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