Our Ny Theatre where the BofM musical is being played. These are missionaries out at 10:15 pm ready to greet the patrons as they come out.
Our Kickoff lunch last Saturday. Pres Olsen has his back to us and Brother Andersen is across the table.
Kære familie, 4
February 2018
We had some snow yesterday—not much to speak of, but what
came down didn’t melt because it has been so cold today. We sang “Once there was a Snowman” in Primary
and we saw the city out scraping and salting the bicycle paths. We will see the temperatures below freezing
several times this week, but will it be enough to freeze the lakes? The cold seems to bring a rash of
illness. We have two elders down with
pneumonia, and both have spent some time in the hospital. One of the elders has lost 25 lbs. and looks
gaunt. He is the AP and has had that
calling for over 6 months. His companion
of only two transfers will spend his last transfer elsewhere and a new AP will
be coming. I can’t help but think that
Elder Jensen (the one with pneumonia and longer tenure) is the one staying yet
another transfer because the president wants to keep close tabs on his
health. We also had an elder come down
with chicken pox—that is crazy because haven’t we wiped out that disease by
now? But it turns out that he had a
reaction to the chicken pox vaccination when he was young and never completed
the series. Luckily no one else came
down with chicken pox. He had a very bad
case which required multiple trips to the doctors as well. And the last illness was more emotional as a
new sister missionary who arrived just before Christmas, went home last week
after only 6 weeks in the field. We are
very fortunate to have good health and hope it continues the rest of our
mission.
We didn’t have ‘institute’ this week because there was stake
priesthood meeting. That took all the
men, and our regular teacher couldn’t come because she had to stay home with
her family so her Bishop husband could attend the meeting. I had been asked to teach the lesson to just
the girls, but when Gismo Borup found out that it was going to be a ‘girls’
night,’ she made other arrangements, which didn’t include a lesson or me. The Stake RS Presidency has been trying to
find an opportunity to talk to the YSA girls for some months, and this
unexpected ‘girls’ night’ seemed to present the perfect moment, so Gismo
invited them to come. They talked about Wendy Watson Nelson’s book What Would a Holy Woman Do? One member of the presidency is an excellent
speaker and had some great ways to involve the YSA. Unfortunately, there were only 12 girls who
came that night—I am always sad when there is a special program and very few
get the benefit from the message. Two of
the YSAs made dinner that night—chicken tacos/burritos. I told them to plan for fewer people, but the
chairmanship thought when the word got out that it was girls’ night, we would
get a huge crowd. Didn’t happen, and we
had a lot of food left over. We had
another activity coming up on Saturday, for which I was to prepare food. I thought we should use the left-over food in
some way. Gismo suggested I make chicken
soup with the shredded fajita-spiced chicken and the Mexican rice—which didn’t
particularly excite me. One of the RS
presidency stayed late to help me clean-up as I was all by myself. I missed Dad as he is always such a big help
to take out garbage, vacuum or whatever.
But he was at the Priesthood meeting.
I walked home at 10:00, alone and a little disappointed over the whole
evening, while mulling over how I could turn the Mexican left-overs into an
edible soup for Saturday.
The soup actually turned out okay—I didn’t use the rice—too
spicy, and added noodles, vegetables and chicken broth instead. I had a green salad and rolls and I think
everyone appreciated the soup because it was a very cold day. The YSA leadership had asked me to share some
training on supporting YSA activities. I
spoke about getting away from the ‘What’s in it for me?’ attitude to one of
“What can I contribute?’ I don’t think
this problem is unique to YSAs as I have experienced it many times over the
years in various callings. When there is
an activity, how do we decide whether we will go? If our decision is only based on what we can
get out of it, our attendance will be a ‘hit or miss.’ But if we go because there may be someone there
who needs us or because there may be something I can contribute, or just
because I want to support the people who have gone to the trouble to plan the
activity, I have moved into a higher level.
I remember my dad telling me once that there are three levels of motivation: Me, Others, and God. Am I thinking only of myself, or am I
thinking of others, or even better, am I thinking about what Heavenly Father
would have me do? I also mentioned the
story of Moses when the Amalekites fought against Israel. When Moses held his hands up, Israel
prevailed; when he let his hands down, Amalek’s people prevailed. Aaron and Hur held up Moses’ hands when they
became tired, ‘and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun;’ and Israel defeated their enemy. We are
the Aarons and the Hurs as we sustain and support our leaders. This principle is one that we need to
continually work on, but I feel it is an important one. I have been blessed by following it over and
over in my life. There are times when I
would rather not go to an activity, but I am always blessed when I do—there is
always some good I can do, someone I can help.
The chairmanship also used the kick-off training to
introduce an exciting YSA challenge for February—the month of love. They called it the Shurtliff Challenge—named
for us because we have already taken the Shurtliff Challenge (going on a date)
and succeeded in getting married. We are
the married couple they see and associate with the most, so they look to us as
their example—or so they said. The
challenge is that you ask someone to go on a date. Date
is defined as one girl and one boy (no group dates, but double dates are
allowed provided the couples are paired up), spend a specific time together
that is arranged in advance. Siblings or
relatives do not count. The couple takes
a picture of themselves during the date and posts it on Instagram and we are
supposed to print the pictures and put them up in our YSA center. The couple also puts their name in a box for
every date they have. They do this as
many times as they want throughout the month.
The more times they put their name in a box, the more chances they have
for some big prize (unknown at this point) which will be drawn on March 1st. We are sponsoring a ‘special date’ on
February 24th. This date is
worth 5 chances for those who participate.
I think we will do some of the Troll hunting that day. We had mentioned this activity to Gismo a
while back—about how much we enjoyed going on this treasure hunt. She had never heard of it—I suspect that is
typical of Danes or anyone—we tend to not know the about the things in our own
backyard. Anyway, the date will be to go
hunt for the trolls and take a picture with them. We will be there too—parked at one of the
troll sights with some kind of refreshment.
So, it should be an interesting month.
I applaud our YSA leaders’ creativity in generating enthusiasm among the
Young Adults and dating.
We got a new language teacher this week. It was hard to say good-bye to our former
teacher. She has been my teacher since I
began taking Danish. It is more common
to change teachers with every new module, but somehow I have been lucky to keep
the same teacher. I think she has been a
good teacher and prepared our class (me, in particular) well for our
end-of-module tests. She has just the
right amount of push to encourage us
to learn without making us feel too discouraged. But the language school is going through a
bit of a financial crunch—it began with a cut in materials (we had to buy our
own books), then new students had to pay an up-front fee which would only be
returned when they passed the test, and now they have cut the number of classes/week,
which means they need fewer teachers. I
think some of the teachers realized that they may be on the ‘chopping block’ so
started looking for new jobs. Our
teacher found a new job as a speech teacher to underprivileged children with
speech problems. This will be a
wonderful opportunity for her and I am very glad she has good employment. We went together as a class to get her some
flowers and baked a cake. I decided it
was also a good time to give her a copy of the Book of Mormon. I wrote her
a heartfelt note—in Danish—about what the Book
of Mormon means to me. I also
included a card where she can find out more about the church if she wants to
know more. The new teacher seems very
good as well—a different teaching style, but I am confident that it will be
good for our class.
After working on the Banner
on and off this week, I finished it tonight—I was waiting on articles from
President and Sister O’Bryant.
Unfortunately, it required a rework of two pages as the space I allowed
for their articles was too small.
Sister O’Bryant, who is a nurse, wrote a lengthy article about health in
the mission—both prevention and care when missionaries become sick. President O’Bryant’s message was motivating
the missionaries to make the transition from finding to committing. We have a goal of 75 baptisms this year and
we only had 2 baptisms in January—both in Iceland. We are doing well on our goals of finding
people, and bringing people to church, and even teaching, but we are way down
on committing people to be baptized. I
think a lot of this is due to having a lot of young, inexperienced
missionaries. Most of our missionaries
have been out for 9 months or less. And
it may also be due to some sickness that has kept missionaries from
working. The Book of Mormon Musical has taken a lot of time as well for those
missionaries serving around Copenhagen.
I felt for them last night as the performance didn’t end until after
10:30 and it was very cold! But we
always see them with smiles on their faces.
I hope everyone has a great week. I don’t have any pictures to send, unless you
want to see pictures of me in the kitchen—this week I baked chocolate cakes,
snickerdoodles, chocolate crinkle cookies, and carrot cake, besides the chicken
soup. I make way too many desserts!
Med kærlighed,
Mom
Kære Familie Sunday,
February 4, 2018
The theme of FHE
this week was the Book of Mormon musical again and we had 3 sets of
missionaries come to the Center for an activity of handing out BofM's on the
street. The turnout of YSA's was only
about 10 - it is consistently less exciting now than it used to be. None of us can quite put our finger on what
has changed. It is like air has gone out
of the room. But, every time we have had
an activity centered on missionary work or Family History, the attendance has
been low, so it is hard to judge anything by this activity. Despite that, the missionaries bring a lot of
excitement with them, so it seemed like the group had a good time. Each team with the missionaries gave away 2
to 3 books, so that was a success. The sisters brought a young French man back
with them. He is visiting Copenhagen for
just 2 days because the air fare was cheap and he "bumped" into the
missionaries on the street. He not only
wanted a book but asked what they were doing.
We think maybe Alma Nonboe brought him back to the Center to see if we
had a BofM in French. He hung around the
rest of the night and had good conversations with several of the YSA’s and Mark
Pedersen had a chance to explain the nature of the BofM to him. He served a French speaking mission so there
was some comradery there. The young man
left saying he would FaceBook Mark when he had questions and he was anxious to
read some that very night. Maybe something will come of it!? Some of them started playing Uno after that
and we left at about 9:30 as Gismo had a key to lock up.
A new girl, Karlee
Marquardt, came out to FHE for the first time.
We met her at the music fireside last week. She is a 19-year old exchange student from
Arizona and is attending the Copenhagen Business School until June. She has one of those bubbly personalities
that makes it easy to fit in. She mentioned
though how hard it is to come to something like this when you don't really know
anyone. She was sitting in her apartment
with her mom on the phone debating whether to come or not and finally said,
"Oh why not!". She was very
glad she came and had a good time even though she does not speak any Danish. She
also came to Institute on Thursday, so it looks like we may have an English
class again of 1. It may help us get the other two English speakers that we are
aware of, to come out as well.
We had time this week to watch the "An
Evening with a General Authority", which is the annual January broadcast
to CES personnel. It was by Elder
Christofferson and I think it is a "landmark type of speech" on truth
and how important it is in today's society that focuses so much on relativism. He explains very directly why that philosophy
does not make sense and is opposite to the gospel plan. I highly recommend it while you are cleaning
the house, etc. It does not appear to be
in print or a podcast so you will have to watch it. You can find it here: https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/watch/2018-evening-with-a-general-authority/2018/01?lang=eng
I
also read this quote from a departing sister missionary, that I thought was
pretty inciteful. "We're meant to
be anxiously engaged, not anxious. So,
fill yourself so full of faith in Christ, that you have no room for
fear." I think that is something that
can truly help me in my anxious moments, which sometimes seem to be many. I just need more faith. Also, mom ran across
an internet meme with this thought:
Before
you speak, let your words pass through 3 gates:
·
Is it true?
·
Is it necessary?
·
Is it kind?
Since I have this tendency towards “foot in mouth”, I could
add as additional gates: Is it thoughtful? and Is it appropriate to the
occasion?
Thursday, the stake had a general
priesthood meeting so all the men and boys went there. Only the girls had Institute this week. Elder Johnson had language class and Elder
Jenson was in the temple, so I drove up by myself and arrived during the
opening song - unnecessary but I just did not quit other stuff soon enough to
get ready and eat. Elder Johnson arrived
at the same time from his class, so we could sit together. We were the only 2 that needed translation,
so they paused the meeting after the prayer to have someone get the microphone
and translate for us. It was embarrassing that we arrived late and then had our
language handicap, but thoughtful of them to provide for us. The system was not
working well again however. It tends to
go in and out. It quit after the first speaker but came on again 2 speakers
later but then had static and would cut out and in the rest of the night. It
was such a distraction that it was better not to listen to it at all. Consequently, I got very little out of the
talks. The subject was home teaching and
each speaker addressed it from a youth, returned missionary, EQ President, HP
Group Leader, High Councilor and 2 members of the stake presidency. It must have been thoroughly thrashed
about. HT'ing in the stake has been in
the low 20%, so it is getting a lot of attention to improve during the first
part of this year. (see further comment from today at the end of the letter.)
We
have not been back to the theater where the Book of Mormon musical is playing,
so I really don’t have an update for you on that. I hear unofficially, that they are giving out
around 200 copies every performance and some of the members commented today, in
testimonies or in hallway discussions, that they are getting questions at work,
etc. I think the feeling in this case is
that this exposure is positive for the Church.
Most people who see it are a little uncomfortable with the language and
realize that even though they don’t know much about Mormons or missionaries,
that this presentation would not be fair to any church, and they feel a little
bad about that.
The
temple was nice again this week. We are
seeing an increase in temple workers and that has got to make the coordinators’
jobs easier. There is not a corresponding increase in patrons however. Mom and
I were assigned to lead the 2nd session. We did not have any patrons
at 6:30 so they were going to cancel it, but the temple matron wanted to keep
the temple workers busy (not release them to go home as we already had plenty
of workers in sealings, baptisms and Initiatories also going on) and so the
session went ahead. We had 1 man and 4
women, all temple workers, on the Danish session. With a less risky situation (in terms of
making a bad mistake) I decided to go without the earphones for the entire
thing. There were a few times where I
was confused and wasn't sure what was being said, but for the most part I could
translate the Danish into the English words and understand where we were. I don't think I made any mistakes in
officiating, other than being a touch slow with starting the prayer in the
prayer circle. I was waiting for
something more that did not come and there was just a moment of awkward silence
until I moved around the altar to lead the prayer. It would be wonderful to relate this as an
example of the gift of tongues or a major breakthrough in understanding Danish,
but in reality, even though it was a very nice feeling, it would not have
happened without the familiarity with the temple ceremony. (My prayer was in English!) Nonetheless, it
was a confidence builder for the next time.
Saturday
was the Kickoff meeting for Institute.
It was delayed from the first weekend in January until today, because
the leadership just did not get around to planning it with the New Year's Fest
and exams they were all taking. It was
scheduled from 12:00 to 6:00, a long meeting for a Saturday, in my
opinion. The YSA turnout was
disappointing. We had 8 plus the 3
leadership when we started but eventually got up to about 16 in total. Brother Andersen and Pres Olsen each took
some time after lunch to set the tone. (They had to leave shortly after so they
did not stay around.) I then did about 20 minutes of training on our Theme /
Initiative "Invite a Friend". I
started with an activity of 3 of them blowing up 6 balloons; in teams of 2 and
1. Obviously, the team of 2 was clearly
the winner and then we talked about the difference that a friend can make to
any activity we are involved with. Karlee
(the new American student) was able to explain how much it has meant to her to
be invited to FHE, Institute and on some fun ‘friend’ things as she arrived a
stranger in Denmark. I also had Rebecca
Stewart talk for a couple of minutes on her approach to inviting friends to FHE
or Institute. She has been a good
example of that, from my observation. (Rebecca wanted to speak in Danish, so I
could not follow up effectively on what she said, since I did not understand
it.) It was frustrating that the
technology did not work for me (again).
I had tested it all before we started and it was working perfectly, but
when I needed it, I could not get a picture to come up on the TV. I ended up just showing a short video on my
I-pad, the music only to the song, "You've got a friend in me", and I
did not try to use another 4-minute video that I had as an example of the power
of inviting people to come to church, as my allotted time was up, in any case. Other than
the turnout, the day seemed to go very well.
They had some breakout sessions to plan an annual calendar of firesides,
FHE's and other activities and Mom did some training as well that she will talk
about.
I
was looking forward to our February, 3rd hour “council” meeting today, hoping
and thinking that it would be better.
However, it was not very inspirational again. Our HP group leader did
most of the talking and he jumped around between topics quite a bit, discussing
first HT'ing, then the ward goals for the year, then the opportunity and
responsibility that HP's have to lead out in the ward. He did not ask questions or seek input, though
some was volunteered. The HT'ing
increased to 56% for January compared to the 20's last year, so that is a good,
better start to the year. The ward goal is 4 baptisms and 86% of endowed
members holding temple recommends. He commented almost apologetically, that 4
baptisms does not sound like much of a stretch goal but that the ward council
was trying to be realistic. We had 1
baptism in 2017 and either 5 or 6 in 2016, so 4 is heading in the right
direction. Of course, no one will stop
at 4 so there is no limit to the upside!
Our weather has turned “winter-like” bitter the last couple
of days with temperatures around 28 degrees and a skiff of snow and ice
yesterday. It makes it so we want to
stay in as much as possible. I feel
sorry for the elders and sisters who are out in it a lot. There has been quite a bit of sickness going
around.
Love, Dad. Have a
wonderful week. We look forward to
hearing from all of you.
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