Preparing for Golden Days
Building the bar with William Hansen and Sebastian Poulsen
Decoration time with Sarah Stewart, William from Switzerland and Rebecca Stewart
Sissel Valgren and Emma Østergaard
Mom sewing with Morten Olsen, Josephine Kjeldsen, and Gismo Borup
Finished decorations
Red carpet entrance to the gym
Cloud decoration over the dance floor
Finished bar with backdrop
Saturday night dance
Devotional Saturday morning
Mom at the piano
Les Lanciers dance workshop
Blurry picture with Tomas Kofod
(He plays Jesus Christ in The Testaments)
Kære Familie, 17
September 2017
It has been a busy and exhausting week. I have been averaging less than 5 hours of
sleep each night, but it was all worth it to see the success of our Young Adult
Conference—Golden Days. This was just a
weekend conference—Friday night through Sunday afternoon, but it was packed
with a lot of great experiences. Our
youth leadership is fantastic and planned a very worthwhile event. We also have great support from our Stake
High Counselor. When we came on our
mission last year, we talked about Golden Days in our meetings, but it didn’t
seem that anything got going until August.
We were still looking for a place to hold the event at that late
date. This year, we called two YSA to be
the chairmen in April and they have been working and organizing ever
since. Although we still had a great
event last year, this year seemed to run a lot more smoothly. But there are always things to be done the
last minute and we spent the week doing those last-minute things. I am sure I got more sleep than some of the
female YSA leaders this week. They gave
100% to Golden Days and still had school and work. I was drafted to do some time-consuming
decorations as they were just running out of time. I did them, but the sad thing is that they
didn’t even use them after all. I spent
Tuesday and late Wednesday night working on one project—I even got Dad to
help. We hand-sewed small paper cones together in a
streamer. Thursday afternoon I spent
several hours sewing gold paper circles together in a streamer—this time by
sewing machine. They are very cheap,
pretty ideas, but a lot of tedious work!
Our Monday FHE was a taco soup dinner and then more Golden
Days preparation. We asked if there were
any things still missing in the program for the conference and were told that
they still needed one more workshop.
Evidently it isn’t hard to get a workshop presenter; it is difficult to
get one who is comfortable presenting in English. So, at the end of the evening (after 10:00)
the committee leader approached us and asked if we could do a
workshop—something to do with the self-reliance lessons we taught this
summer. That was a pretty broad topic,
and I knew we didn’t want to talk about financial preparation—but I said an
enthusiastic ‘yes, we would be glad to do it,[1]”
and that we would get back to them about a topic. I mulled things around for a day and decided
to talk about being prepared even when things are out of our control and to be
100% responsible for our lives. We
titled our workshop “If it is to be, it’s up to me”—Becoming Self-reliant in a
Dependent World. Of course, we also
talked about relying on the Savior and getting help/advice from trusted
leaders, mentors, and parents. I
identified some videos to show and made a hand-out on goal setting (which we
ended up not using because of time) and I made up some scenarios of different
decisions they might be facing now which I had hoped to use to get them
talking. As it was, we didn’t need those
either. At the beginning of the
workshop, I asked them to write down concerns they were facing, so later those
situations were enough to fill up the rest of the time. There were some good discussions and
suggestions from the other participants.
Some of their concerns were things like deciding what to study in post
graduate school, what career to pursue, how to kindly break it off with a
roommate who is not a good influence, going on a mission now or waiting until
finished with college, having learned to speak Chinese on a mission, should
that skill influence the choice of study or field to pursue, and just what to
do with life? We let these very capable
young people help and advise each other and it was very effective. The class taught itself with just a few prompts
from us to get them thinking. The church
videos were excellent and got them pondering as well.
I helped at the registration desk the first night as all the
YSA came to the conference. It was fun
to welcome all who arrived. We had the
sign-ups for workshops on the wall by the desk.
There were 3 hours for workshops—we taught one each hour. There were 5 workshops—1. A scientific view on who we are[2],
2. Pornography, 3. Cooking while speed
dating, 4. Love Languages, and 5. Ours—Self-reliance. The woman who taught the pornography workshop
also taught the Love Languages workshop the last hour, and the cooking workshop
was only offered the last two hours. We
also offered a session/or baptisms at the temple during that time, as well as
sports in the gym—dodge ball tournament, volleyball and badminton. So, there was plenty to choose from. Some YSA didn’t do any of the above and just
chose to visit, maybe sleep, or play board games. When we went home at the end of Friday night
after all but 10 YSA had arrived and checked-in, our workshop sign-ups looked
pretty bleak. We had no one for the 4
p.m. slot and only a few on the other two hours. But we learned that a lot of the YSA didn’t
sign up until the next morning. When we
returned for breakfast, we had sign-ups for all three hours. Our class was definitely the least popular,
but that didn’t matter. I think all who
came went away with something to think about.
The temple was full—41 endowments and 31 in the
baptistry. The temple had wanted us to help
out in the baptistry, but when we were asked to teach a workshop, we had to
cancel. Luckily, our friends, the Yates,
filled in for us instead. We had invited
them to help at Golden Days a few weeks ago.
They are serving in Fredericia, in Jylland, and work with 3 YSA programs
in the Jylland Stake. That stake is not
organized like we are—the YSA program functions on the ward level rather than a
stake level—I think it is because the stake is much more spread out,
geographically. Once a month they have a
stake activity, but they typically only get 20-25 participants. Many of their YSA’s came to our conference,
so it was nice for them to be with them.
They are ordinance workers, but don’t often get to help because they
live so far away, so they enjoyed being at the temple.
One of the fun activities—that really turned out better than
I expected, was learning a dance called Les Lanciers. We did this right after our keynote address
on Saturday morning, while we still had a captive audience. A member of our stake came to ‘call’ the
dance. It is the refined version of the square
dance like they did in the 18th-19th century. It is very formal and you feel like you are
back in Pride and Prejudice time.
If you want to see one ‘tur’ (trip or tour) of the dance, click on this
link: Les Lanciers I was very surprised by the number
participating. We had 20-25 groups on
the dance floor. (Of course, there are
always a few who don’t want to participate.)
We learned 4 turs altogether.
Each time we learned a different dance, they changed partners—all the
girls moved to the next square. This way
they also got to meet new people. Most
picked up on the dance very quickly.[3] Everyone seemed to have a good time, and we
danced it later that night at the dance.
The Saturday dance was ‘formal’ and the playlist was mostly
slow dances. They began the dance with
Les Lanciers and at 11:30 they danced it again.
There were many participants. Our
YSA leadership purposefully chose to have slow dancing so that couples could
dance and talk. You can’t do that when
the music is so loud and you are dancing a couple of feet from each other. The fast dances also don’t have to be
couples—anyone and everyone just gets out and dances. We had that kind of dance on Friday night and
the ‘couples’ dance on Saturday. One of
our YSA men said he danced every dance on Saturday night. He would dance with each young lady twice and
then get a new partner. He had a great
time and I think he made a lot of the YSA girls very happy to be asked to
dance. The dance floor was always
full.
One of the unique things we have seen with Danish dances is
that they have a ‘bar’ with mixed drinks.
It always makes me a tad bit uncomfortable, but the kids love it. There were ‘bartenders’ (16-17-year old youth
who loved to come to a YSA event!) who mixed the drinks. We had Daquiris, Margaritas, Pina Colatas,
and Mint Juleps. I think it is a silly
concept and they could just as easily serve a fruit drink or slush. But it was nice that there was something to
drink at the dance. They also had
water. The last night they had rented a
slush machine. There was also chips and
cotton candy. At the end of the dance,
there is a midnight snack. The first
night, the food committee had purchased McDonalds hamburgers and
cheeseburgers—which were a huge hit. The
second night, they served 6” pigs-in-a-blanket and cake. Overall the food was good—grilled chicken the
first night and ham the second night. I
was impressed how they were able to use up the left-over food. For Sunday lunch, we had pasta salad with
left-over chicken, but you would never know that it was left-over. The salad was tasty and had many new
ingredients. I still took home about 25
kilos of uncooked chicken which I will freeze and use for future YSA
dinners.
On Sunday, we had Sacrament services in the Allerød
chapel—about a 7-10-minute walk from the school.[4] Several of the YSA had to leave Sunday
morning to go home, so we did not have 270 people in the chapel. The capacity in the chapel was only 200
people. We were the last ones to arrive,
because we were assigned to gather all the stragglers, and there were no seats
in the chapel. We spent the first part
of the meeting in the RS room and listened via the intercom. After the sacrament, the Stake President
invited everyone to squeeze together so we could all be in one room. So many people sat 3 on two seats. Dad sat in the back—shared a seat, while I
was lucky to get an aisle seat up front to myself. There were 10 empty chairs in front, facing
the congregation where those who wanted to bear their testimonies could sit and
wait. Fortunately, Dad’s seat-mate chose
to bear his testimony, so Dad could have a seat by himself. We heard messages from the Stake President
and from Jens Andersen, our institute director.
Our YSA choir sang a beautiful, original arrangement of “Where Can I
Turn for Peace” and “Nearer My God to Thee.”
Between the sacrament and the talks, we didn’t start the testimony part
of the meeting until an hour later. I
was impressed that the testimony bearers were short and bore testimony of
Christ—just as they were asked to do. We
heard 25-30 testimonies. We were
supposed to walk back to the school and start RS and Priesthood Meetings by
12:30, but it was after 1:15 or later before we started those classes. Still, it all worked out and be were
spiritually fed by the testimonies.
I will close with a thought from our institute lesson on the
tree of life. Elder Neal A. Maxwell
reminded us to hold up the shield of faith when scorners can be seen and heard
from the great and spacious building: “Let us expect that many will regard us
indifferently. Others will see us as quaint or misled. Let us bear the pointing
fingers which, ironically, belong to those finally who, being bored, find the
‘great and spacious building’ to be a stale and cramped third-class hotel (see
1 Nephi 8:31–33). Let us revile not the revilers and heed them not (see D&C
31:9). Instead, let us use our energy to hold up the shield of faith to quench
the incoming fiery darts” (in Conference Report, Oct. 2003, 108; or Ensign,
Nov. 2003, 102).
And this
quote by Weatherford T. Clayton in a BYU devotional (May 14, 2017) He talks
about the mists of darkness that envelop us when we fall off our sure
foundation of Christ—but it is the same as losing your hold on the iron
rod. I thought he described the mists of
darkness perfectly.
“Brothers
and sisters, I need to speak soberly to you for a moment. Please listen
carefully. Should you ever choose to step off that wonderful foundation you are
building upon the Rock, for whatever reason, be warned that the mists of
darkness will almost immediately surround you. You will become vulnerable to
“the fiery darts of the adversary.” The first emotion you will probably feel is
confusion. You will not see clearly and likely won’t be able to see where you
have come from nor where you are going. Relationships with people who have
loved and blessed you will change.
Can you feel
Satan’s shafts in the whirlwind here? You may find yourself wanting to hide
what you are doing from others who love you. You will likely find yourself
growing irritated and angry more easily. You will probably find fault with
others more frequently, even with those closest to you. You may become casual
in keeping covenants and, with time, simply not keep them at all.
Can you feel
Satan’s mighty storm? You will most likely find that you are just not as happy.
With time, if you do not step back onto your foundation, you may forget the
many, many marvelous things the Lord has given you and find yourself falling
“away into forbidden paths and [becoming] lost.”
I hope you
all have a great week. We are looking
forward to seeing Jared. As always, thanks
for the updates about your families. We
look forward to these updates so much.
It is our life-blood.
Med
kærlighed,
Mom
[1]
Dad’s response was not quite so enthusiastic and I could see the wheels turning
in his head: we needed to make
decorations, prepare to teach institute on Thursday and now prepare a workshop. It is a little overwhelming.
[3]
The Danes learn this dance in school and perform it at their graduation party
(9th grade graduation).
[4]
There is a new law this year which prevents holding religious sacramental services
in public schools, like we did last year.
Kære Familie Monday,
September 18, 2017
Our Golden Days
YSA conference is over. I guess for us
it ended last night at about 8:00 when we more or less collapsed from lack of
sleep. That is a couple hours earlier than last year, as I remember. I feel for a few of the girls who still
needed to drive home after we left them and home is out in the country. They got a lot less sleep than we did. Friday night we went to bed about 1:00 and
Saturday was about 2:30, so I was feeling the lack of sleep. We left a mess on the stage in the stake
center as we unpacked last night, so we still will clean that up tonight for
FHE.
We received this
note from our High Councilor, Thomas Ringheim, last night. It is very touching
and makes any sacrifices that we make all worth it.
Let me also let you know how thankful
I am personally for your incredible service to our Young adults. Thank
you for being there and for everything that you do.
Thank you for giving up your life
(children, grandchildren, friends, your home… everything that was your life) to
come and serve us.
The scripture “Greater love hath no
man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” can be understood
in many ways. And you have in some way “laid down your life”, and this
not even for your friends, but for total strangers in a foreign country. Our
Young Adults and us. I believe that this in some ways is an even greater
achievement than doing it for a friend. You are a great example to us all.
The
conference was great. I am not sure an
event for 275 people could go much better, but I suppose so much depends on a
person’s perspective. They came from at least 10 countries, the most from
Denmark and Sweden, so there are cultural differences as well. There are always complaints about sleeping on
the floor, didn’t like the food, don’t like dances, etc. But I heard a few say
it was the best Golden Days ever. I
liked it better than last year myself (but our relationship with the YSA is so
much deeper that it is impossible to factor that out of it). The food was fabulous, despite the few
negative comments, and all the events ran smoothly. There was something for everyone. Even the clean-up went much better, though I
still wish every person would feel some responsibility for pitching in and
helping a little. (They had a crew of HP from one of the wards come in at the
end and help with cleaning the school.
That was a huge help. I wonder
what they thought about an assignment to spend 2 hours cleaning up after a YSA
Conference on a Sunday? Especially as they witnessed many YSA’s sitting around
talking and not helping. I would have
murmured!) Mom is going to talk a bit
about the Lanciers dance event they did.
I thought that was going to be a flop but it turned out to be a huge
success, even with the YM jocks.
Thomas Kofod
(our friend the Danish singer, actor and Christ in The Testaments movie) was
our devotional keynote speaker on our theme of Look Up from Elder Carl B.
Cook. I thought he was exceptional and
connected with the youth on their level.
He was both funny, spiritual and very personal at some points. I was hoping he would sing as part of his
talk but he elected not to. (I wonder
why he decided that way? Maybe it is hard and too personal to mix singing with
a keynote talk?) Here are a few ideas he
shared.
On living our
lives the best we can: Why do
we continue to do the things we shouldn't do and not do the things we
should? Are we dumb or just not
Celestial material? Lucifer entices us to use a big hammer on ourselves, beat
ourselves up, and give up on our destiny. He tells us all the time that we are
not good enough. The gospel teaches us
otherwise, but Neal A. Maxwell said, "Sometimes it seems like the best
kept secret in the church is the gospel of Jesus Christ." There is no
limit to what 2 people can do if one of them is HF. The corollary -- We are very limited in what
we can do if we try to do it on our own.
On a loving
heavenly Father: Does HF
love me? This is the basic question at
the heart of our insecurities. What if
He doesn't, or He just doesn't have time or concern to answer us? From his perspective as a father of 2
children – It Is not possible for any father to resist such a plea. There is no end to a father’s love. We may have thoughts of shame or unworthiness
but we should never feel unloved. An
example is the Parable of the lost sheep. -- if we look up, he will come after
us and carry us home on his shoulders.
He does not shame us or punish us, though we may deserve both. There may be consequences to our actions that
require repentance, but He will even help us through that and of course the
atonement makes it possible.
On marriage: How can I make myself
spiritually recognizable for my eternal companion? Make yourself spiritually irresistible. He and his wife were from opposite sides of
Denmark and were only together 5 or 6 times when they decided to get
married. They met at a church
dance. She was beautiful but he was
drawn to her inner beauty and not so much her physical appearance. After a few
dates, they fasted and asked HF if they should continue to see each other. The strong answer came, “Yes”. They later asked if they should get
married. No answer came, other than “I
have already told you this is right.” Prepare yourself to be ready and to act
when you meet the right person. He became a member of the church at age
24. She joined about 6 years earlier at
18. At one point, she was ready for
marriage and was frustrated that she was not meeting her husband. The thought came to her with her prayers that
perhaps he wasn’t a member of the church yet.
That led her to pray every night for her future husband, that he would
find the church, and be prepared for their life together. He saw her at the dance and crossed the room
to talk to her. His pickup line was
(admittedly not very clever, but it was what he felt), “Haven’t I seen you
someplace before”.
On the Savior: The gift of the atonement has been given but it is not complete until
we fully receive and accept it. He descended below whatever we might have
done. There is no sin so deep and dark
that the Savior has not paid the price for it. Quote by Truman Madsen. “But if there are some of you who have been
tricked into the conviction that you have gone too far, that you have been
weighed down with doubts on which you alone have a monopoly, that you have had
the poison of sin which made it impossible ever again to be what you could have
been–then hear me.
I
bear testimony that you cannot sink farther than the light and sweeping
intelligence of Jesus Christ can reach. I bear testimony that as long as there
is one spark of the will to repent and to reach, He is there. He did not just
descend to your condition; he descended below it, that ‘He might be in all and
through all things, the light of truth.’” (D&C 88:6) — Truman Madsen as
quoted by Tad Callister, The Infinite Atonement,
Salt Lake City, Deseret Book 2000 81)
The sacrament
meeting and testimonies were wonderful yesterday. We might have mentioned that
Denmark has passed a new law in the last year that churches cannot use schools
for religious purposes. Somehow that
means that we could use the school for the weekend for free, have workshops and
our devotionals but could not have a church service there with the Sacrament.
Therefore, we walked 10 minutes to the Allerød Chapel for Sacrament meeting (the
only ward there moved their block meetings to the afternoon to accommodate us) and
back again to the school for Priesthood and RS.
We did not have a SS. Our Stake President Bernskov spoke about what a
valiant generation these young adults are and Jens Andersen was the keynote
speaker on our theme of Look Up. He
referenced 3 stories from the scriptures starting with Moses looking up to the
brass serpent to live and Elisha's servant whose eyes were opened to see
"those that were with them", and Peter healing the lame man from
birth at the temple. All needed to look
up to receive blessings and faith. We
had testimonies for about 1 hr. and 15 minutes or so. There is a difference between YMYW and Young
Adults. These testimonies were inspiring
and it was obvious that the weekend conference was good for them. They were
very focused on the Savior and living the gospel for its blessings and our joy.
The meeting went longer than it was supposed to, and I thought they should have
just closed church meetings at the chapel, but I ended up being wrong. Priesthood was a good experience as we talked
about President Hinckley’s Lesson 18 on Virtue. I was totally moved by how many
of the young adults came back for it. I thought we would lose most of them in
the transition. One of our YM taught the lesson and it was worth having for his
own spirituality just to give him the experience of teaching.
Besides Golden Days
this week, we had an interesting Mission Office meeting last Monday to discuss
the Christmas zone conferences. We could
have done those by phone or email but we were invited to join the weekly admin
meeting. It was efficient so everyone
could hear the same messages. We are
assigned the picture video set to music, the gift collecting and the letters to
the missionaries. The calendar dates
shifted around a bit as we talked but for now we know the due dates to work towards. Elder Koch will coordinate with Brother
Knudsen on a dinner. I was also assigned
to borrow a Santa suit and play Santa Claus with the gifts and letters (over my
quiet protests that I am not a bavard!) and I don’t expect to enjoy that part
of it very much. The rest of the meeting
was interesting to see how things get planned and what the next 3 months will
look like, but very little of it was relevant to our assignments. We do have a general authority coming to do a
mission tour at the end of October, so that will likely lead to another good
meeting with him.
We had 2 good FHE’s and an extra Wednesday
afternoon and evening making decorations for Golden Days. On Wednesday, I was called on to bail out the
team and figure out how to make the fruit drink bar. The basic shape was there
but it did not have a top on it yet.
Gismo described a design concept which I said I didn’t think could be
done with the tools, nails, screws and lumber that we had. She just stomped her foot and said, “Elder
Shurtliff, you just figure it out. It
can be done.” Gismo can be bold. At the Friday night dance, the cotton candy
machine would not work. She grabbed me
and asked me to give it a priesthood blessing to fix it. The wet bar turned out
pretty cool looking l think. Someone
else changed the extension cord on the cotton candy machine to a thicker one
and it fixed that problem.
Thanks for your letters, blog posts, pictures
and Facetimes. We love it all and miss
you. Have a great week.
Love, Dad.
No comments:
Post a Comment