April 28, 2013

Godt dag!
Sorry about lateness. Busy stuff happening.

This week has had an interesting focus on service. We stopped by the
frivillige arbejde (details mentioned below), Scrubbed and cleaned the floor
of a member who's pregnant right now, and on several ocasions made cookies
for members who were having a tough time. (Did you know you can make
cookies WITHOUT brown sugar? Substitute... Syrup. Smell like syrup when they
come out of the oven too.) You just gotta time it right when you make them
so it doesn't cut into your working time.

We stopped by a man that has recently been coming back to church this week
with cookies, and quite frankly I love the guy. He was having sort of a
tough day, so we were glad to stop by. Since i got here in the Gladsaxe 1,
he's made steady improvement week to week.  You can see just how happy the
gospel is making his life. The ward has been helping him out as well,
giving him rides to church. (name withheld) went home teaching with him and
he just felt so privileged and happy to be helping. One of the members gave
him a old suit coat and he proudly wears it. You can just see the pure
happiness on his face when he's at church. He has a sharp testimony of the
word of wisdom because of his alcohol addiction for many years, and I think
that after stopping and following the word of wisdom, even over the course
of the past month or two, the Lord has been greatly and visibly blessing
his life. I think he is someone I'll always remember. Keep
staring

Other then that this week has simply been filled with stopping by less
actives and mulig investigators. Not much has occurred from that quite yet.
We did find one new investigator so that will be interesting to see where
that goes. I'm a little concerned that we weren't able to set up as good of
teaching/expectations basis as I'd have liked, but he still has potential
if we can still set up a good foundation. He knows a lot about the church
and has a really good view on it. He seemed to know a TON on Joseph Smith
himself. Just doesn't know if he can believe that Joseph really saw what he
did. Book of Mormon. Read it. Pray about it. You'll get an answer. He
talked so much that was all I was really able to get in before he was on to
the next subject. Really neat guy.

I have a testimony of the divinity of the book of Mormon and the power of
its words upon the soul. I had this event happened to me once before. One
day this week, I got depressed at my own weakness. I'm out on the Lords
errand, I should be better then this, talk to everybody without hesitation.
blablabla. Anyway, I was pretty depressed. There was a point where we were
going out to stop by a less active and we were waiting for the bus and I
had a dark cloud over my head. (Figuratively and literally. Later it
rained on us. But it was a light rain and I had a windbreaker so it was
ok.)  So i pulled out my Book of Mormon to read a bit, to ''escape'' into
the stories of the BOM. as i opened up Ether 12 (I'm nearly done with the
BOM in Danish!) and began to read it was an incredible sensation. I could
literally FEEL the sorrow drain out of me and the Spirit replace that
gloom. I could feel that peace in my soul again and that happiness that
comes from the scriptures. There is no doubt in my mind that the Book of
Mormon is the word of God. The rest of the evening was gone about in an
upbeat manner. Very thankful to the Lord for his Spirit.

I'm starting to understand the better way of contacting, of talking to
people other then ''Hej, vi komme fra jesu kristi kirke...''. Its more of a
friendly way, talking about their life and interests. We had this really
good conversation with a man in front of his house that was doing yard
work. After saying no thanks to our offer of helping out with it, we sorta
asked what the barrel of sand was for. He mentioned that it was for his
kids sandbox, so that was neat. We talked a little bit more and he revealed
that he actually knew where our church building was! If we can avoid
putting up the robotic face, they will take down their robotic face as
well. Its still very hard to do sometimes.

We didn't do much knocking this week. I don't know if that was a good thing
or a bad thing. That form of finding is slowly decreasing. Its not the
best way of finding of course, but perhaps we shouldn't forget it.

Oh, and Sunday was of great note, as least from our mission leader
coordination meeting. Our mission leader has been kicking into top gear.
He's having a special meeting/class every week or so and having certain
family s come and follow up and do the family mission plan. He's giving
certain assignments to the ward mission couples to visit less active people
once a week. He's having all the member missionarys pray for one of our
investigators so that they can progress. And coordination in having people
present to our appointments is going great. For the most part we can get
someone to every appointment, although I think Brother Rasmussen is getting
tired of being called out all the time. Gotta find someone new. Or make
appointments where we can get someone else present. Church was just a
spiritual high. I just love going every week. There is just so much love
and connection in the ward, its great to see!

Other random stuff seen this week. A park full of big bunny statues. Kinda
creepy and we couldn't help singing ''the bunny song'' from veggie tales.
;-)