A Stinky Week

Contrary to popular belief, stink can also be good! I think, I'm not actually sure but I thought it would be a fun title anyway! This week was pretty packed of randomly exciting things. :)

So on Monday, we basically visited the Shopping Center. I got some Area Book Stuff and tried to find a sweatshirt. Ældste Weaver got a large handful of random things from Tiger. (Which is a wonderful store!) That evening, all four of us went up to some apartment buildings to knock. There were 11 floors and 2-3 doors on each floor, so there were plenty of people. Ældste Weaver and I had gone through floors 11 down to 3 without any success. On floor 3, we talked to a lady who was atheist. She got a little irritated that we kept asking what she believed, but we apologized a couple times and stopped asking questions. Instead we just testified of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. Then she took the book and set an appointment with us! It was a miracle!

På Tuesday, we had a couple appointments. We met with Morten again! He allowed us to pray at the beginning and end of the lesson! It was great! He also really opened up to us about why he isn't very religious. He had a really rough childhood and he didn't see prayer help him through it. But he is happy to read the Book of Mormon, so his desire is coming along! We also had an appointment with a Floridian girl named Brittany, but she ended up giving us the wrong address... So we knocked on a house and the lady who answered was very kind, just also not interested in meeting.

Wednesday was insane! We had crazy splits! The Zone Leaders had splits with the two Odense Elders (Ældste Hosac and Ellis) so they stayed Tuesday night and worked here in Kolding Wednesday. So we had six people that morning. But, Ældste Weaver still needed to complete his Biometrics at the Horsens Police Station, so that morning we hopped on the train up to Horsens. It took about 20 minutes to get that taken care of, which was just enough time for us to miss our train. We had an hour to wait, so we stopped by the Horsens Elders' apartment! Ældste Thorgren and Myers were home too! So we talked with them for a bit as they were waiting for the Aarhus Elders (Ældste Hamp and Fairbourn) to show up for splits! Then the Aarhus Elders started coming up the stairs! So the Horsens Elders gave the Kolding Elders (us) their name tags and we welcomed the Aarhus Elders for splits!! It was hilarious!! Both Aarhus Elders know who we are, but the fact that we were there and wearing the wrong nametags was really confusing! They caught on really fast though. On our way home from Horsens, we picked up the Fredericia Elders (Ældste Woodforth and Cannon) for splits in Kolding as well! So we had lunch in our 4-man apartment with 8 missionaries! It was insane! We went through a ton of food! I had splits with Ældste Woodforth, which mostly just included knocking and street contacting. It was pretty good!

Thursday was District Meeting! We talked about Finding. It was a really spiritual meeting and we all participated, so it was really good! Then Ældste Weaver and I came home and went finding. We talked to a girl named Helena on the gågade for a while and set up an appointment with her. She's a teenager but has thought surprisingly a lot about religion! 

Friday was also quite weird! We did a lot of contacting and knocking, but there wasn't much positivity out of them. We then tried to do Weekly Planning, but just finished organizing and updating the Area Book. That evening, we had æbleskiver to celebrate my 6 Months as a missionary! It's super weird! I don't feel like I've been gone nearly that long. 

Saturday was a service day! We went to Bent's house. Bent is an older member in the ward. The missionaries have been helping him clean out a chicken coop. However, coop is not a good word for it, it is literally a small house! It hasn't been cleaned for 40 years, and therefore had a fairly thick extra flooring, courtesy of the chickens. We spent almost 4 hours cleaning it up and shoveling out chicken droppings. It was pretty stinky (hence the email title) but I actually really enjoyed it. :) I'm pretty sure the other Elders think I'm crazy. I just smiled a lot and kept saying randomly positive things. After the super long service, we went home and did weekly planning. That took almost all of our time, so we spent about a half hour following up with some investigators and contacting.

On Sunday, we somehow also had a really busy day. We had church, which was wonderful! Then Ældste Weaver and I taught our 'Guest Class' on keeping the Sabbath Day Holy (in Danish) which went really well! Then we took the Sisters' Investigator, Finn, to Priesthood! It was a really cool discussion about Sister Oscarson's talk and how we can put our arm around others. Ældste and Søster Johnson (from the Mission Office) were visiting, so there were some translations going on right behind us. Listening to Danish and then again in English is really confusing for me. But then we came home, had studies, and stopped by Rosa! We have an appointment set with her for this coming Tuesday, but we had to switch times. She had been reading the Book of Mormon and was quite excited to have us give her more to read! She's just awesome! I'm way excited to teach her!

My spiritual thought comes from our apartment. We have a little balcony/room called the 'Smoke Room' which is the best place to go and say prayers by yourself. I would encourage you to say a personal prayer out loud this week! It's super simple and could be uneventful for you, but I've really seen a difference when I truly am pouring out my heart to Heavenly Father. It's powerful to give your whole thoughts in words to God. I hope you're able to set some time aside for that this week, it's definitely worth it. 

Thank you all for reading! Sorry that one seemed a little long. Thank you for your support and have a wonderful week!

--

Ældste Bryant Jepsen

-Emailing on Pday from the library
-My Rejsekort (bus/train pass) and Residency card (with the picture)
-Splits with Ældste Woodforth!
-Headed to Service (I'll admit that I did know it was supposed to be a serious picture)
-The Horsens Party!