Kære familie, 10
December 2017
Tonight we attended a piano concert given by Josh
Seibert. He is the young man from Orem,
UT who has been on an internship for school the past 3 months. His original internship was for 5 months, but
he had some problems with his visa, so he has to go home early. Just like any other country, Denmark has
rules for how long you can be in their country and what documentation you need
to stay. We are fortunate to have a
Danish senior couple (The Koch’s) working in the mission office to take care of
immigration issues for the mission.
Originally, Josh was going to perform in a Stake-sponsored musical
concert at the end of January, along with another accomplished pianist in the
stake. But his visa problems caused his
part of the concert to be moved up. As a
result, he didn’t feel as prepared as he would like. He played all classical music—Beethoven and
Chopin—for about 40 minutes. It was
definitely ‘concert-performance’ style.
Josh has not been active in church since he came to Denmark—I don’t know
if he was active before. It is easy to
move to another country and kind of get lost—on purpose. But his love of music kept him from being
totally lost from church because he needed
the church, if only for the pianos in the building. That is where people noticed him, especially
the stake music chairman who attends in the same building he practices. Josh lived in an apartment very close to the
church—the one directly behind the temple.
He practiced several hours a day—whenever he could get into the
building. He became good at knowing the
right times to get in the building. He
knew the building was open on Sunday, so he came after church and just stayed long after everyone else went home and
practiced. I also think he became
friends with the missionaries who have keys to the building. There were several times when we were in the
building during off hours, that I could hear beautiful classical music
permeating the halls of the church. The
church is on 3 floors with the distribution center on a fourth floor, and the
temple housing on a 5th floor.
There are pianos on all 3 floors in the church. If an activity was going on one floor, Josh
just chose another floor to practice.
But he preferred the baby grand piano in the chapel. For tonight’s performance, he removed the
music stand from the grand piano so he could open the entire piano for the last
song—the one he had memorized. We met
him for the first time in October when he came to the center for the cultural
night open house. He played for us
then. He is very personable and likeable
and made fast friends with the other YSA’s.
But despite our invitations, he never came to any of our
activities. His music is such an
inspiration. I hope he recognizes where
those talents come from because he truly has a gift. By the way, his internship here in Copenhagen
had nothing to do with music. He is
studying some kind of engineering. Music
is just his hobby—but it is also his passion.
It has always been difficult to describe our missionary
duties. We are YSA missionaries, but
what does that mean? It means we cook
and sometimes teach lessons, but that is only the outward appearance of what we
do. The inward appearance is more
difficult to describe. But I think I
have found a word—we minister. Sometimes we do that by merely being
present. We see that as the YSA come to
the center and immediately look for us when they come in. If we are there, then all is well. Sometimes they greet us and give us a hug and
that is all they need. Other times, they
seek us out and just want to talk. I
guess it is like coming home from school and knowing mom is there to greet
you. If you need to talk about your day,
she is there. If not, having her there
is enough. I have always referred to
those times as the crossroads. We try to
be at the crossroads for our youth. That
is why we wanted to attend the baptism for Daniel—if we didn’t come, it
wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
We wouldn’t have been missed. But
because we were there, he knew we cared and we now share in that special
memory. It is also the reason I readily
said ‘yes’ to Gismo Borup when she called to get a ride to the baptism. That precious visit we had with her to and
from the baptism was the essence of ministry. At one point, Dad asked her what she wanted
to be ‘when she grew up.’ She is
studying business at school and would eventually like to be a wedding
planner. She would be very good at it
because she is the dynamics behind all of our big events—planned down to the
smallest detail with a lot of creativity.
She also said that she hopes to marry a wealthy husband—tongue-in-cheek,
but with a lot of truth behind it. I
told her that her plans sound wonderful except that I hope she doesn’t marry a wealthy man. I told her that there is something very
binding in a relationship when all you have is each other. You can’t live on money, so you have to live
on love. Those struggles can actually
strengthen your marriage if you work together.
Any struggle—not just being poor, that you work together to overcome can
bring those same binding experiences to a relationship. We don’t ask for them, but we should welcome
them and use them to strengthen us, not to break us. I really enjoyed the BYU devotional last
week. Bryan Ashton talked about
happiness. He said, “There is no joy or
happiness without something to overcome.”
And later, “The happiest people are those who have challenges in their
lives and are striving to overcome them.
Because of their challenges, they rely upon God, and in so doing, feel
His help and love in their lives.” Now,
I don’t wish poverty, illness or other challenge on anyone, but I also don’t
want to take away those opportunities when they come. I think I will share this talk with Gismo
this week.
We spent a lot of time this week on the Christmas Slide Show
for the mission zone conferences. The
first conference is this coming Thursday in Jylland. The Sjælland conference will be the following
Thursday (December 21st). So
we needed to have this project completed this week. We were still waiting on pictures from a few
missionary parents, but they finally came in.
As we were double checking to see that we had included all the
missionaries, I had a thought hit me that we had forgotten a senior couple—The
Kochs. I don’t know why they weren’t on the
list we received from the mission office, except that they are church service
missionaries and not full-time missionaries.
But I am glad I thought of them.
David called them yesterday and we received their pictures today. With that, I could complete the movie—with
captions, animations, and music. I know
the missionaries will enjoy this part of the conference.
We didn’t have any English speakers at institute again, so
we didn’t teach. But I love studying and
preparing anyway. We studied the
chapters where Alma and Amulek preach in Ammonihah. There are some great
doctrinal lessons in those chapters—about the resurrection and judgment. I’ve always thought that teaching was the
best job in the church! We had a good
group out to institute, including 4 missionaries—one of them being the District
Leader who met with Daniel before institute for a baptismal interview. The class seemed smaller, though, because
there were about 10 YSA in the missionary prep class that began that night. They are meeting in the institute
office. If we do teach an English class,
we will now meet in the kitchen. This
is the first time that we have seen the missionary prep class being taught since
we have been here. I feel it is very
needed as we have 2 missionaries called already who will leave in February and
several more who should be getting ready to turn their papers in. (Our stake sent several missionaries off this
year without having taken the course.) Gismo
Borup is teaching the class. She is not
only a returned missionary who used Preach
My Gospel, but she teaches with enthusiasm and dedication. She has been the driving force behind the
class, and when the Stake Presidency couldn’t find the right person/couple to teach the class, she volunteered. Her younger brother was one of those
missionaries who left a few months ago having never had the missionary prep
class, so she feels there is a great need.
Those who attended were excited about the class. One young man, who has already received his
mission call, said that he has never been very good at reading the Book of Mormon consistently. He said after the class, he is now motivated
to study it in earnest—to establish a habit.
If the class accomplishes nothing else, it will be a success, but I’m
sure it will do much more.
We watched the First Presidency Devotional on Monday for
FHE. We had a lot on the agenda for that
night and I don’t think the YSA realized that the devotional was so long. But we enjoyed the talks and the music, and I
think it got us in the right mood for the rest of the evening. Afterwards we divided into two groups—one
group decorated the center for Christmas with Christmas music playing in the
background; and another group went into the office to write Christmas letters
to the missionaries serving from our stake.
I went into the kitchen and made glogg (wassail) and pandekager (Danish
pancakes). I actually got to the center
earlier to make the glogg so that when everyone arrived, they would smell the
wonderful spices emanating from the kitchen and give the center a homey
feeling—hygge, as the Danes would say.
It worked. It turned out to be a
late night, and no one seemed in a hurry to go.
The YSA transformed the center into a festive place and our 8
missionaries all got several notes from our YSA. They also enjoyed the refreshments. At 10:30, the last of the YSA cleaned up the
left-over decorations and we vacuumed the pine needles from the boughs that
decorated the window sills. It was after
11 when we left the center to walk home.
We have walked home that late before, but not in the winter time. Tivoli was closed—just the last few visitors
were trickling out, and the streets were almost empty. There was a different feel in the street and
for the first time I felt a little unsettled walking at night. The people who were still out all seemed to
be drunk, and we passed a group that were having an altercation—mostly with
yelling at each other. Dad quickly ushered
us on our way, but I was a bit worried that it would turn into something more
and wondered if we needed to help. I was
glad to get home.
I hope you all have a great week. We are excited to hear about your Christmas
activities—recitals, etc. Thanks for
sending us the snow pictures. We had
some snow flurries tonight on our way home from the concert an I think we
should get some snow this week. I can’t
believe that we have missed so many big events in Houston while we have been
gone—the Flood, the Astros, and now Snow.
That probably won’t happen again for another quarter of a century!!!!
Med kærlighed,
Mom
Kære Familie Sunday,
December 10, 2017
The
mission is getting very close to our goal of 60 baptisms. We attended one for Daniel on Saturday in
Roskilde. He has attended Institute
twice and of course has been attending more Sunday meetings. His mother and younger brother attended the
baptism to check it out. They seemed curious and interested in the service and
the nice reception he was receiving. The
sister missionaries were Skyping the service back to Georgia so his girlfriend,
who introduced him to the Gospel, could participate in it. That made me a
little nervous but mom talked to our mission president today and he said it is
ok to stream a baptismal service. The sun was streaming in windows behind the
font and it made for a pretty backdrop and seemed to be an omen of good things
to come. The missionaries decided to
have their weekly district meeting around this event so there were 14
missionaries there, including the zone leaders and sister trainers. There were also at least that many ward
members there and he was baptized by a member of the ward. All those were good
signs that he is being fellowshipped well.
There were a handful of YSAs who came to support him.
We
had a long FHE Monday. We went to the Center at 4:15 with some shopping for
supplies on the way. We pulled out the Christmas decorations box so that it
would be ready, as decorating was part of the planned activity. The program was crowded but amazingly, the
kids stayed around and accomplished most of it. We started with the First
Presidency Christmas Devotional. That
went until 8:30, which is when some of the youth normally start drifting home; those
that live the furthest away. I don't
think anyone left that early this time.
Then some started decorating the Center for Christmas while in the
office they had it set up to write personal cards to our missionaries serving
from the stake and some BofM testimonies for the Roskilde sisters. Quite a few cards were written to our 8
serving missionaries so that they each got at least 3 to 4 cards, if not
more. We only had 2 testimonies but they
are nice and the cards were the more important thing for them. The Christmas decorations look really nice
and some of the YSA put in a lot of effort to make it festive. Mom made Crepes
and a Wassail as all of this was going on.
They ate 3 batches of Crepes and went through a large jar of
Nutella. There were also oranges and
clementine's. As it got late they kept
on working, and the last of them did not leave until the decorating was
declared done at a little before 11:00.
We then finished some final cleanup with vacuuming, etc. We did not get home until 11:40. There was a
great spirit of service and togetherness.
Alma, our 17-year old investigator, was there again and was one of the
last ones to leave. She has really
bonded with our YSA's. She worries me
though, as she reminds me a bit of Eline, who also attended Institute quite
faithfully for more than a year before her baptism, and now is less active
after less than a year in the church. The difference is maybe that I don't
think Alma has a boyfriend, and that will make a huge difference. She is trying to be an actress however for a
career and that won't be easy to combine with Church membership.
On Tuesday, the
Amager sisters called in the morning with more complaints about their
heat. It stopped working again or never
really got very warm from Saturday night when I tried to fix it. I carried on text conversations with Elder
Koch in the office about possibilities to fix it since he is familiar with
local heaters which run on hot water. He
could not go to the apartment until Wednesday, so mom and I went over after
lunch. I had an extra thermostat which I
wanted to try to see of it would fix the problem. It seemed to be helping and the sisters
texted back at night that it was working great and they were getting heat
again. One more little rescue done. The sisters sent cookies to us on Wednesday
with a nice thank you note. They were so
happy not to have to wear their coats in the apartment.
Tuesday night we
drove Elder and Sister Yates to the Mission home for their farewell dinner and
testimony meeting. Sister O'Bryant
prepared a wonderful roast beef dinner and then we had time to share thoughts
and experiences from our missions. Yates
have had a couple of neat missionary sharing experiences with their neighbors
in the last couple of weeks as they felt they needed to meet them and do more
to share the gospel before they left. The two they approached were both
welcoming and nice and they were able to share something about the church. They
also both accepted Book of Mormons.
It is hard to
see the Yates go when we came out together. I haven’t been able to not have
some thoughts that it could be us on the way home to see the family again. On the other hand, they don't seem envious of
our opportunity to stay 5 more months. I
think it depends on what you are mentally prepared for. We have more to accomplish and are excited
about the things that are coming up.
The Yates stayed
over with us for their last night in Denmark.
We woke at 6:00 and they wanted to leave for the airport at 7:00 but
were not ready until 7:30. That meant we caught more morning traffic. We parked
their car which barely fit all the luggage plus me, and I helped them wheel the
luggage into the airport. There was too
much for them to handle in one trip without a cart or a porter, neither of
which I have seen in this airport. We
had trouble finding he KLM service desk - I wish they would mark them better
with directions at the entrance doors.
We went up and down the length of Terminal twice before we found it in
small letters at the Air France service counter. Their large bags were ok at 50 lbs. but there
were issues with the carry-on’s which can only be combined 12 kilos for 2 carry-ons’. Sister Yates for a bad start, had 3 including
her purse. The weight was not even close
so they had to check both carry-on’s as extra bags and it cost a total of 3600
kr or $300 for each bag. Elder Yates
appeared philosophical about it - what are you going to do at this point - but
Sister Yates was mad and sick about the cost.
We had to go to another window to pay the fee, but the line was very
short. I left them after that for their
long flight home. Copenhagen to
Amsterdam to Minneapolis to SLC and then a drive to Brigham City.
We had mixed
commitments for Saturday. We had arranged
a visit to the Jule market at Kronberg Slot, lunch at a cafe and then a visit
to the Maritime museum all in Hillerød.
Jensons and Johnsons were going to be with us. Daniel's baptism came up however for 11:00,
so our plans changed and we were going to meet them in Hillerød just for the
museum portion of the day. Then even
that changed. Gismo called in the morning
to see if she could catch a ride to the baptism - one way only as she was going
to go on to her parents for the day.
Then that changed and she needed a ride back to Copenhagen. We dropped her off at about 1:15 and decided
that we really did not want to go to the museum that badly since it was getting
late in the day. I called Elder Jenson
and begged off. We finished taping our
Christmas packages to mail but opted to eat lunch before going to the
Post. That was a mistake and we missed
their closing at 2:00 by 20 minutes. The packages will get in the mail on
Monday now.
Mom is mentioning the many hours we spent this week on the
Christmas Devotional slide show for the 2 zone conferences. It is a fun project and we use a Microsoft
program called Movie Maker to put it all together and have 4 slides of each
missionary with background music. We
always have technical problems with the program which adds to the
challenge. One would think, that since
we used the program last year it would be easier, and perhaps it was, but since
it has been a year, it is almost like starting over with it. There were also a lot of quirks with it where
funny things would happen that we could not understand. For example, the music would pause where it
shouldn’t, pictures we had in the program would disappear and not be there any
longer, animations would not work, etc. I don’t think that happened to us last
year. Last year, I did most of the work
on the program. This year, mom wanted to
do that, so I did the background work of chasing parents to send us their 4
pictures and making sure everyone was accounted for. Then we worked on the technical issues
together. Mom also wanted some different
music, so she listened to a lot of songs selecting some nice ones. We ended up using a Lexi Walker, Jerod
Radnich, the Piano Guys, Nathan Pacheco, Michael Buble, etc. It is a nice assortment of Christmas music
that we think is appropriate for a missionary group, i.e. not any silly or just
fun songs. Hopefully the overall effect is nice. We think it turned out really well. Just a funny, side note which shows my lack
of technical ability and forgetfulness together: This morning, I got the program ready to give
to President O’Bryant by copying it onto a jump drive and testing it on both my
laptop and mom’s. It plays on moms (she
has the Movie Maker program and I do not) but it wouldn’t play on mine. That did not worry me too much because I
thought President also has the program and I was thinking it just required the
program to play. I gave him the jump
drive at church and he emailed me later to say it wouldn’t play and seemed to
be just gibberish without pictures or music.
He did a google search and said the program had to be “published or
rendered” which changes the file from a .WLMP format to a .MP4 format (changed
from a ‘project’ to a music file). Once
I did that after church, the new MP4 music file can be played by any video
player so it will play on my laptop now as well. I am sure I had to do that last year as well,
but I have no recollection of taking that step. It is so hard to get old and
not have any memory of past things!
Well, this will be a short letter this week. It seems like not as many interesting things
have happened. I look forward to reading
your news of the week or having some FaceTime with you all.
Love, Dad.
Here are my quotes for the week from our Institute lesson. Are we each living up to what we agreed we
would do?
President
Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) taught that both men and women were given
assignments in the pre-earth life:
“In the world before we came here, faithful
women were given certain assignments while faithful men were foreordained to
certain priesthood tasks. While we do not now remember the particulars, this
does not alter the glorious reality of what we once agreed to. You are
accountable for those things which long ago were expected of you just as are
those we sustain as prophets and apostles!” (“The Role of Righteous Women,” Ensign, Nov. 1979, 102).
Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of
the Twelve Apostles described the responsibilities God’s children have in
mortality regardless of their chosen state in the premortal life:
“Premortality is not a
relaxing doctrine. For each of us, there are choices to be made, incessant and
difficult chores to be done, ironies and adversities to be experienced, time to
be well spent, talents and gifts to be well employed. Just because we were
chosen ‘there and then,’ surely does not mean we can be indifferent ‘here and
now.’ Whether foreordination for men, or foredesignation for women, those
called and prepared must also prove ‘chosen, and faithful.’ (See Revelation 17:14; D&C 121:34–36.)” (in Conference
Report, Oct. 1985, 21; or Ensign, Nov. 1985, 17).
President Harold B. Lee explained that although many
were called and foreordained in the premortal life because of their valiance,
they must exercise faith and good works during mortality to realize the full
blessings of their calling (see D&C
121:34):
“God
may have called and chosen men in the spirit world or in their first estate to
do a certain work, but whether they will accept that calling here and magnify
it by faithful service and good works while in mortality is a matter in which
it is their right and privilege to exercise their free agency to choose good or
evil.
“… I
fear there are many among us who because of their faithfulness in the spirit
world were ‘called’ to do a great work here, but like reckless spendthrifts
they are exercising their free agency in riotous living and are losing their
birthright and the blessings that were theirs had they proved faithful to their
calling. Hence as the Lord has said, ‘there are many called but few are
chosen’” (Decisions for Successful Living [1973], 169).
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