July 23, 2012

Evangelist Forkynds af Missionarene!

Den er sandhed men også gennem medlemer.

I sometimes wonder if I'm telling too many stories. I'll come back and have

nothing left to tell. That would be unfortunate! I'll thank limited

timeframes for hjælpe mig holde der low key.

This past week was very slow. I guess every missionary has a week like

this. Nothing really scheduled, which leaves us to a lot of finding, and

finding without members is tough and unproductive a lot of the time. Or

rather unfruitful. Knocking = hard. Going to referrals from members =

fruitful!

That was the one of the many things I'm beginning to learn quickly here on

my mission. Working with the members, especially dedicated members, brings

the absolute best results. Why? We knocked some 3-4 hours one day, to

nothing to show except a lot of no's. We then took 5 minutes to stop by a

referral by a member, that was in-between areas we were knocking. Very

positive result. So when a member gives to a referral, USE IT! So yea.

Last week actually WHILE we were typing emails, a lady that Ældste Arts had

taught came up to us. She began to talk to us, and mentions how Elder Arts

hadn't called her back. In my head, my thought process was Ældest Arts

doesn't drop people without good reason. The conversation continued. She

said she wanted us to see this one video that she thought was great and how

it was the truth. My mind flashed red alert for two reasons. 1: We aren't

supposed to look at other videos online and such. 2: I remembered a story

he'd told me of an investigator that kept trying to show him and his

companion videos of priests online. Unfortunately it turned out the be the

exact same women, and she proceeded to show us the video. We couldn't

exactly blow her off like jerks. Basically it was about how Mormons and

Catholics weren't Christian. She was telling us how there wasn't any other

book from God other than the bible and such. She actually had a pretty good

monologue going, full of facts and whatnot. However, both Elder Arts and I

basically said that we didn't believe what the video was saying about us, and

I said how I beloved the Book of Mormon was the word of God and it was

true. Not much more for me to say, otherwise it would start turning into a

Bible bash, and at the library, you are supposed to be quiet. She finally got

the message I think and left. Weird thing was, about 5 minutes later she

returned and gave us some sort of treat. We had no clue what it was and

when I asked her she didn't say. Both of us looked at each other and wisely

decided NOT to eat them. I later discovered it was some sort of chocolate

egg, but that still woundn't have persuaded me to eat it. Weird.

It was a interesting experience to be put on the spot like that. To have

somebody directly say you're wrong. It makes you appreciate your Faith and

Testimony which are both things I CANNOT deny. I'm glad I've been building

it and know such truths well.

After she left for good, elder arts on his computer typed at me, ''See why

I didn't go back?'' Yep. There are better potentials out there seeking

truth at that moment.

When we went to Nykøbing Mors, I saw some chocolate. No ordinary chocolate

though. This one was the BIGGEST toblerone I had ever seen. It was on a

1:10 ratio of a normal one! If I wasn't going to be walking the rest of the

day... I would have so got it. Haha.

Saw a rainbow the other day. With how much it rains here I thought I would

have seen one sooner but go figure. This one was kinda fun because I was

nearly a full circle if the earth wasn't in the way. So as I followed the

rainbows circle I could see the end of it! If my suspicions were correct,

the pot of gold lay at resting home, that a 100 year old member lives. If

we weren't rushing to catch the bus... I would've stopped by.

We got some candy at the store during the end of one of our days. Elder

Arts let me have a piece of his, and to my misfortune discovered it tasted

like cough drops. Um... who makes candy that tastes like cough drops? I

looked over at Ældste Arts and he was munching away at them. Ok, Europeans

have weird tastes. Sure, I'm weird, but that... ugh.

Ooo! ok, so for those who know me, I'm known to talk in my sleep. I've

talked a little here and there, and in full sentences and one sided

conversations sometimes. It was fairly infrequent before. Now, according to

Ældest Arts, I've been talking in my sleep almost every night. It wakes him

up, and leaves him cranky in the morning. We finally decided to video

myself talking. Sure enough we did get a video of me talking, but the audio

was bad, so we'll have try again. But until then, hope it doesn't hurt our

daytime energy for work! I blame all the long sleep hours and healthy food.

The Spirit guilds our actions and it's a fantastic experience every time we do

turn to him for guidance. I hope everyone can train themselves to listen

to the Spriit. It leads you to much more effective results then by yourself.

The catch is figuring out why you are where you are when your original

appointment falls though. But the Lord doesn't waste a single action, so

just remember to look around when you do. There is usually some reason you

are where you are.

Thats all for this week. Love you all! Not much time as P-day is skewed

today to fit in some work!

Bestest Ønsker!

Ældste Christensen

June 2012

June 2012, a set on Flickr.

July 9, 2012

Last week I wasn't able to post his letter so if you scroll down you can read more of his adventures. 

As I reviewed what I did this week, I had to double take. Over half the
things we did and accomplished seem like they were months ago. Whoa. But
that's why it was so fun! It makes me happy to know that my sense of time is
being destroyed slowly and I can go to work without regrets. Some
interesting challenges this week, so I'll up to date you.

It starts at last P-day.
There is something to be said for total obedience. one of the things in
the mission handbook is to wear missionary clothes when you go out, even on
P-Day, unless its for a specific activity. AS we were walking back from
buying food, we were suddenly stopped by this random guy, who asked us for
our info on where our church was, and said he would try and come next
Sunday. Whoa! Blessing for obedience! Nice!

I lament not being able to find normal American brands, of both food and
other supplies. Half the time it feels like I'm playing Russian roulette with
what I buy. I pray in thanks for my companion, who is from Europe, who
knows what to get. He can also cook. It really amazes me how simple he
cooks and yet very delicious it comes out. Maybe my expectations have just
been lowered from living on my own at college. I must say that I'm beginning
to see patterns. For example, Im pretty sure that the food we eat here is
STUFFED with spices. I've never used so many spices on plane potatoes and
sauce before. Totally worth it. Its interesting what a home cooked meal will
do for you. Delicious!

Random things Ive noticed. In one of the stores we bought food in, the
price tags are all electronic, so they can just change them whenever they
need. That was pretty fancy to me. Probably easier too. The store had
special deals of the devil. There would be a candy bar for say... 15 krona.
Pretty expensive for one candy bar. BUT they would have a deal that you
could get 4 for 30 krona. Oooo! Devious!

As we were out knocking doors at the end of the P-day, I saw something
curious. A law-mowing robot. It was just putting along, along this yard by
itself, and turning and adjusting to get what it missed. I just looked at
it and thought it was the coolest thing. The house was very nice and big,
even for American standards. Rich people have law mowing robots. Cool.

Also this week was my first zone conference! How exciting! I got to meet
other missionaries besides my companion and also the new mission president,
president sedarholme. Very cool. I walked in the the church building and I
was weirded out because random missionaries who I had literally never met
were walking up to me, hugging me, and greeting me like a close friend. I'd
never met any of them. I guess thats how the mission is. Everyone are
brothers in the gospel! But the end, I did get to know some of them better,
so I'm not totally in the dark anymore.The new mission president is ok so
far. No one really knows what to think of him yet. One thing I am
absolutely sure of, is that he has been called, straight from God.

Wednesday was an absolute blast! Ældste Arts and I headed off to a town
that hadn't seen missionary work in a while call Struer. Brand new.
Exciting! Potential! And references right off the bat, because we went and
talked to a member who lives there and he had a few for us! Very good! Our
day then consisted of door knocking, to which I saw notable success! At
least more then I had since getting to the mission. We gave away 3 book of
Mormons, one English, one French and one Danish, although he wanted an
English. Go figure. One of them was a super potential investigator, who has
been searching for spiritual enlightenment, and believes in being at peace
with nature, kinda like Buddhist or Native Americans believed. Like with the
oneness and respect for nature? Thats how we caught his attention, saying
that the Book of Mormon was a record of the Indians. If there is one thing
Im learning from my companion, it is understanding what other people think,
and see religion like. He understands them very well. There is more than
just, 'we have a message, listen.'  Its... more. Anyway, a very successful
day!

On Thursday, I had my first actual teaching appointment! Woo! But because of
a horrible scheduling mishap, we were forced to cut it short. It was very
good though, although my companion did most of the talking. The guy seems
very responsive so we hope to meet with him more in the future!

Friday was an absolute blast because it was Splits! My first one, YES!
Ældste Wright and Holyoak came up to help us in Viborg for a day. We
knocked doors and found an incredible amount of success to me! 4 Book of
Mormons! I haven't ever seen that much success since I got here! Teamwork!
It was also nice to meet and get to know some more Elders. it shows me what
other things I can expect from future companions and what i want to be like
for my future companions. A good thing to know. Both of them were absolutely
awesome. I would love to be able to work with them in the future! Can't
wait! It was a pity we had to cut the day short due to travel arrangements.

The big thing that has been holding us back this back half of the week was
sickness.
My companion Ældste Arts has lately been pretty sick. He has massive
headaches and dizziness whenever he gets up or stands up or just works too
hard. Its been going for a few months too. We went to the Doctor to see if
he could help, but one of the tests he did only made it worse. As a result,
it got so bad that we stayed home Saturday. I was very understanding of the
situation, but I'm praying to the Lord that we can find a solution to this,
or we are going to start losing investigators.

The interesting thing about staying home due to sickness is how much study
time you get in. You can learn a lot of things. In reading the scriptures,
I love it when Nephi starts praising the Lord, especially in 2nd Nephi
chapter 4, verse 19. ''...I know whom I have trusted...'' Yes! Yes! I love
this because strive to say the same thing. I know whom I have trusted, in
my work, in my life, in my service. My Lord, and My God Jesus Christ who is
my Savior! Also, we listen to a lot of BYU devotional talks. They are really
cool. When you listen to the prophets voice... and others called of God...
You learn some very intense things. Divine things. At the same time though,
realize they are all BYU talks, so I don't know how good it is to keep
listening to talks about getting married right now... haha!

So I guess thats all for now. Here are a few fun pictures!

Love you all! sounds like you are doing some exciting stuff!

Best wishes to all!
Ældste Christensen

July 2, 2012

Hej der min elsekhed vener! Det er godt to hørt fra dig!
Ok, so that was just to sound sort of impressive. I have officially been
here for 2 weeks, and been working for about 1 and a half. Impressions? I'm
such a greeny. My companion is fond of telling me so. ;-)

Where to begin? How about a overview of the last week and a half.

I'm almost beginning to understand Danish, and by almost, I can understand
a conversation about 30%-70% of the time. Its weird how hearing it enough
starts tuning your brain into understanding it. I can understand good
chunks of reading material at times, especially the scriptures, and it
seems cool to me. The more you talk and the more you listen, the better you
get. Its really kind of cool. The Danish language is Germanic in origin. You
can actually understand Swedish because the two are so close together.
Icelandic is closer to Danish in language though. Well, at least l think.
All the Nordic languages have something of the same origin.

Our mode of transport? A bus. Always the buses. The train tracks are
getting worked on so we have to take the buses everywhere. Kind of nice at
times to have that time to think, ponder and maybe get a little more study
in, but other times it thrashes our working hours. Its been an hour bus
ride whatever city we go to, so it leaves little time for actual
proselyting, and you have to cut it short to get back to the apartment in
time. Like I said before, it leaves much to be desired.

I do wish we had some bikes. We do have some here at our apartment, but
they are broken, and it costs too much to fix them. Almost not worth the
effort. We seem to be doing fine without them anyway. Walking works just as
well. Glad I have a good pair of shoes!

I´ll tell about my companion, Ældste Arts. He's from Holland, and speaks
Dutch, in addition to English and Danish. The people here in Europe learn
TONS more languages then we Americans do. In school, he studied Ancient
Greek, German (to which he was nearly fluent), Latin (yep, people still
learn it) and French. Yea. Everyone can speak more than we can. He played
Rugby in school and was pretty good at it by the sound of it. He plans to
go into mechanical engineering when he gets back off. He´s been out for 8
months, and is a solid worker. Plays a pretty good chess match too. And
cooks better and more than any person his age I´ve ever seen. Its never
pre-packaged meals for us. Its always pasta from the stove, or baked
potatoes, and onions go on everything! You learn to love things pretty
quick out here. Lot of peppers too.

In the aspect of the work of spreading the Gospel. It seems that a lot of
our efforts are getting to know the members. Yes the key to any missionary
success is through the members. It helps create that member support from
the start and also gives us references to work from. KEY! VIGTIG! Very
important! (Vigtig means important by the way, not key.) We are really
excited because we are going out to a new area/town tomorrow and a member
that lives out there has references for us! Exciting! We are super excited
to work with them and many new, uncharted streets, ripe for knocking!

Finding otherwise is extremely difficult, especially here in the  area.
Our main activity is knocking (Banke) doors and after about a week average,
next to no success has been found. It almost scares me to think some of
these people don't want to listen to God. I'm sure that if we could, even
for a moment, remind them for a moment of their divine potential and
lineage, they would listen to us. If they reject us, fine (its not fine,
but you get my meaning), but at least listen to our message!

It was actually kind of funny the other week as we were knocking. I got my
first door slammed in my face! Woo! I can check that off my missionary
experience list!
"'Got door slammed in face': CHECK". Goes right next to the one that says
"Got cussed at by random guy on bike':CHECK" Hahaha!

So the other day, we went out up to the northern part of 'Salling' which is
the inland penneslya of the north-west part of Denmark. Pure countryside
out there. All I can say is WOW. I have NEVER seen landscape like that. It
almost felt like it was a dream. Almost too picturesque! Lets see if I can
put it into words, which don't quite do it justice. Rolling GREEN hills.
Endless fields of wheat and other crops. Cottages dotting here and there.
The sun amplifying every color to be its brightest. The lake right next to
it, blue and sparkling like I'd never seen before. Green trees, as
sentinels and walls over the fields over which they stood. Later, we took a
walk with some members we visited out there after dinner because we missed
our bus. (bad thing to do in the country. Next bus can in 2 hours. I wonder
if we are spending TOO long at members houses, but we can't escape politely
and they need our support.) ANYWAY, we went on a walk to the lake.

We walked by those stretching fields of wheat and as I looked out over them,
several unique things stuck out to me. you could see the wind, grazing over
the fields, like invisible shosts or angels, moving through or brushing
lightly above without leaving a trail. So gentle, and so suddenly ethereal.
Enchanting. As we walked, I stretched my hand forth, gently swishing
through the stalks of wheat and my companion said it reminded him of the
movie "Gladiator". My mind went back to the scene where the hero does the
same thing. Awesome moment. We soon reached the lake. Like i said before,
beautiful. There was a old pile of ashes that were the remains of a witch
they burned last week. Apparently a Denmark tradition. cool. We skipped
rocks, and I have to say I think Denmark has better skipping rocks then
Utah. More dense and harder, better weight to them for skipping. As we
traveled back, we passed through a thick forest trail, and as I looked
around myself, I could suddenly see myself in the minds of great literature
writers. Fantasy writers and where their worlds are based on. The thick
forest trees, ancient and tall, thick foliage all around. I could see many
fairy tales and myths about things that lived in the forest, hiding many
curious adventures and secrets. The forests of Europe are unique in of
themselves. It was a few hours of contemplation, of the nearly
uncontemplatable beauty and magnitude of the world God has created.

Ok, those last two paragraphs are very in detail. Weird. Little awkward.
But thats how I write so get over it!

We met an incredible member the other day, who can't go to church because
of heath issues. What was really interesting about her was her age. 100
years old. WHOA! Yea, nuts! She even got a letter from the queen of Denmark
wishing her a happy birthday! That was a very cool experience! The members
here are incredible. They are all true examples of Faith and Diligence to
me.

We see a lot of Muslim people here in Denmark. All immigrated from Iraq and
Afghanistan and such. Kinda interesting. We actually gave away a Arabic Book
of Mormon the other day. Curious really. We seem to have a dozen different
languages in our apartment. Cool.

So in Viborg, apparent it has some very significant history here. The kings
of Denmark would be crowned in a chapel in Viborg! Kinda odd, to think they
would do that way out here. However this was one of the old capitals here
in Denmark, and Copenhagen became big because of the trade. Copenhagen
literally means 'Trade harbor'.

The work is slow in progressing here. Missionaries have gone crazy in the
past, but we will succeed! New life is needed to injected into this area,
and we will! Attitude is everything here, and it is critical to have a
positive one in everything you do, even real life. (Is missionary work not
real life? Isn't it more real than other life? We're spreading eternal life
here!) So its a blast, and I'm having fun being new in everything. I try
not to lose my greeny zeal and the love for the country. Its a work at
charity. Go study it. Its a topic that is MORE than just service. Try
'Preach my Gospel'. Its got some very interesting things to it...

Its also fun to see how much the words of Isaiah are loved by Book of Mormon
prophets. His words are more than just another prophets...
Coolness.

So I guess thats all for this week. 2 weeks. I've told you the highlights.
Excuse the randomness, but all the details I want to tell get jumbled.
Writing a chronological set of events doesn't seem to quite work, so I go
with the highlights. A huge highlight for me, everyday no exception is
getting in an hour of personal study time, weather it's reading and studying
the Book of Mormon, or another gospel topic, its always very meaningful for
me. I highly recommend people to go study for that long. I know its
different on time frames, but unless you get up at 6:30, to work at 7, I'm
pretty sure you can fit in time. It really is surprising how much time you
can fit in.

Anyway, hope some of these pictures work!

Random last notes. A word for you that I love. See if you can figure out
what it means. Vederstyggelighed. ha! fun!

Love you all! Stay safe and have fun