Monday, February 12, 2018

The Bright Side of the Door

This week has been decently uneventful, to be honest, but it's been really fun. The first week with a new companion is always different, but Ældste Schaffer and I basically just hit the ground running (or biking...) Also, because I didn't explain last week's title (Kolding Our Fathers) I'll explain that and this email's title now. Ældste Schaffer (my companion) was trained by Ældste Preece who is now Ældste Saviano's companion who half trained me! So we're all a Father-Son kind of apartment! (Hence the "Kolding our Fathers") And this week, we just did a ton of knocking. That's easier to explain.


An inserted paragraph with a little more about Ældste Schaffer that he wrote in an email to mom:
I love working with Ældste Schaffer! He's really easy to get along with and has a very good endurance for long hours of knocking and finding. It's pretty fun! We laugh a lot. It's probably not ok how much fun we have just knocking doors. ;) Ældste Gabriel Schaffer hails from Spanish Fork, UT. He's been out the same time as Ældste Saviano (now almost a year). He is amazing at the guitar, very musical. He has extremely fun and hilarious voices and accents. He actually physically reminds me of Stephen Poor, at least when he doesn't have his glasses on. He did some theatrical things at home. He was part of Jazz band (guitar), orchestra (violin/tuba), and some Marching Band (drumline). He also apparently like walks on the beach. Yea! He's really random and fun to be around. I enjoy it. He was trained by Ældste Preece (from Am Fork), by the way. I realized I never explained last week's email title. So now both our fathers are companions in our apartment! We are now biking. It's pretty interesting, quite a different area. We had to take them in for some seasonal repairs, so they're good. We're short one helmet though (I never bought one...) so we've been taking turns. I don't want to have a lame one, but I also don't want to spent too much, so I just haven't gotten one for myself yet. 

On Monday, we got our new companions and were rushed getting everything normal, like buying food, done for the week. So I apologize that last week was such a short email. I also hope you all prayed this past week. ;) Prayer is important! We also contacted a guy named Korr who owns an outdoors store. He wanted a Book of Mormon but we didn't have any because we had just dropped off a bunch of luggage, so we told him we'd come back.

Tuesday was pretty interesting. We went running over to IBC and ran up and down the stairs for a while. It was pretty chilly, but felt good. We did some morning contacting and had a rundown of the area. Then we decided to visit all our friends on Cedervej/Cyprusvej! So we started biking! As the extreme navigator that I am, we soon passed through Seest! (Seest is West while we were trying to head North. Seest is also where our Jepsen family lived in Denmark!) Yea... That was awkward. We quickly recalculated and ended up riding bikes over a river and through to woods, and to Kenn's house we went! We caught him home and were able to teach him the Restoration! We got a good connection with families, but he still hasn't read in the Book of Mormon. It's also hard to set an appointment with him because he gets his work schedule (bus driving) at the end of the week for that next week. 

Wednesday was also pretty active. We rode bikes up to stop by Nille, who we haven't heard from in a while. But she wasn't home! So we just knocked on some houses and opganges up there. We also stopped by Korr again. We talked to him for a really long time. He wasn't super interested, but was happy to read more of the Book of Mormon. We'll probably stop by him in a couple weeks.

Thursday was District Meeting! We had four new missionaries in our district, so that's fun! We now have Ældste Cannon and Ældste Gotfredson in Fredericia, along with Søster Peterson and Søster Andrizzi in Vejle! It's weird having so many people from my group again! It's pretty fun. I also found out that we'd been missionaries for 7 months now... That is also super weird... After district meeting, Ældste Fonnesbeck drove us home and helped us get some things for our apartment, like some cleaning supplies and a blender. Then we went out and knocked some more for a couple hours.

Friday was a pretty miracle filled day! We went to finish knocking a street that we started on Thursday, but some of the stairwells were locked, but quite a few of them weren't closed all the way so we could get in! Little miracle! We later went knocking out on Cedervej and we met a man named Alexander! He let us in and we taught the Restoration! It was awesome! He didn't want to take a Book of Mormon yet, but he's happy to have us back and wants to play board games with us (on P-day of course;) ) Litte Miracle! We also ran into Frank again, so we were able to get his phone number. Little Miracle! Then the bike ride home was down hill!! Huge Miracle! We had a lesson scheduled in the library, but when we got there the library was closed! And then we weren't able to get a hold of the man we had the lesson with! That was pretty sad, but we did some stop by's instead.

Saturday was pretty normal. We had some street contacting, weekly planning, and went knocking. That basically comprised our entire day. We also had some good Compartmentship inventory, so that was good.

On Sunday, Denmark turned to a blizzard! Not actually, but according to Danish standards it was. We got to Fredericia at a good time, but the bus broke down in the station. So we called Ældste Fonnesbeck to see if he could come pick us up for church. We finally got there almost half way through Sacrament Meeting! It was pretty lame. The ward was a little scarce because of the bad weather. Once we got home, we did some studies and then went out to contact. But being Fastelavns (a really weird/dark Danish holiday that is basically like Halloween's cousin) that was basically no one outside... So we stopped by one of our Czech friends! We'd knocked into him a week ago, and we were able to teach him a bit! He doesn't have any religious background at all though! It was really interesting to teach from literally the ground up. We tried hitting the points of the Restoration, but we're planning on going a little more basic next time. 

As for a Spiritual thought, I read a talk this past week from Elder Holland called "The Miracle of a Mission." I would recommend that everyone should read it! It was really motivational and really put into perspective the calling of a missionary, the concourses of people that they are able to influence, and the good they really do bring about. I'm not sure how large of a concourse I'll be bringing anywhere, but it's definitely helped motivate me through the long days of contact where we wonder if we can find a new investigator that day.

Thanks for all your support! Good luck to all the missionaries that are currently serving and those who just received their calls! You all are amazing! And thank you to everyone else for supporting them as well! Have a wonderful week!

--
Ældste Bryant Jepsen

- Ældste Schaffer and I
- German Pancakes, all part of a nutritious breakfast
- A Spejder Scout place. That's the BSA, basically. 
 - We found this weird snake/alligator... so we sat on it!







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