Sunday Fireside Musical Quartet by our girls: Gismo Borup, Sissel Valgren, Lea Meilsøe, and Astrid Toft
President Michael Olsen with his demonstration of sand gravel under Denmark roads
Kære Familie, 19 November 2017
On Friday night, we stuffed 22 YSA into the loft in our apartment to watch a movie. Jared can attest to the fact that there really is no room to hold that many people up there. There were bodies everywhere. I didn’t join the party upstairs but half way through the movie, Dad couldn’t resist seeing the action. (We could hear the movie just fine downstairs.) Why are we hosting another YSA activity, you ask? It seems they really like the hyggelig atmosphere of a home—especially a home other than one of their parents’. It was YSA Temple weekend. Our stake YSA hosted and invited all the YSA’s in the stakes in our temple district to come. The main focus was for Saturday—two sessions at the temple, plus baptisms. But because of distance, many of the YSA came Friday night. So, we also offered an endowment session (6:30 p.m.) on Friday as well as baptisms. Then they all came back to our apartment after they were done. It was after 10:00 when they finally started the movie—but they visited and snacked for about an hour before that. We had about 10 YSA from Sweden who came to join us. They actually only live less than an hour from our temple. The YSA’s in our stake put them up somehow—YSA’s are used to couches. They seemed to really enjoy themselves, but it was a late night for us!
Dad and I helped with baptisms on Friday night. We had 8 YSA plus a new convert (not a YSA) who just showed up to do baptisms. One of our young men came too late to do a session, so he joined us in the baptistry. It just so happened he was the home teacher for the new convert, so he was grateful he could be there with him. They were able to chat together about the ordinance and the important work they were doing. Another of our young men, who recently went to the temple, did the baptizing. It was a good experience for him as well. He has a mission call and will be leaving in February. His father is Swedish, so he knows that language a little. He was able to baptize both in Swedish (for the 2 Swedish girls) and Danish for all the others. Anya Johansen came from Bornholm—a convert of about 6 months. She is well-loved by our YSA who took good care of her this weekend. She said she came to get her ‘spiritual’ as well as her ‘social well’ full this weekend—and she definitely did! On Saturday, I did an endowment session at 10:30 while Dad helped in the baptistry again. Some of the same people came back on Saturday, but we also had new people join us. There were 41 people on our session (there are 40 chairs, so we had to bring in an extra one)—many of them Swedish, so the session was in Swedish. It was really wonderful to be in the temple with our YSA.
We left after the first session to go to the church next to the temple and prepare food. Another one of the YSA was in charge. She had looked up a recipe on Thursday night, after institute, and I spent some time on Friday night (during the movie) preparing our grocery list. We picked her up on Saturday morning at 9 a.m. to go shopping. I am not a ‘last minute’ person and am not comfortable waiting to the last minute to prepare the food. But everything worked out; we shopped and dropped off all the food at the church; and we still made it to the temple in time. We also shopped for food for Sunday night’s fireside and dinner. It has been a weekend of last minute things—but often that is how it goes. For example, on Friday night at 12:30 as everyone was leaving to go home, we learned that the church building had not been scheduled for Saturday. One of the YSA leaders asked Dad if he could call in the morning to schedule the building. I was in a panic—what if the building was not available? Then what? Where would we go? I had to know for food preparation reasons, let alone for letting the rest of the YSA know where we would be meeting. All the messages on Facebook and the announcements for the past few weeks had said we were having lunch and activities at the Nitivej chapel on Saturday. I assumed, of course, that it had been scheduled. Luckily the church was available and by 9 a.m. the next morning, all was well.
We had lots of help preparing food as all who went on the first session or did baptisms came over to the church immediately following their temple service. We had advertised that a late lunch would be served following the 1 p.m. session (or about 3:00). I had bought some fruit to tie everyone over until lunch time. Only 4 other YSA joined us after they finished the 1:00 session. Our meal needed a lot of chopping, so we quickly got people set up to chop chicken, broccoli, onions and garlic. We had to make two versions of the meal—one gluten-free and one for everyone else. I supervised (as I seemed to be the only one who knew the recipe instructions) but I let the others do the cooking. The dinner turned out very good and it looked like we had more than we would ever need. I was afraid we would have half of it left over and was planning on using it the next night for our fireside dinner. But the YSA’s kept eating and more people kept coming, so in the end there was only one serving left over which I sent home with a young woman who had missed the dinner because she was filming an “I am a Mormon” spot for Mormon.dk. The day was a success—we probably fed over 25 people, and we were cleaned up by 5:30. I had made some chocolate chip cookie dough in the morning (another last-minute request) and baked them at the church. The freshly baked cookies were a big hit! We were tired from a long day and other than dropping off a lot of things at the center and making quick trip to the grocery store to get some additional things for Sunday’s dinner, we crashed. We didn’t even make dinner. Instead we worked on our talks for Sacrament Meeting and called it an early night—after having had less than 5 hours’ sleep the previous night.
I ended up doing the meal on Sunday as well, although another YSA was supposed to be in charge. She had decided to have spaghetti, which was easy enough, especially because I had purchased all the food. It was a cold, wet, blistery night so I didn’t expect a lot of people to come to the fireside. Still, I prepared for a large group and was surprised when we had 29 YSA come (with about 24 coming early enough for dinner). We spoke in the 10:00 meeting in our building and had YSA training afterwards. We were finished just as our ward was getting out of sacrament meeting. I stayed to practice with the Primary as we have the Sacrament program next week. Thus, we didn’t get home until nearly 4 p.m. (dusk), just long enough to load up the car and head to the center. I expected other YSA’s to be there to help cook, but we were the only ones, so I began dinner. We were supposed to have a YSA Student Council meeting at 5:00, so I felt everything had to be ready by then. Just before 5:00, I got a call from the girl in charge saying that the Student Council meeting had been cancelled and asking me if I had started dinner. When she learned that I had, she thanked me and said she wouldn’t be coming then until 6:00. She had a super busy weekend (working until 1 a.m. Sunday morning), so I didn’t really mind. Dad was a huge help, and everything went well. I have one more night to worry about food—Monday night FHE. It has been 5 days in a row, beginning with institute on Thursday night. Five days of non-stop YSA activities. I think even the YSA’s are feeling tired.
I have finally figured out the secret to our speaking assignments. In order to have time for The High Counselor to speak, plus Dad, plus a musical number, I need to take only five minutes. That gives me time enough to only share a short thought. So that is what I did on Sunday and it worked out perfectly. We also had a short testimony from a new missionary. I talked about what happened to King Benjamin’s people when he concluded his talk. He asked them if they believed his words and they answered: “Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2) What brings a mighty change in our hearts—enough that we want to do good continually? Was that the feeling we had as we listened to the conference talks nearly two months ago? How long does that mighty change last? I also shared a quote from Ezra Taft Benson who said, “Becoming Christlike is a lifetime pursuit and very often involves growth and change that is slow, almost imperceptible. …“… True repentance involves a change of heart and not just a change of behavior. … Most repentance does not involve sensational or dramatic changes, but rather is a step-by-step, steady, and consistent movement toward godliness.” That tells me a change of heart is a lifelong pursuit, but we should see steady and consistent growth towards our goal to be like Christ. We all need that in our lives. We didn’t have to teach our lesson this week—no English speakers came, but the preparation time is so nice and I love learning more about the Book of Mormon—even if I only get ideas for a talk.
I had an ‘it’s a small world’ experience during our Ward YSA meeting after church on Sunday. We were meeting with a member of the Bishopric, the two ward YSA reps, a member of the RS Presidency and her husband (who may have been representing the Elders Quorum). The RS Counselor conducted our RS class today and I could tell she was not a native Danish speaker, so when I sat next to her in our meeting I asked her what country she came from. She said Chile. We told her that Clayton has served there, and she asked what city. When I said Vina del Mar, she said that is where she is from as well. I told her it had been about 11-12 years ago. She had served a mini mission at that time. So, she looked at my name tag, fiddled with her phone, and then showed me two pictures of none other than our missionary Clayton. He was wearing his suit, and was with about 20 other missionaries—maybe a Zone conference? In one of the pictures the missionaries were posing, and Clayton was front and center in a ‘thinking’ pose. It was funny to meet someone in Denmark who knew Clayton all those many years ago. The woman’s name was Alejandra Bruun (not sure of her maiden name).
Love, Mom
Kære Familie,
Sunday, we both spoke in the Gladsaxe I ward, our first time in that ward. We both have some friends there from the temple or other places and it felt comfortable to be in that ward. Mom decided to speak in Danish and she took 5 minutes. Everyone said her Danish was very good and they understood everything she said. I spoke for 15 minutes on the Prophet Joseph Smith, but mine was in English except for my closing testimony. I just can't bring myself to attempt a talk in Danish, given the time I was given and the things I want to say. I also don’t want anyone to be focusing on my accent or grammar mistakes rather that the message. Of course, this assumes that the message is still coming through better with the pauses for translation, then if I just stumbled through the Danish words. About a third of the talk was my personal testimony of Joseph Smith and I shared 2 experiences from when I was 14 and 19 and the Holy Ghost witnessed to me that the Sacred Grove experience actually happened. I will attach the talk to the email, since I wrote it down to help with translation. Maybe you will want to share my experiences in an FHE as the message from Grandpa to the grandkids for this week.
There has been a church film crew in town this week, and Saturday and Sunday they have been filming people for what I think are "I Am a Mormon" spots that will be put on Mormon.dk. They were filming Sacrament Meeting Sunday so it was a little bit distracting and interesting that about 3 cameras were there catching different scenes, including preparing the Sacrament, the Prayers and even the trays being passed around. That surprised me a little because I have always assumed that similar scenes in videos were staged, and not real meetings taking place because of the sacred nature of the Sacrament. I guess I know better now. Of course, they filmed the bishop conducting and some of the speakers, I didn't really notice if they did much of mom or I -- I think not, but they did film a little of Brother Ringheim. Before the meeting started, they were also filming in the foyer and outside. I know that one family was involved with little kids, as they had them walking up the sidewalk arriving to church (it was cold and raining) and then sitting in the chapel. A few weeks ago, we were asked to submit suggestions for YSA who would be effective on topics that they were looking for. We know that at least 5 of them were given the opportunity to participate. Most of them were filmed on Saturday but a couple were done yesterday after Sacrament meeting. I think these new segments will be available on the Internet in the Spring Time.
Because of the Danish privacy laws, they had to notify everyone in attendance that they would be filming the meeting and that by sitting anywhere except the last 2 rows of the chapel, they were giving consent to be included. The last 2 rows were the "safe zone". They had notices on the bulletin boards last week and before the meeting started, they had a brother with a sign standing by the door of the chapel. The bishop asked us last week if we were OK to be filmed while we were speaking. If not, I guess they would have found new speakers.
We had a fireside Sunday night with a dinner. Attendance started out slow, we were not expecting more than about 15, but they kept coming in and we finally had 29 in attendance. The food ended up just right with just a little of everything left over. We had a new sister there who made an effort to join us from Nykobing - Falster branch in the South on the Island of Lolland. It is a 90-minute drive by car. She came on a bus and is a new UV rep for the branch. She is working as an Au Pair and is from the Philippines. Miranda was also there, so we had translation for the 4 of us. I appreciated it as President Michael Olsen was the speaker and he did a very good job speaking about stress and depression. I think he hit a chord as our wrap up speaker on our theme for the month. He told me afterwards, that based on comments and questions and a couple of youth who talked to him afterwards, that we have some who are struggling with this. He started out with 2 interactive role plays and instant involvers which added a lot to a fireside type of a talk. The first involved 4 of the YSA with a deceased person, the killer, an angel and an instructor. The deceased was hit in the stomach 3 times by the killer and kissed on the cheek by the angel one time. The instructor decided whether he was hit or kissed. It was cute but the purpose of this one never came through to us in translation. I didn't see how it applied to his discussion that followed. For the second one he had a mixture of sand, pebbles and stones that he poured into a glass container so they could see the material. He said this is a scientifically prepared mix that is used as the foundation for all the roads in Denmark. Asphalt or the cobble stones are put on top of it. It is a very strong mixture that makes the roads really hard and stable. The interaction of the sand and other sizes of rocks support each other so that the synergy makes the whole compound stronger than any of the individual components. He used that as an analogy in his discussion where different people help us to be stronger and our different experiences in life combine to make our whole selves better than we would be just focusing on a segment of our lives.
President Olsen is the 1st Counselor in the stake presidency. The presidency has been together for 7 years. He shared with us tonight that he has been called to be a mission president and will be released in February or a little later from his stake calling. His new call came around the first of October by President Eyring in a video conference. He knows what mission he will be in, but it won't be announced until the church releases the new callings in the Church News. I really respect this man and I think it is a wonderful calling for he and his wife. He thinks their daughter, Mikaela (17 and one of our YSA), will go with them for the first year but that Christian (returned missionary this year) will probably stay home and get into the university. Since President O'Bryant will be released next year, I wonder if President Olsen will be the new mission president for Denmark?? That would be cool but maybe also hard to serve in your own country when it is so small and everyone knows him from his stake presidency years.
FHE was interesting; we had 20 come out. 2 of the YSA talked about stress and then they did a 15-minute meditation period with the lights off, either lying on the floor, which most of them did, or sitting in the dark. A soft voice on a video with music told us to let the stress go and feel it leaving from the top of our head and down our bodies. It was a little strange but gave me a chance for a short nap (I stayed in a chair and did not lie down)!
We had 2 investigators come; one was unexpected and unknown. His name was Michael and he is probably in his early 40's, some graying hair. It became obvious to him as the night went along that this was a younger crowd! He was a little uncomfortable with the meditation, as I was as well, but did lie in the floor after some hesitation. Morten Olsen did a great thing by talking to him a lot both before and after FHE about his background and the church. He gave him two pamphlets on the restoration and plan of salvation and discussed what the BofM is about, as a 2nd witness to the Bible. It was a little unclear how he came to the Center tonight, but I think the Birkerød elders may have talked to him and invited him and he came. (I later found out that Michael got their phone number from somewhere and called them. They had not met him yet.) The elders did not come and were surprised that he came when we called them. Michael said he would also be in Church on Sunday but would take a pass on Institute if it was the same crowd. Morten later said he was quite knowledgeable about the Bible and was looking for religious instruction tonight and was surprised that it was only practical teaching, even though it was good.
Michael surprised us again by coming Thursday for dinner and Institute. He decided that he wanted to see what a gospel lesson was like after “our strange” FHE activity. He seemed to enjoy it all again and seems really interested in the church. None of this is scaring him away yet. We had 29 to the lesson and of course a few less than that for dinner. Once again, we did not have any English speakers so our preparation time on the lesson was not needed. We had 3 investigators come again, Alma, Michael Larsen and Theodore. No missionaries were there. Alma, who is only 17 and has met with the missionaries twice, said she was a little overwhelmed by it all. Theodore, a friend of one of the girls, asked several questions during the lesson and had some comments. He seems intellectually interested at the very least. Michael also came to church on Sunday as he said he would. But we were expecting him in our ward at 12:30 and had the missionaries there watching out for him. He came to the G1 ward at 10:00 instead and ended up listening to us. I hope he doesn’t start thinking that the church revolves around us, instead of the members here. He only stayed to Sacrament meeting, but hey, does he look like a golden contact or what?
Quotes to end with:
“We cannot find Enos-like faith without our own wrestle before God in prayer. I testify that the reward is worth the effort. … I promise that if you do these things sincerely and unceasingly, the words Christ spoke to His disciples will be fulfilled in your life: ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ Elder Robert D. Hales
“Petitioning in prayer has taught me, again and again, that the vault of heaven with all its blessings is to be opened only by a combination lock. One tumbler falls when there is faith, a second when there is personal righteousness; the third and final tumbler falls only when what is sought is, in God’s judgment—not ours—right for us. Sometimes we pound on the vault door for something we want very much and wonder why the door does not open. We would be very spoiled children if that vault door opened any more easily than it does. I can tell, looking back, that God truly loves me by inventorying the petitions He has refused to grant me. Our rejected petitions tell us much about ourselves but also much about our flawless Father.” Elder Neal A. Maxwell
Love, Dad
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