Carnaval of Babylon

Well, it was a pretty weird week. At least in contrast with less weird weeks. ;)

This past Monday, we decided to spend in Aalborg! We also, conviniently, met up with the other missionaries in the District! (Including and limited to Ældste Danielsen-Jensen and Ældste Ellis, Ældste Newton and Ældste Walton, along with Søster Esplin and Søster Matheson) We all got food, which was surprisingly hard because stores were closed for Anden Pinsedag (Second Day of Pentecost). Then we played games and ate in the Singing Forrest! It was pretty fun! We also had a soccer ball! After, we all recongregated at their Bishop's house for some service!! It was actually really fun! We helped clear out weeds and branches, set in woodchips, and then raked the entire lawn twice after they mowed up all the moss. :) It was pretty great! They also fed us afterwards and we had some fun conversations! 

On Tuesday, we had splits with Ældste Danielsen-Jensen and Ældste Ellis in Aalborg! I was with Ældste Ellis, and we basically had a two part day. We went out contacting in the morning and talked to quite a few mothers with baby carriages. Then we had a lesson/chapel tour with an older Thai lady named Lai. After missing the first bus, reading some of the Book of Mormon with her, showing her around the church (that I'd been in only twice before), she accepted a baptismal date! So that was great!! We then had to run home so Ældste Moulton and I could catch our train home.

Wednesday was quite typically awesome! It was the best member day ever! Our morning contacting wasn't very fun, but there were quite a few people who knew Erik and Marie Toft (some members). Then we planned for a lesson at home and were heading out when we ran into Jeanett Ørtegren (member) who had made us dinner!! We said thank you and then rushed off to meet Torben Andersen (another member) to explain our lesson for Naja. Naja is a Greenlandic woman who has been coming to church off and on for a while, and she loves it! But she has a hard time reading Danish, and doesn't want to move too quickly into baptism. We had an awesome Gengivelsen (Restoration) lesson with her and Torben shared some powerful testimony!! It was great!! She is still planning on coming to church and will start reading! We also had choir that evening, where Lise Lotte (Kurt's wife and choir director) said we weren't allowed to transfer because the songs sounded great! It was a fun day!

Thursday was different. Ældste Ravn came and inspected our apartment that morning (which passed). Then we helped Kurt clean out some of the church's storage. Our knocking was highlighted by an older lady and her 30 yr old son. Her son gave us ice cream and told us to say hi to one of the members! We had a lesson with Dorthe and Søren that evening, which was actually taught and they understood it, but they dropped us at the end. So I wrote a sad poem that evening, just because that's whacha do, ya know.

Friday was strangeness all over the place. We had an appointment with an older lady who was frustrated that we couldn't come inside because our member didn't get back to us. But then she wasn't able to find her Mormons Bog and went looking for it as we stood on her doorstep. Then once we left, we got a call from an unknown lady who said there was some non-Danish guy outside our church who has been there for hours. So we hurriedly biked over there to meet with a traveling Rabbi!! That's the best description. He lives on his bike and was making tea on a campstove when we showed up. He shared a bunch of Bible scriptures with us, but wouldn't take a Book of Mormon! He also insisted that "Jesus Christ" is a made up person from the Catholic church, but Yehoshua is the savior. It was a pretty interesting experience. We also had weekly planning that day and we made cookies to give to Jeanett.

Saturday was insane! We had the Zone Leaders come to our District Meeting, so it was on Saturday. But Saturday was also Carnaval in Aalborg, which is not a missionary approved activity, to say the least. The train ride down to the city was basically terrifying. There were people packed into the train! There were some 26-ish year old girls with glitter and capes sitting on the armrests and table of our seats, and then some 16-ish year old boys that also looked uncomfortable even though they were also in costumes. I had some glitter on my pants at the end. Luckily, we all survived and got there safely. But then Aalborg was in even more chaos!! We quickly hopped on the bus with the Zone Leaders and made it out to the church fine. District meeting was about starting to teach rather than just trying to set appointments. It was really good!! We all ate lunch on the church lawn (which was safe) and then the four non-Aalborg Elders headed off again. But Ældste Moulton and I just barely missed a train to Frederikshavn! Instead of waiting an hour, we left for Hjørring (same direction just not all the way home). We did 20 minutes of contacting there, where we taught Vera on the street! She'd been taught by missionaries before and wants a Book of Mormon!! Thankfully, Carnaval did not happen in Hjørring! :) I called Aalborg as Babylon as we left. The bus and train floor was super sticky from all the alcohol, and basically there was just craziness and weird people everywhere. It was an interesting day!

Sunday was significantly less weird. We had church! Naja wasn't able to come though! Afterwards, we ate at Ella Damgaards house with her and Kirsten. They're two hilarious and fun older ladies! It was fun! Then we went knocking a bit in RAIN! It was a very weak and short rainstorm, but it was the first time in the past 3 weeks that it's rained! So that was fun!!

I was thinking this past week about The Book of Mormon, as missionaries do on occasion. In Preach My Gospel, there's a quote which says that the Book of Mormon has all of the doctines that are required for salvation. As a part of our spiritual thought for Ella and Kirsten, we talked about how cool it was we had a book, let alone that it also has all of Salvation's truths in it! Kirsten told us that Mormons Bog was first released 16 pages at a time until all of it was translated and published. I think it's incredible that we have access to such powerful doctrine in a single and convenient place! So I would challenge you all to write down a question for the week (or a couple days if needed) and to look for an answer as you study the Book of Mormon throughout the week! Let me know how it helped you and strengthened your testimony! 

I hope all of you have a wonderful last week of school or third week of summer for those of you out of college! 

--

Ældste Bryant Jepsen

- The Traveling Rabbi told me to take a picture of his Bible, so I did!

- Here's a calmer picture as we were leaving Aalborg

- This is Gregory's hotel from the train

- The clouds outside our apartment were gorgeous! Also, there's a Baptist Chruch right there too!

- Some of the District

American Hotels (in Denmark)

 Halløj! This week has basically flown past! We did stuff, so that was good!

Last Monday, we didn't do a ton. We just kind of relaxed and bought a ton of chicken to last us the rest of the transfer. So that's exciting. :) I made pancakes for breakfast, so that was fun! We knocked into a guy from Yugoslavia (which doesn't technically exist anymore...) but he spoke a bit of French, and Slovak, but knew a couple phrases in English and Danish. So after a little Charades, we set an appointment to bring him a book in Slovak. It was hilarious!! And Ældste Moulton got to practice his French! (He took a couple years in high school, but Danish has basically taken over.)

Tuesday was pretty crazy! We had some good contacting in the morning but some very sad stop by's. We biked around to try and get a couple people home, but only the Yugoslavian guy was there! But we luckily had his book! His son explained that he was leaving back to Serbia soon, so he could take that with him. Afterwhich, we tried taking a train to Tolne for some service. But the train we planned was cancelled! Along with the two after that! We ended up waiting forever and then getting on a bus that was going down there instead. There, we helped Gregory and his family. He's an American who owns a hotel! He's super nice, but a little too comfortable with missionaries doing service. We really wanted to teach him while we ate some food, but we ended up helping make lasagna, moving wood, and then eating a bit before running out to catch a train. But I got to help a little bit with fixing his chainsaw (Thanks Brian Crow!) so that was surprisingly fun! We had a ton of stop by's that evening, which resulted in a couple appointments, so that was nice!

Wednesday was pretty uneventful. I basically was looking forward to having choir that evening, but we weren't sure if it was going to happen. So after a super long time of working and waiting for an answer, I got excited to stay out knocking for another hour. And so, of course, we were told that we did have choir and we were late. So we got kind of chewed out for that... But it was still fun! We also found quite a few potentials, which was great! We met a man from the Congo (DRofC) and he was really bad at Danish. He's filler word was "tak" so anytime there was a pause in talking he'd just thank us! He also gave us some very nice cough drops as candy... So that was nice of him! 

Thursday was pretty normal! We had District Meeting, which was very focused on virtue and diligence! I felt very motivated to get on top of the few minutes in between things where I can get distracted. I just want to use all the time I can to be more effective. And then of couse, we barely missed our train home so we had to wait a half hour. So we walked to the Singing Forrest! It was pretty cool. It's basically a little orchard with sound boxes of people's music of those who had performed in Aalborg. We found Andrea Bocceli, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Shakira, Beyonce, and a couple others. it was pretty fun! Then we headed home and did some knocking. Then! The evening got more exciting when I found a tick on my knee! We have no idea how it got there, but we took it out! We were trying to use a hot knife (I don't know if that's supposed to work or not) but ended up just pulling it out with tweezers. So that was the most exciting part of the day.

Friday was highlighted with our lesson with a lady named Henriette! (Shout out to a specific Ældste Francis who started teaching her sometime last year!) We had knocked into her and she said we could come back, so we set an appointment! We were able to take Kurt along with us, which turned out to be quite helpful!! He knew basically half of her family and she knew a lot about his family as well! So our next lesson is very possibly going to be in his house! We were really excited about that! She was pretty excited to read more in Mormons Bog and gave a soft commitment to church.

Saturday was normal. We had weekly planning and went knocking. That's basically everything. We knocked two streets called Horsensgade and Slagelsegade, so we joked that we just biked quickly over to Horsens and Slagelse to see if they would be productive. But there were very few people home, sadly.

Sunday was fun! We had church, which included some American guests!! They needed some translation, so I was excited to try it out, but we have a couple members who are good at it, so that's what happened. We have little headsets and everything though, which was cool! Henriette didn't come to church though, sadly. We're hoping for next week. After church, Jacob Holm-Larsen showed us how to make koldskål! So that was fun! We also got some knocking in that evening where we talked to quite a few fun people and got some potentials!

My spiritual thought for the week is about diligence. In Preach My Gospel it says: "Diligence is steady, consistent, earnest, and energetic effort in doing the Lord's work."  I think it's important to realize, at least for me, that it is not a race to achieve perfection. We're not trying to get better than others faster. We're just trying to get better constantly! As we consistently strive to do our best, we will be blessed and be able to see the growth that we have!

I hope you all have a wonderful week everyone! Good luck with graduation, end of school, deciding what to do with free time, etc. 

--

Ældste Bryant Jepsen

- The Singing Forrest

- Food, because it's easy to take selfies then

Who Needs Appointments Anyway?

 This week was almost unbelievably slow. We had a couple appointments set with investigators and/or the branch members. But, like a missionary's life tends to be sometimes, they didn't go quite as planned. In fact, anything that had been planned beforehand, was cancelled (Zone Conference and Church being the only exceptions). So that gave us some good finding time!

So on Monday, we had some fun service!! We got to clean out the attic of the church! We went out to a little hill with cannons (Nordre Skanse) and then biked over to the church. We were there forever! There was so much stuff up there! Chairs, paintings, wooden cutouts of the Nativity, at least 4 old printers with matching age of computers, etc. It was pretty fun! We also got to see the weird Danish dumps! They're just a couple of large dumpsters like the ones used for house construction. After that, we went contacting in order to get some normal work in. The rest of the day was pretty relaxed with emailing home and trying to coordinate Skyping the next week (by relaxing, it was kind of stressful because we didn't have a place to Skype from confirmed yet).

Tuesday was Zone Conference! We got to ride down to Aarhus with Ældste and Søster Ravn, which was pretty fun! We arrived a little late though, so we snuck in during some announcements. We learned about Preach My Gospel and talked about Personal Revelation. It was awesome! I definitely felt like I just needed to be a little more confident in what I'm doing and more faithful that the Lord will guide me to do as He needs. I also loved being able to see and talk with so many of the missionaries! It was really fun! We got home after interviews (my last interview with President O'Bryant since he is released this summer), had our studies, and did some contacting!

On Wednesday, we had a lesson planned with a lady named Mary, but after a reminder text, she cancelled because of sickness. So that was disappointing. So we did some stop by's and contacting. While we were doing stop by's we got a text cancelling floorball that evening. Then while contacting, choir was also cancelled. So we had our whole day open up really fast! So we headed out to Provst Dreslers Vej to knock a bit out there. While out there, we talked to a lady named Liza. She was a bit curious and after I saw her husband was home, we asked to come in. So we taught a Restoration lesson with a good focus on the Holy Ghost's power! And, what's more, we invited her to be baptized and she said she'd think about it! So we made another appointment for Saturday.

Thursday was kind of uneventful. That morning I did some weird/bold things which had moderate success (gesturing and telling atheists to look at the world created by God, but they took a book because they were interested). Our lesson with Dorthe and Søren was rescheduled so we didn't have that anymore. So we went to Fælledvej to knock a little bit. We talked to a lot of people, but the most interested was an older lady who has eye problems but wanted to give us soda and talk outside a bit. Not too much there.

Friday, we decided to head out to Sulbæk to follow up on a referral. There was a girl who had visited BYU and stayed with an LDS family who they said might be interested. So we biked out 8 kilometers to stop by. Her dad was outside working on a patio, so we offered to help. One thing led to another, and both the parents (no kids were home) were talking with us on their porch as we drank soda and ate fresh fruit. They were super nice and really love Mormons, but they weren't interested in learning more themselves. They said we could stop by again and that 'our parents have wonderful sons.' We tried some knocking in Sulbæk, but there were very few home. So we biked back to finish off the evening in Frederikshavn. We talked to a man who was not believing. He was very passionate that we should be able to see the news as missionaries. He also talked about some clothing that is debatably Christ's, and a lot about how I apparently have something inside me that drives me to meet people and should therefore be a door to door salesman. It was pretty interesting. (I'm not considering door to door sales though.)

Saturday was also uneventful. We went contacting, met a lot of people that don't like religion. We went knocking and talked to a guy who did not want God more in his life because he works to get what he needs. And to top it off, Liza cancelled and dropped us. So Saturday was fun.

Sunday was great though! Mothers' Day is always wonderful! Church was a lot about mothers, and we were invited for lunch with Ivan and Kirsten Kristensen, which turned out to be their extended family as well! So we gave a spiritual thought to about 20-25 people. That was pretty exciting! Then we biked out to do some knocking before we Skyped at Kurt Holm-Larsen's house. Calling home was great!! I loved seeing all my family and hearing how they're doing! It was also fun to see all my grandparents! And Kurt might know one of our neighbors too! After we Skyped, Kurt talked to us for a while, then as we were leaving he came out after us to give us some saft (juice)! He's an awesome guy, I really like him. The rest of the evening was basically study. It was good!

So my spiritual thought is from a scripture in Daniel 3. The story is about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego when they refuse to worship the Golden Calf. It says: "If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."  I've thought about this scripture a couple times this week. Of course God wants to bless us as we are doing His work. Of course He wants His children to benefit from the gospel. Do I have enough faith to find those He wants me to find? But at the same time, do I have the faith to work hard regardless of finding some one who really does want to listen? President Packer once said: "You exercise faith by causing, or by making, your mind accept or believe as truth that which you cannot, by reason alone, prove for certainty." Faith is truly a choice. I love that he says "you cannot" because that defines faith, something we don't fully understand and cannot prove "by reason alone." And yet, as we strive forward and keep pressing along with the things we do know and believe are right, we are blessed. So this week, be faithful. Be patient. Know that the Lord is preparing you through your life, so keep pressing hard on the trials you do have because you will be able to work wonders because of them!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day!! Just a quick shout out, my Mom is amazing!! She's by far the best Mom I've ever had. She's been an incredible example to me in testimony, love, strength, service, and noticing the small things to uplift others. I would have never been blessed the way I am, nor be able to bless others as I hope I can, without her example and love. I love you Mom!

As for the rest of you, have a wonderful week! And make sure you told your mom you love her if you haven't already. Or just do it again. ;)

--

Ældste Bryant Jepsen

- Mothers Day video call! (first one has Kurt Holm-Larsen in it)

- We had some Star Wars Lunch boxes to use for our bike ride to Sulbæk

- My mom was proud I can make some food, so there's an example :)

- A very large wild bunny!