Mission Blog

Oh! Our Mission Presidents wife has started a mission blog! Its at
http://cop-den-mission.blogspot.dk/ so for you who want pictures I didn't
get...

November 19, 2012

November 19, 2012

Well. I discovered when the real date of thanksgiving was. We celebrated it

a week early or something. oops. But hey, no complaints.

Actually not a whole lot to report this week, other then our super

fantastic zone conference and activity! But other then that, it only

appears like we did a lot... or maybe we did? I think we did. It was a lot

of walking.

It was our Jylland Thanksgiving Zone Activity! It took up the whole day and

it included a Turkey bowl, Thanksgiving dinner and Talent Show!

First was the Turkey Bowl with the entire zone. Ah! Good old American

Football. The downside? The field we intended to play on was wet and very

muddy. We quickly found the difficulty in running anywhere on the Field

because of the condition of the terrain. You had to dig in to get traction,

getting shoes extremely muddy. It felt like a tiptoe game we were playing,

trying not to slip and fall. You could tell where people had tried to stop

because there would be mud skids in the dirt for several feet. Many slides

and falling catches left people with massive mud stains. I didn't get

anything too massive, which in a weird sense was disappointing. My shoes

got it pretty bad. And of all the days, I forget to bring my church

shoes... Glad my other ones were somewhat black. After we'd finished and

cleaned up, we had a good old fashioned Thanksgiving dinner, with all the

works. Turkey, potato's, ham, stuffing, gravy, rolls and pumpkin pie made

by the mission presidents wife.

Next up was the Talent show! I did a solo act of juggling and telling

jokes. It got some good laughs and I think everybody was impressed when I

started juggling 5. I'll show you the trick to it one day. Then Ældste

Dunshee and I did a karaoke of Taylor Swifts ''Love Song'' except we did a

pardoy of it changing the words to ''Dåb(babtism) story'' That went great!

We looked pretty slick too. Elder Dunshee gets credit for that.

I have to tell you about one of the new elders in the mission. His name is

Ældste Crank, and he is a native American Navajo Indian. He apparently can

speak Navajo and I heard him speak it. He said he's been learning it for 12

years and almost has it down. You thought your languages were hard? I don't

think any of ours holds a candle to what I heard him speaking.

Our mission president then expounded upon something super incredible. He

emphasized that the Lord is hastening his work, and he's hastening it NOW.

Elder Bednar of the Twelve, said to the missionaries in the MTC, (I heard

this from one of the new greenies) that there are many speculations and

guesses at why the age limit was dropped. But the simple reason is that the

Lord needs to hasten his work .With all the publicity that the church got

from the presidential election, that is more evidence that things are

hastening. Our mission president then gave us the scripture D&C 88:73. I'll

let you look that up yourself. ;-) But that scripture is being fulfilled

right now before our eyes. Its an exciting time to be serving a mission and

I'm glad to be apart of it.

The work progresses! No unhallowed hand can stop the work! (unhallowed. I

like that word.)

Bestest wishes from Denmark!

Ældste Tyler Christensen

November 5, 2012

It was a crazy busy week this week! I mostly blame splits, double eating

appointment and immigration test. But ya know, I guess all the work we did

is also in there.

Last Monday was particularly nuts when I found out I had the immigration

test on Tuesday, and our train leaving for København left in one hour. Wow,

glad that piece of mail reached us in time. Lucky us. So Æ. Dunshee and I

scrambled to pack and were off. The trip to København takes 5 hours from

Skive by train. Glad I could keep myself busy. It was also very fun to meet

up with my good ol MTC companion Ældest Wible for the long trip over. That

was a fun 2 days, and I'm really glad it all worked out. Never thought I'd

be in København when I woke up that morning. Immigration test completed,

(super easy.) and return on Tuesday. Æ. Elsbury and King were very

hospitable to us, in the central Fredricksberg apartment and it was cool

seeing them again. OH! And I totally saw the København temple!!! It was

just a glimpse but it filled my soul with immeasurable joy. You don't

realize what a blessing it is to go to the temple often until you suddenly

don't for 4 months. I know my last companion Æ. Arts in his interview with

Pres. Sederholm said that whatever area he was transferred to, he only

wanted to be able to go to the temple. Very important place. The primary

song ''I love to see the temple, I'm going there someday...'' suddenly

become very precious. Actually, many of those primary songs take on a whole

different level of meaning when you listen to them as a missionary.

The work in Skive has oddly picked up lately. We've had several very

positive investigators that we've been meeting with on a regular basis,

ever since E. Dunshee showed up. We are totally rocking it! I really like

how he works and some of his working style. One is a Greenlandic lady and

we've been meeting with her a lot lately. She is open and progressing.

Another named (name withheld). He's one that you'd never think was open, but is super

open. Like he's being prepared. But like any good dish, you need to add the

right things at the right time. Guided by the Spirit of course.

I enjoy the format of many of the lessons and opportunity's I've had with

Æ. Dunshee lately. Several sit down appointments, with many of those

ingredients. He's the kind of missionary that likes Kig Fobi's so that has

been our main focus this past week. It has a ''Onto phase 2!'' feel to it.

Æ. Arts and I did all the finding, now Æ. Dunshee and I go to all the

teaching. I believe that Forkynd Mit Evangelium (PMG for you English

speakers out there.) can be super effective in helping much of the teaching

we've been doing lately. No matter how good you think you are at teaching

and think you can wing it on, there is always something more you can apply.

I like the scripture that says before all things were created physically,

they were created spiritually. So there was a plan set in place before work

was done. God didn't just, ''wing it'' on creating the universe, no matter

how well he knew how everything worked. He planned and prepared and

probably communicated with those under him on how it was all going to work.

A good outline of how our work should go.

We had splits this week, with Æ. Wright and Merriel. I had the opportunity

to go with Æ. Merriel, a brand new greeny in the land of... a week and a

half I believe... and that was a unique experience. Both of our Danish is

not super fantastic yet, so in those several hours we were together alone,

it really pushed me to focus and make sure that I was on top of what was

going on. To lead, so to say. It was fun, and we did not totally fail at

all, so that was a good thing.

We had the opportunity to meet with (name withheld) again this week. I think we said

that we moved the date back to the 17th because of scheduling stuff. I'm

personally very worried about her. She might not quite understand that you

can't have a cup of coffee every now and then. Thats not how it works. When

you repent, its for life. Or at least we try to. I don't want to baptize

her if she's not totally ready, just for the sake of baptism, thinking

she'll repent later or work on it later. We've got enough less active

people in Denmark. Part of Elder Hollands general conference talk comes to

mind for me. When you raise that arm to the square, you better make sure

they've repented. The missionary purpose goes, Tro på Kristus(faith

in Christ) og hans forsoning(attonment), OMVENDELSE(repentance), then

dåb(baptism). It doesn't all come at dåb.

So as we worked in one of the towns here called Nykøbing Mors, something

that has been dawning on me the past week hit me. It's completely dark by 5

o clock. WHAT IS THIS? Just 4 months ago I didn't see the dark of night for

almost 2 weeks! Now I'm never going to see it again? The other Elders in

the mission say that in the heart of winter, it will be totally dark by 4.

So... major contrast. And the constant rain can make it cold and downright

miscible. However, the fact I'm in such a situation excites me. Adventure!

I also found the most oddest thing in one of these Genbrugs up there... I

saw it and thought 'cool' then looked again and thought, something is wrong

here... it's a Pika-rabbit. Happy Halloween I guess.

Oh so I guess they DO celebrate Halloween in Denmark. Just... on a date

that is more convenient for them.  Like on the weekend where they can all

party anyway. And no trick or treaters I saw. I've been in Skive 4 months

now and I've never seen the Skive gogåde with so many people. Super cool,

because Æ. Wright and Merriel came on splits with us, so we toured up and

down with them looking at all the Halloween stuff. Fun. I saw another one

of the super big dogs here.

I guess thats all for this week.

Ældste Christensen

October 22, 2012

Travelmode Must be related somehow Danish Hot Dog Godt dag! Vores ude var rigtig godt! Biggest news! TRansfers! Its time to say goodbye to my trainer and companion for the past 4 months, Ældste Koenraad Arts. If you can pronounce his first name, congratulations, you can speak Dutch. He's the only non-US missionary in the entire Danish Mission, and I had the opportunity to serve with him my first time here. He's now headed for Balorup Area in Central København. I on the other hand am left behind to progress good old Skive area, with my new companion Ældste Dunshee. I've heard he's a great guy. Transfers all kick in on Onsdag, (Wednesday) so I'll meet up with him then. Elder Arts has been in the Skive area for 8 months now so he's really glad to be moving on. Still, he'll miss the members. In addition to transfers, we had a fantastic District meeting in Aalborg, which was a good 3+ hour train ride away. These long train rides no longer effect me. I just go into travel mode, and we are at our location in a blink of an eye. All awareness of the passage of time ceases to exist when we go into Travelmode, and i'm sure we have less going on in our head then if we were watching a TV or were dead. Its a useful, but dangerous mode to go into. Anyway, on our ride there, this random guy sat down next to us and started talking to us. We proceeded to find out that he was a less active member and had some obvious brain damage due to the use of drugs and other stuff. He talked to us about seeing blue flying elephants and turtles that go flying past in 'whosh!' sounds. We gave him the missionaries number in his town and wished him the best of luck, being able to do no more for him. Don't ever do drugs. They will wipe out your life and brain. The zombies would not go for him first if they were to attack. Still a child of God. Still love him and desire the best for him. We arrived at District meeting, and we also had interviews with our Mission President. He lead us in our District meeting and expounded to us some basic but extremely powerful stuff. Answers to my prayers the past few weeks for sure. I'll share the best part of it. How to turn FAITH as a principal of action into a principal of POWER. The sort of faith that moves mountains, calms storms, cures sickness, and changes hearts. Its the faith that changes reality and what is. The answer, in the most basic of forms. Sacrifice. That's the whole key. Sacrifice will bring it to you. But then WHAT do you sacrifice? They told us that also. We are to sacrifice our WILL. Sacrifice our will to God, and let it be swallowed up in his. Learn His will and FOLLOW i! It will affect CHANGE that would not normally occur or happen. In doing this, its a similar notion to what Christ did with the Atonement. he sacrificed his will to God and we do likewise. Sorta similar. That is what turns Faith form a principal of action into POWER. Great strong, incredible, worthy,Godlike power. Super cool. The interview with him afterwards was also very great. I love our mission president! After turning on travelmode and returning to Skive, we had a super cool investigator come to our branch activity. It was fantastic because after the activity which was a couple sharing their mission experience in Russia, we had a Fællesspisening, (Eating activity) after. He was very involved in the conversation with the entire branch and it was way hygge! Very great moment. Hope he comes further! He grabbed the Liahona as he went home because he loves getting his copy and for some reason hasn't gotten his in the past two months. So cool! (Name withheld) at church was rocking! In Sunday school she was talking and getting involved in the lesson giving great answers. The member that she was sitting with was also talking to her and encouraging her. It was super great! And after Sunday School our branch had a Søndag dinner where she was also very involved and another member helped her out a lot! I think shes progressed great and is totally ready! We had a good meeting with one of our other investigators. After admiring his large collection of medieval swords and daggers, we taught him a brief lesson on the importance of prayer. I was a little disappointed when he didn't want to say the closing prayer, but as I said it, and closed, you could feel the Holy Ghost in the room testifying of the power and importance of it. That made me really happy that the Holy Ghost could come in. That's the absolute most important thing I aim for in lessons, and if we can't get it, then the meeting was not as effective as it could have been. The rest of our week was filled in with lots of aftales with people. I think this is the first week we had way more teaching hours then finding. And the finding we did do was very simple and minimal. We've got enough going that we don't need to spend entire days bånking doors. Yes! But beware of too many good eating appointments, especially if your norm is to eat a meal and not need to eat the rest of the day. That happened to us this week and it hurt to move we ate so much. It hurts to be polite sometimes. Anyway, best of busy weeks to you! Ældste Christensen