017
I was asked to play for sacrament meeting again today—less than 10 minutes before the meeting. Last week I didn’t play and it looked like there were two ‘organists’ called who will be alternating weeks. Sister Bryde played last week—she is the talented piano player who puts me to shame. But she wasn’t here this Sunday, nor was Phillip Klejstrup who also plays the piano very well. So, I played—not my best performance by any means, but still I managed to inspire someone. Of course, it wasn’t my playing at all; it was the hymns I chose to play for postlude. Tomas Kofod came up to me to thank me for playing “Our Savior’s Love.” He enjoyed listening to it and felt inspired. He said that he believes music came to us from heaven so it must also connect us with heaven. As a musician himself, he surely feels the power of music—good music—and knows it is a conduit to heaven. And especially hymns—‘the song of the righteous”—are just like prayers.
Tomas will be our keynote speaker on Saturday morning at Golden Days. Our theme is “Look Up” and comes from the conference talk by Carl B. Cook. He took the occasion of speaking with us to ask us what we thought our YSA need to hear. We shared our concerns that many of the YSA who attend the conference are not actively attending church or institute. They tend to come to the conferences for the social aspects, but don’t attend the essential meetings because they don’t feel they belong. Many of them, even RM’s, are struggling with their testimonies; some of them feel their future dreams of spouse and family are slipping away and are becoming discouraged; and some of them are just trying to find their place in the world. I feel there is a great opportunity at this conference to give counsel and hope to these young adults. Tomas feels that Satan no longer has to be subtle and come at us undercover. He can be forthright and hit us head on. He has felt that it is his mission to give people hope and help them come to Christ again. I am always impressed by his humble spirit and deep testimony whenever I see him or talk to him. I left our brief conversation feeling quite uplifted.
The weather changed this week—as if on cue that summer is no more. In fact, we got rain the day that Stephanie and Ali returned home and we have had rain 8 of the last 11 days, mostly this week. So, when this morning dawned sunny and bright, it was a welcome sight. Besides the rain, the temperature has dropped more than a few degrees. Now the high is 62 and our lows are in the low 50’s. I even broke out my coat this week to wear to the temple. We paid $15 for parking and drove to institute on Thursday night. It would have been difficult to push two carts of food plus hold an umbrella. We walked home from language class on Friday and were both pretty wet even though we had umbrellas. It isn’t the Houston-kind of rain, but there are puddles on the path and our shoes kick up water. Even when it is not raining, it is overcast and cool. Other signs that our last summer in Denmark is nearly past are some of the leaves are changing colors, our baby swans (who are as big as their parents) are starting to turn white, and the days are getting shorter. I know you are welcoming the change from the hot summer weather to cooler autumn temperatures, but we see the approach of another cold winter.
Our FHE activity this week was held at the Stake Center. We worked on decorations for the dances at Golden Days. We will do this again next Monday night. We were to begin at 6:00 with a meal before getting to work, but it didn’t go as planned. I prepared homemade pizzas for dinner—the only problem was I couldn’t figure out how to turn the oven on at the church. We all tried everything imaginable. Finally, one of the girls called the Bishop’s wife and asked her—we did everything she recommended and we still had no luck. She said she would send her husband over, otherwise she suggested we go to Dominos and buy pizzas and send the bill to the FM group. When the Bishop came, he tried everything we tried and then he decided to set the clock which was blinking an incorrect time. Somehow that triggered the system and the oven turned on. I felt so foolish. Because of that, our dinner was delayed. The YSA had a short spiritual lesson first and by the time they were through, the pizzas were ready and there were 25 hungry YSA to eat them. I was especially glad we got the oven going because I brought cookie dough to bake cookies for dessert.
There was a lot to do to make the decorations and I was impressed that those in charge have such clever ideas—they searched Pinterest. There were old pallets which the guys took apart and then worked to reassemble the wood to make a ‘bar’ where the non-alcoholic drinks will be served. Others worked on making ‘balls’ out of newspaper which will be spray-painted and hung from the ceiling. Some used shape cutters to cut out different sizes of circles from gold paper. I then sewed these together in a long streamer. These will also dangle from the ceiling. I will remember to take pictures of these things so you can see what we are doing. Others made signs. Everyone was busy for 2+ hours. We will have another night to finish it up tomorrow. I am making dinner for that as well.
We had zone conference last Tuesday. Sister O’Bryant typically makes extra-large cookies to eat for a mid-morning snack. But she was in Iceland the previous week end and didn’t get home until late Monday night. She asked that the senior missionary wives make some cookies. Three of us volunteered and we were to make 18 cookies each. I literally weighed my cookies (2.6 oz.) to make sure they were all the same size and big enough. I made chocolate chip cookies (which is why I made the same cookies for FHE). The others made a different kind. We had plenty of cookies because the other two senior wives also made a dozen cookies.
President O’Bryant gave an excellent talk in Zone Conference about the Savior and what we can learn from His example. He said that Christ lived and traveled in a very small area during his ministry—maybe only 200 square miles—but He walked them over and over—around 1100 miles. Lessons we can learn:
- Testify. He was preaching in the synagogue when He began His ministry. He quoted scripture about the coming of the Messiah and then said that in Him were the scriptures fulfilled. Do we, as Christ did, testify truth, or merely explain our beliefs. Which approach will bring the Holy Ghost to also testify?
- Be calm. Christ was calm—even when He cleansed the temple, he was not focusing on Himself, but His Father’s temple. Are we stressed or calm? Stress is being focused on yourself. When Christ was on the ship sleeping during the storm, He was calm while the disciples were stressed. If we are stressed, we need to follow the counsel President Hinckley’s father gave him—“Forget yourself and go to work.”
- Don’t seek recognition—do your work calmly and quietly. When Christ healed the daughter of Jarius, He didn’t want her to tell anyone about it.
- Take time to help along the way. Christ went about the work at all times; He didn’t let a deadline or a destination get in the way of the work. This is evident when He stopped to heal the woman with an issue of blood. He paid attention to what was going on around Him and observed. While He traveled, He served and taught. He was always thinking of others, not Himself.
This is why the Jewish leaders felt threatened by Him. People listened to Christ, not them. That is why they worked so hard to arrest Him and have Him killed. He probably spent the last six months of His life near Jerusalem, but He didn’t go to Jerusalem until He knew His mission was fulfilled. He knew that the leaders in Jerusalem would seek His life, which they did. He was betrayed, falsely tried, whipped and hanged on the cross. We are here to testify of Christ. We use the Book of Mormon because it, too testifies of Christ.
A young woman met us to let us in to one of the missionary apartments we needed to inspect, as the missionaries had an appointment. She is one of our older YSA (27-28). She has finished her university studies to be a teacher. She just got back from a 3-4 month stay in the U.S. I had heard that she was there with a boyfriend. When I asked her about it, she said their relationship was more than that—they are going to be married. I told her how happy I am for her. She met her future husband on the internet. I think you have to be pretty creative these days to find a spouse. They will have to play the ‘legal immigration’ game to get her into the country. Evidently if she applies for residence as an engaged person, it could take more than a year. But if she goes to the states on a ‘vacation’ visa, and then gets engaged and married, the government looks on that as a ‘change of intent’ and she can stay while she awaits her green card. While Dad was fixing the faucet, she asked us for some marriage advice. She has older siblings who are married and struggling in their marriages. She sees marriages failing all around her and she is apprehensive. We live in a world where divorce is prevalent. What happened to ‘all eternity,’ let alone ‘til death do you part?’ She wanted to know what advice we would give to have a successful marriage. We can give good marriage advice—after all we taught a marriage class for 2 years, right? —but I had a moment’s pause, as I wondered how well we do at ‘practicing what we preach.’ The mission president is always reminding us that one of our purposes here is to be good role models for the missionaries—to show them what a successful marriage looks like. What kind of example do we give you? I realize that from the time you were born, you watched us. Was our marriage a positive or a negative example? What example are you giving your children now? Satan’s forces are real. He knows the best way to frustrate God’s purposes for man is to destroy families and he is working at it full force. We must make sure we recognize his attacks and work to defeat them.
I will close with a thought that was referenced in the BYU talk by Elder Lynn G. Robbins. I went directly to the source of the quote by Jeffery R. Holland, "I Stand All Amazed." (It is a rather long article.) He is speaking of Christ’s last moments on the cross when Christ forgives His murderers.
‘Surely the reason Christ said “Father, forgive them” was because even in the weakened and terribly trying hour he faced, he knew that this was the message he had come through all eternity to deliver. All of the meaning and all of the majesty of all those dispensations—indeed the entire plan of salvation—would have been lost had he forgotten that not in spite of injustice and brutality and unkindness and disobedience but precisely because of them had he come to extend forgiveness to the family of man. Anyone can be pleasant and patient and forgiving on a good day. A Christian has to be pleasant and patient and forgiving on all days. It is the quintessential moment of his ministry, and as perfect in its example as it was difficult to endure.
‘Is there someone in your life who perhaps needs forgiveness? Is there someone in your home, someone in your family, someone in your neighborhood who has done an unjust or an unkind or an unchristian thing? All of us are guilty of such transgressions, so there surely must be someone who yet needs your forgiveness. And please don’t ask if that’s fair—that the injured should have to bear the burden of forgiveness for the offender. Don’t ask if “justice” doesn’t demand that it be the other way around. No, whatever you do, don’t ask for justice. You and I know that what we plead for is mercy—and that is what we must be willing to give. Can we see the tragic and ultimate irony of not granting to others what we need so badly ourselves?’
This is something I need to ponder more in my own life.
Have a great week.
Med kærlighed, Mom
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