Mærkelig Undersørgerne og hvor de finds

Translation: Weird Investigators and Where to Find Them

It was a hilariously exciting week. It began with my first transfer day, which went quite smoothly, and finished with an interesting day of finding yesterday. That is why my title is about weird investigators. It's also a reference to "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" in Danish, which doesn't sound as cool in my opinion. But the cover still looks exciting. (I've included a picture below for your viewing pleasure and confusion with Danish) 

A short description and/or random comments about my new companion. Ældste Spencer Saviano is from Roy, Utah. He graduated in 2016 and worked in Logan before coming on his mission. He enjoys singing, playing the piano, and making very random and strangely funny jokes. He's been on his mission for 6 months so far and has served on Fyn, Sjælland, and now Jylland (all over the country). He was training Ældste Angerhofer from my MTC group, but now he's my companion. (which happened to a lot of Elders in my group actually... all but 4 got new trainers) He's pretty good at Danish, but we're learning a lot together. We get along very well and laugh constantly throughout the day. We also do planks every evening. We started at 6 minutes and have gotten up to 7 so far. (They're not only elbow planking, it's seven minutes of planking straight while switching between different positions, but always up) It's been a blast being his companion so far and I'm excited to keep working with him.

So Monday we just basically survived and got all the necessities taken care of, like unpacking, grocery shopping, having a repairman come try to fix your window by himself, so just the normal week to week type things. (The window is not actually week by week, luckily.) And we visited Finn and Dorthe as well. They had quite a few question that time, so we did our best to answer them and said we'd have better answers next time. But Ældste Saviano got along very well with them, so that was fantastic.

Tuesday was a good day overall. Not too much happened though. We took Minna the sacrament again and helped her pull of General Conference on her computer. Then we visited the Kvists and set an appointment with Elna.

On Wednesday, the window repairmen came back and basically just cut off some of the wood frame to get it to close. But I was able to easily communicate with the repairman and we talked about his daughter who lives in Dallas, and why we're in Denmark! It was great! We then met with Elna and she's really excited for her baptism this Saturday!! We're still in the process of planning everything, so I hope that goes smoothly, but she's dedicated and wants to be baptized! We then watched the Sunday Afternoon Session of General Conference and attempted a couple visits with Karsten, but he's being allusive and we can't catch him home.

Thursday was a short and very exciting day. We went knocking in an apartment building which turned out to be a retirement home. No one slammed the door on us, but I'm not totally sure if they physically could have... We were then told to leave by some of the workers because the residence were not interested, which was disappointing because we had some good discussions with quite a few before that. We then had a dinner apointment with Svend and Inge Reuter. They're the two longest time members in our branch and basically just a super sweet couple. They shared a ton of fun stories about the members and gave us a lot of food and ice cream. It was an awesome appointment for me because I could understand virtually everything being said and actually contribute to the conversation!! Then the excitement continued as we were walking back from the church after our language study. We usually do language study last because people don't like us tracting after 8. But we were walking back to our apartment when we found a Fantastic Beast!! (That's also why I chose the title.) I've heard they live in the "wiles of [Denmark]" before, but this was the first live one I had seen! It was a needlepig! That's the Danish translation, but it was a little hedgehog! It was super cute! So we took pictures with it! We haven't seen it since, but we now take gloves with us just in case. 

Friday was a pretty relaxed day full of traveling. Elna wasn't able to meet in the morning, so we came back to Skive for a surprise apartment check with Ældste and Søster Koch and we luckily passed. They also made the comment that they might look for a new Skive apartment, so I'm not sure how that will go down. We then met with Elna and she's still set and ready to be baptized! She also invited her son to come pray with us! She's just awesome! We hope to see her in church more often though. Later we were able to talk with Karsten for a bit. He showed us his cat and said he'd call us. We're still stopping by, but he's texting us so that's better contact. We also had another eating appointment with Connie in the branch. I was very happy being an active participant in the conversation the entire time! It was a really great appointment!

Saturday was crazy. We were in Aarhus for our first district meeting! We combined with the Aarhus District for this one, which was why we met there this time. it was a good meeting and all the Elders in our district wore sweaters! We did plan it, but it was still exciting! (picture coming eventually...) Then we had our classic lunch at Domino's. Ældste Saviano and I then headed back to Skive where we did some contacting and knocking. We found an Arabic man named Soliman who didn't speak much Danish or English, but invited us to come to his house. He fed us some apples, bananas, and then pulled out some other interesting stuff. It's apparently called labneh (or something close) which is a Middle Eastern strained yogurt of some kind with olive oil. We ate it on some tortillas and it tasted about as good as it sounds. Luckily he also brought out some homemade applesauce for us to dip our tortillas in. He also showed us a picture and tried to explain that he has some cranial damage of some sort... So quite an interesting eating appointment, but we told him we'd bring him an Arabic Book of Mormon on Sunday. 

Sunday was quite weird. We visited Soliman and gave him a Book of Mormon and some pamphlets in Arabic. He then gave us some more tortillas, labneh, and applesauce to eat. As we left, he gave us each a big jar of his applesauce and a hug. He's a super charitable, loving guy, but I'm not sure how much we can actually work with him. Church was great, but none of our investigators came. We texted and called to remind them, but they all fell through. The branch was extremely happy to hear that Ældste Saviano can play the piano though, and I understood the whole meeting as well!! It was great! After church we went finding and tracted into two potentials who both took a Book of Mormon. The first guy, Ib, seemed a little paranoid so we'll see how that goes with him. But the second man, Ole, was quite positive. He's had a lot of hard things in his life, but we were able to give him some verses to read in the Book of Mormon and we're visiting him again on Friday.

My spiritual note is from our Zone Goal in district meeting. We're trying to better center our message on Christ and we talked about how He is the Bread of Life. We had a discussion about how all people have a hunger for Christ whether they know it or not. So think about how and where you go to satisfy your hunger for Christ. For me, I find Him in the scriptures. Every time we have personal study, I'm disappointed when it's over. I love being able to see how Christ teaches and how His example affects the lives of the people in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. So look for ways that you can find Him in your life, and how you can satisfy the hunger that others have for Christ as well!

So it's been an interesting week! We should have Elna's baptism this coming week, so I'm super excited for her! I'm also getting a lot more practice with Danish being companions with Ældste Saviano. We talk a lot more in Danish and I know the people, so I control the conversations a lot too. I also really like driving here! It's fun and I already know my way around quite well! Life is going great in Skive! I'd be happy to hear from anyone and thanks to those who do email me! 

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Ældste Bryant Jepsen

-Our First district meeting in Aarhus Sat Oct 7th
-Fantastic Beasts in Danish (just because) 
-Making Dinner (and trying to help)
- The wild Needlepig! (Fantastiske Skabninger!)
-At the apartment