Ready for our Trip - cold !!!!
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art - Outside courtyard looking to Sweden
Dybbol Banke Battlefield
Hederslev Dom Kirke
Creche at Tyrstrup Kirke in Christiansfed
Ribe Dom Kirke Tower with Elder and Sister Hall
Bones of King Canute dated from 1086—thought the grandchildren would be interested in this. He was a Viking king.
Gråsten Palace (summer residence of the Royal Family)
Kolding Castle
There was a huge trainset—2 trains that traveled in opposite directions around the mock city of Kolding. It was really cool.
There were also dress-up clothes for adults and children that we couldn’t resist.
Sønderborg Castle
The most beautiful nativity scene. (St. Alban’s church)
Picture ornaments from Stephanie
Kære Familie Sunday,
January 7, 2018
Well, I missed a week in letter writing. Mom did a great job of filling in our
activities for the last week of December.
These 2 weeks have just flown by – lots of down time during the
Christmas and New Year’s holidays for everyone – but we filled them up with
some extraordinary travel and sightseeing.
It is always strange when we feel more like tourists than
missionaries. We always have our name
tags on though and wear them with pride and optimism. I like to travel with Elder Hall as he has a
missionary mindset, plus he is a bit of a bavard, and he is not intimidated to
open his mouth in any situation. It
seems that wherever we are, he finds a way to start a conversation with someone
and manages to slip in that we are in Denmark as missionaries for our Church
and what do they know about the Mormons?
He did this in a pizza parlor, in a museum, etc. Much to be admired. It led to the baptism of Anja in Bornholm
whom they met in a grocery store. I
don’t know if he has had other teaching opportunities since then, but he
spreads good cheer and is a great example.
I on the other hand, assume that the light from my eyes will attract
people to me to ask questions! That has
only happened a couple of times. I am sure in the final judgement, I will have
poor marks for opening my mouth. Hopefully,
there are other talents that will balance the scale.
A note to all
that Jared sent us a gift of a DNA test and we sent some saliva off to be
analyzed. It should be exciting to learn
something more about our blood line ancestors – 6 to 8 weeks of turn-around
time until we get a report. I think this
was a thoughtful, unique gift and I appreciate the planning that went into
it.
New Year’s Day,
we spent most of the day in cleanup mode, including putting away the Christmas
decorations and cleaning 2 apartments. Thankfully, the kids did a good job with
the temple apartment only leaving mom the bathroom to clean and mopping the
floors. We had to take a big load back
to the Center, including the 5 folding tables.
The young man from Sweden with no place to sleep, was kind enough to
help load and unload because he really had nothing else to do. He left at about
1:00 to do a walk-about downtown as his bus home was not until 4:00 pm. We tried to take a short nap at about 3:00,
but a temple counselor called and I had to return keys to him right away. I did get a 30-minute nap from 5:00 to 5:30,
after we had packed for our trip. The
Halls arrived just after 5:30, we ate a quick dinner of soup and then hit the
road to drive to Fredericia and our short sight-seeing trip. It is about a 2-hour drive and went ok in the
dark. We found the apartment, had the
right key - I had a bad feeling that it wasn't going to work - and got settled
in just fine. We ended the night by
planning our road trip for the next morning.
Exercise this week did not really seem
like an option with sharing an apartment.
We are trying to do our New Testament studying together but not our
Institute lessons. That would take too much time. Meals other than breakfast were on the road as
we traveled or got back to town in the evening.
Driving was
interesting and an adventure all week long.
Elder Hall and I split the driving, except that mom drove home from
Odense on Thursday night. On the way
from the Augustenborg to Sønderborg Slot we took two wrong turns. I was driving but the Navigator is always at
fault – right???? We went off the island
17 k's north to start with and then turned around, reprogrammed and proceeded
40 k's south before Mom called our attention to the fact that we were way off
course and approaching the German border.
We discovered the GPS was set for Kiel, Germany. (Navigator, right?) The 2 slots are only 10
min from each other, so we wasted the better part of an hour being dumb. Having
2 men in the front seats caused us several problems on the trip. We get to talking and do not concentrate on
the driving and navigating. Elder Hall
programmed Germany twice when he was navigating. Maybe there was someone there we were
supposed to contact!??
One of the
places we visited was Gråsten Slot - West of Sønderborg. This is one of the 4 Queen's residences and
it is maintained very nicely. (We have now seen all 4.) The grounds are kept open year-round as a
public park but the home is not open to the public. It has 5 little lakes, a
tennis court, fountain, apple orchard and a nursery. One of the workers told us the royal family
uses it only 6 weeks a year in the summer.
The queen is there for 3 weeks and one of the sons comes with his family
for 3 weeks for part of their summer holiday.
It has got to be very expensive to keep up these stately mansions for
the royal family. Why do the people put
up with it?
We discovered at
a place called Dybbol Banke, that at the time of our civil war, Denmark was in
its own “civil war” with Prussia (civil war because many of the residents of
the area sided with Prussia against Denmark).
They were fighting for control of southern Denmark. Denmark lost this
war – one of their worst defeats – and lost a good portion of land that connects
with Germany. They later got some of it
back but a part of the territory is still in Germany today. This is an open-air museum of a battle ground
in about 1864. It had trenches and
spiked timbers and seemed to look just like our Civil War battleground
pictures. It also reminded me of what the Nephite fortifications might have
looked like under Captain Moroni in his early days. The museum building was closed until Spring,
so we just wandered the grounds for a bit.
We had another
adventure with the car. We left for home
about 4:15 on Thursday, just about when we wanted. Mom was driving. We forgot about gas though,
and had to make an emergency detour outside of Køge to make sure we could get
home and not run out on the freeway.
There was not a gas station in sight when we took the exit, so we
stopped at a grocery store. I jumped out
and asked a man for directions, then hurried back towards the car. I saw a blue car backing up towards me, so I
circled around and opened the passenger door.
There was a big purse on my seat that shouldn't have been there, so I
grabbed the handle to move it. Just then
the lady driver screamed something at me and I realized it was not our car. I
quickly mumbled "undskyld" (excuse me), dropped the purse, backed
away and shut the door. Just about then, Mom yelled "David", from a
few cars away across the parking lot.
They had witnessed me getting into the wrong car! We all had a good laugh over my mistake. I am sure however the lady was not laughing
and had a different tale to tell her husband about the purse snatcher she had
bravely scared off with her screams. (I
hope she did not see the missionary badge on my coat!)
We got home at
6:30. Elder Hall had to be at the stake center at 7:00 for a bishopric training
meeting. We turned him around quickly
with a change of clothes, but he left at 6:50, so he was late.
We met Elder Hall at the stake center as
his meeting ended at 9:00. We then went
to the Ismageriet for an ice cream treat and ate our cones as he told us about
this first-of-the year bishopric training that included EQ Presidents, HP Group
Leaders and WML's. It seemed to have two
focuses: 1) A stake goal for 33 baptisms (achieved 30 in 2017) and increasing
HT'ing above 12% where it was in 2017.
It has decreased over the last 2 years from the upper mid-20's to this
low mark. 2) Training on the new "Come Follow Me" teaching approaches
for the Priesthood meetings. His overall reaction was that the meeting was not
worth his time or expense of coming from Bornholm to attend it. That was disappointing for him. There was not
much new that he hadn't already read in the church publications. I suppose many meetings are like that. We often learn the most from what the spirit
whispers to us about our stewardship.
Sometimes priesthood leaders are just setting the mood and creating the
opportunity for individual revelation.
That cannot be discounted, BUT we also need to remember what I hope will
always be Pres. Packer’s legacy, “It takes an awfully good meeting to be better
than no meeting at all.”
I had to deal with a flat tire on our car
as my first priority Friday morning. We jumped in the car Thursday night only
to find we were riding on a rim. I
called Elder Koch (responsible for the mission cars) at 9:00 am to get his
advice on where I should take the tire to fix the flat. He was not very helpful. He said the dealer is always a good choice or
another option was a car repair place. I
have not seen many of those and Denmark does not have any "Discount Tires
or NTW’s” that I have seen. He said he
knew of one place on Roskildevej but he could not remember the name of it or
where it was located. We ended the
conversation with me agreeing to do an internet search for a tire repair shop. The car dealer we use is on the other side of
town, at least a 30-min drive, so the internet turned up a shop about 4 k's
away that I decided to try. That is when
I first went to the car trunk to try to put on the spare tire. I was surprised that the Toyota Yaris does
not have a spare, a jack or a lug nut wrench.
There is no way to take the tire off.
What it has as standard equipment is a canister of flat repair liquid
and a tire pump that connects to the car’s 12-volt battery outlet. I had to read the instructions that came with
it to figure out what to do. Thank goodness
they were in English. It was pretty easy
to hook it all up, but I could see the white liquid coming out to the bottom of
the tire about as fast as it was going in, so I was not confident this was
going to work. Nonetheless, the tire inflated to be pretty hard so I figured I
had to drive quickly to the shop and get there before the tire went flat
again. The GPS said I had 8
minutes. The shop was where it was
supposed to be and they had me drive right into a bay. That was nice. As I got out of the car in the bay, the
worker was laughing as the air was coming out of the tire with a loud hiss and
more white liquid was leaking on the shop floor. I am sure I left a streak of
white in the road for my 4 k’s. Bottom
line, news a little later was that the tire could not be repaired and I had to
buy a new one. The story they told me, was that the liquid repair melts the
inside of the tire and it can no longer be patched after it is used. It had a
nail through the middle of the tread which I think could normally have been
patched for very little expense. Denmark in the last year has made the use of
this liquid illegal. However, it is
still legal to sell it, just not to use it.
The guy I was talking to thought that was funny, but not unusual for
some Danish laws. He said there are
still a lot of cars on the road without spare tires but that they should all
get one. (Duh, that would be nice to know.)
We were back to
the temple Friday afternoon.
Surprisingly, we had double the number of workers that we normally
do. One couple was new, but the others
all seemed to come back at the same time.
We did not have any more patrons, however, than before Christmas. We ran 2 Initiatory sessions, which we never
do (no patrons in them, just temple workers). I was sent as a patron on both
sessions, the 2nd one with Mom as the witness couple. We had 13 on the first session and only 9 on
the 2nd. Any New Year's resolutions to
attend the temple more often are not evident this week!
I will end with
these thoughts. As we woke up Wednesday
morning in the Fredericia apartment, I received an email from President
O'Bryant (7:30 am) passing on the information that President Monson had died
Tuesday evening around 10:00 pm at home with his family. The church has a pretty good news network to
get the word out to missionaries so quickly. That occupied a good bit of our
early day discussion with the Halls and we discussed his life, legacy and
speculated a bit about the future. It is
a really secure feeling to know that the transition in the church leadership
will be very orderly and predictable.
Policies and procedures will not change very much and President Russell
M. Nelson will be a beloved prophet. He
is 93, the 2nd oldest by only a month to Joseph F. Smith as an incoming
prophet. It is likely I am sure, he
thought he would never outlive the younger President Monson. I am grateful for the many positive
influences Pres Monson has been in my life.
I will remember him for the short phrases he used in his talks that made
them catchy and memorable. Here are a few quotes that I want to share that have
impacted me at some point in time.
· Work will win when wishy washy wishing won’t.
·
Faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind
at the same time, for one will dispel the other.
·
You see your children growing. You look at your grandchildren, and you say
to yourself, “What if I weren’t here? Have I done all I can to prepare them for
their role in life?” You realize you never quite do everything, but you want to
do better than what you have done.
·
We must not let our passions destroy our
dreams.
·
I wasn’t with Joseph, but I believe in
him. My faith did not come to me through
science, and I will not permit so-called science to destroy it.
·
Courage, not compromise, brings
the smile of God's approval.
·
The principles of living greatly
include the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with
cheerfulness, and trial with humility.
President Monson was a great man and leader.
Love, Dad
Remember to laugh often, love always and do a good turn
daily. Laugh at yourself and with your
family. It will overcome both
disappointments and trials.
Kære familie,
7
January 2018
It was nice to have a break from our routine the last 2
weeks, but now we return to ‘real missionary life’ and there seems to be a lot
we still need to accomplish in the next 4 months. One of the things I noticed about the Yates
apartment when we stayed there was how clean and organized it was. Also, Sister Yates had left notes for the new
couple about shopping, parking, YSA stuff, etc.
I think I need to do the same—which will require another ‘de-junking’ of
our apartment to get rid of some things I was hesitant to do before, and
leaving some detailed notes to help the new couple get started. We had a lot of help from the Brookes our
first two weeks as we adjusted to life in Denmark, but it would also have been
nice to have some practical help for our calling as missionaries. It is time to begin another mission
newsletter—and I realize that I will only do 3 more newsletters. We are preparing for the new returned
missionary course—My Plan, and always prepare our weekly institute lesson. We are brainstorming ways to boost the
attendance at institute and are trying to formulate a YSA budget for 2018—something
that has been missing in the YSA planning the last couple of years. And, I still have a few things on our Denmark
‘bucket list’ to see. So we will see
what happens.
The southern part of Jylland has a colorful history—between
Vikings and disputes between duchies and borders, the area has seen a lot of
upheaval. It is the question of Schleswig-Holstein—two
duchies which were never to be separated, but in fact, are separated
today. There were two wars fought over
these territories. The Prussians and the
Swedes fought the Danes in the first Schleswig war (1848-1851). The war ended in a Danish victory only
because international pressure made Prussia withdraw. Later, when the Danish king died without an
heir, questions arose over who should be king.
Denmark (and the new king) passed a law integrating the duchy of Schleswig
into the Danish kingdom. This resulted
in the second Schleswig war. The war
started and ended the same year—1864.
The outcome of this war was Denmark's cession of the Duchies of
Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia and Austria.
It wasn’t until after World War I that Denmark got the northern part of
Schleswig back again. Most of the places
we visited were in this disputed area.
The German influence is evident in many of the castles and churches and
there are a lot of German-speaking Danes in the south. But there are a lot of Danish-speaking
Germans in the north of Germany. I find
all this history fascinating, as well as the history of the Danish kings and
the Viking kings. So I thoroughly
enjoyed our visits to the museums/castles and reading about all the
history.
The other places we visited were churches—a lot of
churches! We even saw the skeleton
remains of a Danish King who died in 1086.
He was made a Saint, so the
people built a church in his memory and his remains can be viewed in the
basement. I was impressed with the
Christmas decorations in all the churches.
Some had large lighted Christmas trees, others had nativity scenes. All the churches are magnificent anyway, but
they are especially impressive at Christmastime. When we arrived back in Copenhagen on
Thursday night, we visited yet another church—this time to hear a free organ
concert in the huge Grundtvigs Church. We
never get to attend the free concerts here because they are on Thursday night,
but we didn’t have institute this week, so it was our one chance. The organist was fabulous. He played all Christmas music—from Denmark, Germany,
France and England. The last number was
10 variations on a French Christmas carol.
Each was unique. The acoustics in
the large hall were amazing. It was
definitely worth the visit.
We learned about President Monson’s death on Wednesday
morning—President O’Bryant sent a message to all the missionaries. Many of the testimonies in church today were
tributes to him and the impact his many years of service in the church had on
the people. I vividly remember getting
the news of President Hinckley’s death 10 years ago. The same feelings of gratitude and love
washed over me, but also the assurance that the Lord is in charge and another
prophet was prepared to lead His people.
I thought about our young missionaries who probably only remember
President Monson being the prophet. They
would have been 8-10 years old when he became prophet so he is the prophet of
their youth. I still remember when
President David O. McKay passed away—I was about 15 years old and still in
middle school. We were able to get
released from classes if we chose in order to watch his funeral which the
school showed in the auditorium. The
next two prophets—President Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee—only served
a short time and I don’t remember them much as the prophet, but I was well
familiar with them through the years and their conference addresses. President Kimball became president of the
church during my last year in high school and will always be fondly remembered. As I look back over my life-time, I recognize
the impact that each of these prophets, as well as beloved apostles, had on my life. How blessed we are to live in a time when we
can ‘listen to a prophet’s voice and hear the word of God.’ I have never doubted that these men are
called of God and when I follow their counsel, I feel peace; I feel joy; and I
know I am on the path that leads to eternal happiness. I am so grateful we have had the past years
to study each of our prophets in Relief Society/Priesthood lessons and hear
again their prophetic voice and guidance.
Just like the children sing, “Follow the Prophet; He knows the way,’ I
too add my testimony that we will never be led astray by following the prophet.
We are seeing a lot of changes in the mission and temple as
missionaries return home. One temple
missionary couple went home in December, another couple leaves next week and
another couple leaves in February. There
will be a whole new group of temple missionaries within a very short time. All these missionaries came out after we were
on our mission so
it is like saying good-bye to old friends that we may never see again. But one temple couple who left a year ago has
now returned. They are not missionaries and will only be
here for 3 months—on a tourist visa. But
they missed their service and requested to come back. It was good to see them again. The new couple replacing the Yates will
arrive in a few weeks, but we will probably not have much to do with them
because they are on the other island with their own Zone Conferences. We got to know Yates very well because we
came out with them, so we knew them in the MTC.
We also went to Festinord and the Nordic CES training together twice and
spent a lot of time with them while we traveled. They also attended two Senior Conferences
with us in Copenhagen and stayed with us a number of times when they had family
come to visit. None of those things will
happen with the new couple. We are also
saying good-bye to many young sister missionaries in the last few transfers (and
in the coming transfers) whom we have known their whole mission. It makes me realize just how long we have
been out in the field. We also got the
official word who the next mission president will be for our mission—it is
President Olsen, 1st counselor in our stake presidency. We have gotten to know him well as we meet
each month in our YSA council meeting.
He is a wonderful man and I have remarked many times about his insights
and wisdom. It is interesting that the
out-going and in-going mission presidents are not to speak to each other about
missionaries. So even though they know
each other from meetings and councils they attend, these two brethren don’t get
to ‘talk shop’—at least not any more than they would normally do about
missionary work in the stake. But
President Olsen is very familiar with the missionary work in Denmark—the stake
presidency puts a high priority on missionary work and reached their goal of 30
baptisms last year. President Olsen
will already know some of the missionaries that he will work with—but not any
of his senior couples as we will return home just before he becomes
president. One thing is constant in
church callings—and that is change.
I am still taking down some decorations left over from New
Year’s Eve, and there are Christmas decorations in the center that need to be
put away before FHE tomorrow. I think
everyone forgot about them as we have not had a meeting in the center since
December 21st, our last institute class. The YSA are back to work and school—many of
them had classes or final exams on January 2nd. We were supposed to have a YSA ‘kick-off’
meeting on Saturday night to set goals, outline monthly themes, and reorganize
the committees (i.e. FHE committee, food committee, activities committee,
etc.), but with planning the New Year’s Eve activity, that meeting never got
planned and 5 days just wasn’t enough time to get it ready (because of school
commitments with our leadership). So it
is postponed—maybe for a month. I am sad
because it puts us behind to start the year, but it is what it is. They are the leaders and need to take
responsibility for the program. We will
have our stake meeting on Wednesday, so we will get some direction then. We tried to jump-start the planning a bit by
preparing a tentative budget and giving ideas for activation. Dad also prepared a financial summary of our
New Year’s activity which came out about even (200 kr. in the black). I will be spending some time every day
practicing “The Lord’s Prayer,” and Danish classes have resumed. That’s what the New Year looks like for us.
I hope you are all
happy and well and have made some New Year’s resolutions. I have a new addition for our apartment which
Stephanie made for me—decorations for our ‘dead branch.’ She said she wanted to send me my family for
Christmas, but in lieu of that impossible wish, she sent me a picture of each
of you to hang on my branch. I’ll
enclose a picture. It was so
thoughtful. My love to all of you. I don’t tell you enough how grateful I am for
my family—and how you really look out for one another. It is a great blessing for me—a mission
blessing—and certainly makes my time away from you a little easier. I miss you all. Thanks for the pictures and updates.
Med
kærlighed,
Mom
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