Apparently God's Police confiscating Free Guitars

It was a super weird and hilarious week basically. I'm not totally sure where to start. 

Last week for our walking P-day in Skive, we visited some Folke Kirke buildings that looked cool! I'll put some pictures with the email. And then just walking around we saw Karsten!! He's an investigator that we had been trying to get a hold of because he's the closest to our apartment. He was also the first investigator I had actually met in our area! He's a cool guy! He has some mental complications, but he's really attentive and likes the missionaries! He's been taught everything, we're just helping him quit smoking and then actually following through with his baptismal date. But it was cool! Sadly he wasn't home that evening when we tried to stop by.

So we visited the next day and Karsten was home! We talked about God strengthening Nephi as he began building the ship and Karsten said he liked that Nephi did what God asked even though his brothers said he couldn't do it. I'm excited to keep working with him! But it's hard to get a hold of him because he's in the process of moving and his phone doesn't always work. But that evening he gave us a present that reminded him of us. It was hilarious actually. He gave the us Mormons a brass plate. It was such a weird joke that it was hilarious. It's this decorative brass plate that has a deer on it. It's cool, I guess. It's hanging up in our apartment now though. So that's awesome. 

Karsten also gave us a referral for a guy he met in the mental hospital! So obviously we had to follow up with that! It was for an English guy named Chris who apparently said he was a spy and plays the guitar and banjo. So we walked over to his apartment building and we were buzzing his room when a guy came down and just opened the door. It was super weird, but we followed him to the apartment that was Chris' and he didn't say much. Then a Danish woman came and spoke with Ældste Brown about something. I thought she said he was sick and couldn't leave, but she invited us in to say hi. Turns out he was super drunk! That's always fun! It was a very different atmosphere than a more comfortable Kaysville house. Chris was sitting down when we came in, and he was convinced we were the police! We told him several times, but he had to check our hips for any guns anyways. Then the two Danish people went outside so we could talk. Ældste Brown wanted to calm him down, so he asked if he could play his guitar. Chris pulled it out for him and kind of walked around mumbling as he began to play. Then he calmed down a scary amount. He came and put his arm around me and almost fell asleep on my shoulder. I felt so incredibly awkward... Then Chris told Ældste Brown that he needed to take his guitar. But it was missing a string, so Chris had to explain how to replace it. We finally left when he started talking about his German agent that would come find us if we didn't take his guitar. So that was exciting! I didn't know it, but apparently it was a super nice guitar. (Epitone from the 1970's) So that's where my email title came from! That's by far the weirdest experience I've had basically ever, so that was fun! :)

The next day was significantly less exciting. We basically just met the Frederikshavn Ældster (Elders) in Aarhus to get our car. But I also found a FC Barcelona jersey for 195 kr. which was under 30 US dollars! That's really inexpensive for a good quality jersey, so that was exciting for me!

Then on Thursday I was able to work with a lady in our branch, Bodil Christensen, with some Jepsen family history!! It was so cool!! We found some unfinished branches back in the Danish part of my ancestry and we filled in an entire family from the Danish Census and Church records! It was so cool!! I really enjoyed it and I'm excited to be able to help our Danish ancestry as I learn to read and understand more Danish!

I also witnessed the first baptism here! A lady named Helle was taught by the Aarhus Zone Leaders, Ældster Smith and Eriksen. We went to Aarhus for splits and so we were able to attend the service. It was awesome! The baptismal font is in the middle of the room with ropes around it. And Ældste Brown and I were the witnesses for her too! It was a really cool experience and so many people felt the Spirit and talked to the missionaries afterwards!! I'm excited to see what amazing effects it'll have for them!

Then my first splits on a mission too! It was super awesome, but I was quite pampered, which I'm ok with! ;) We got an awesome Danish meal cooked by Ældste Smith and they had just gotten new mattresses for splits too! The Christensen Elders also live just below them so they came up and we all hung out together. It was hilarious though! We ate dinner with some little candles in this glass vase type thing. Then after quite a few other matches were thrown in too, the glass vase just shattered! It was super sketchy! I have a picture of us looking at it, but you can't really see the vase. It split all the way around and now it's modern art! We threw away the shards, but they're keeping the rest.

On Saturday morning Aarhus has a ward thing called Sport, where youth are supposed to come and play with us boring missionaries. But no one showed up, so we had six Elders and we played soccer!!! It was awesome!! I luckily brought my cleats on splits too. Ældste Smith is really good, and then I was the second best player which was quite weird. But it was fun! Then after an hour or two the others were ready to head home. So Ældste Smith and I joined a bunch of African guys who were playing by us. It was super fun! We talked to them after and one of them said he might come for Sport next week, so I hope they're able to keep in contact with him! But that was the most intense soccer I've played since my competition season ended in early spring. My calves are still quite sore, but I loved it! We then had some homemade Danish sandwiches. Jelly and cheese sounds super weird, but it's pretty good! And chocolate sandwiches are just as amazing as they sound. ;) 

Fast Sunday was super cool too! We had a visitor from Liberia, so Ældste Brown was translating for him. I understood the whole meeting because of that too. ;) He was a super nice guy, and he bore his testimony too! Then we went finding that evening, but we said a prayer to know where to go. I felt like we should go to this random street in Skive, so we drove out into the pastures and knocked on the only door. The family was quite nice, but not interested. They did, however, give us a referral! I was a bit skeptical because it was just the name of a town, but we follow up nonetheless! And sure enough, we found a man who had a lot of LDS ancestry but a lot of them migrated to Utah. He had a Book of Mormon and had read all of it! He's still agnostic, but we set an appointment on Friday to come back and talk with him, so we'll change that. ;) It was an awesome experience to see how prayers are answered, but not how you always think they will be!

I also gave a thought in District Meeting about Hope. I never really thought about hope as an attribute, but it's super cool as I studied it! Preach My Gospel calls it an "abiding trust'" in the Lord. And I really liked replacing hope with trust in the 13th Article of Faith so it says "we have endured many things, and trust to be able to endure all things" It reminded me of the scripture 1 Corinthians 10:13. (Go read it! It's awesome!) Heavenly Father knows what you can endure with his help and he will strengthen you so you can bear your trials!! I also need to work on putting more trust in the Lord. I've already seen some of the fruits of trusting the Lord, and I hope we're able to help that man we met see how God can do that for him as well!

I'm so grateful for the truth I've been so blessed with!! And I'm excited to share it with more a more people! It's been kind of slow in Skive for a while, so it's time for us to help the work or the Lord hasten here! (#SkiveWard) Thank you for all your support! I challenge you to trust the Lord more in your life and to look for how you are blessed by your hope in His strength! I know you can see miracles! 

Tak for alt af jeres kærlighed og støttelse! Hej!

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Ældste Bryant Jepsen

-Some Fjord selfies
-Fancy Old Churches 
-I found a soccer goal! 
-A cool sunset too!
-Random morning selfie 
- Cool old stuff  
-The Aarhus Glass Catastrophe 
-Barcelona Jersey!