Halløj from
the land of ferocious house pets! (But no, I still have not been bitten by a
dog.)
This week
was extremely motivating and really fun/exhausting! (Those usually tend to go
together, for some fun reason.) First, as a shout out to a friend up in
Frederikshavn: Zibar was baptized this past Saturday!! He's officially
following Jesus Christ as a member of His church!! I'm super happy for him!
(See picture below)
Monday was a
day of adventure! We basically had nothing planned, so we were sitting in our
apartment and then we decided to go on a road trip! So we biked out to Café
Stryhns for famous Esbjerg ice cream and ate it on the beach in some hammocks!
It was pretty fun! We then decided we'd knock a bit out there, which was an
awesome idea! We talked to quite a few fun people, one of which is named
Henning. He was weeding, but finished just as we came by so we couldn't help
him. As we talked, he mentioned that he founded two Frikirke congregations in
Esbjerg's area! We had a lot of doctrinal similarities, which was really fun!
Anything he said, we could support and add more to it! He took a Mormons Bog
and said he'd read in it if we really thought it would help him. (OF COURSE!)
So that was super cool! We also stopped by the "Mennesker ved Havet"
statue in Esbjerg, which is a landmark. It's very... artistic. It's cool, but
we didn't spend too much time there.
Tuesday was
the bomb!!! We had District Council with the AP's (Ældste Saviano and Ældste
Thorngren) about Personal Revelation. There were some pretty big promises made,
and a lot of commitments as well. Then we had Blitz Splits!! The Sisters took a
car and headed out, while the other 6 missionaries all headed to an area and
started knocking it down! (Not actually, it's just an expression.) I was with
Ældste Saviano first, and we talked to a bunch of Muslims smoking weed, then
met a super cool young mom who loved Mormons Bog, and then a grandma who also
wanted to read it! And then to cap off the first half of splits, we found
another hedgehog!! This is literally the second live hedgehog I've seen in
Denmark, both of which were with Ældste Saviano! So we got some cool pictures
with him. Then we all headed to a new area and knocked a bunch of houses. I was
with Ældste Kofford, and we talked to a lot of nice people, but not many who
would do more than take a card. There was a man named Torben, who's wife had
met the Sisters and wanted them to come back, so we set up an appointent for
them the next day! At the end of the day, there were 6 people who had been
found and accepted an appointment for us to come back!! It was awesome!! That
night in Coordination Meeting, we basically just gushed to Martin about how
stoked we were. It was a great day. The Sønderborg Elders (Ældste Iverson and
Ældste Kofford) then stayed the night with us because they were driving to
Odense for Blitz Splits the next day, so we had an eventful evening.
Wednesday
was exciting too!! The other Elders headed out, and we chose to stay back in
our own area. It was a lot of finding for us that day. We did a lot of
contacting and knocking. While we were out contacting, we met a man named
Faris. He was happy to take a Mormons Bog and he set an appointment with us for
Saturday! The rest of the day was super motivating getting text messages about
the work going on in Odense, and just knowing everyone was out finding! (Also,
the Sisters appointment with Torben and Henriette went really well!) It was
just fun to be out working all together even if we weren't in the same place.
The party
continued on Thursday! Sønderborg came back and stayed the night so we could
have splits on Thursday! Ældste Kofford and I were out finding again! We met
this man on the gågade who was from England. David, the man, grew up 30 minutes
from where Ældste Kofford grew up!! That was super cool!! He was really open to
learn and asked us quite a few questions! We then set up a time where we could
actually meet and talk, but he's a busy guy so it's in a couple weeks. He's
super cool though!! We then went out knocking all 4 of us (remnants of the
Blitz Splits) where Ældste Jensen and Ældste Iverson found a lady who wanted to
learn more, and Ældste Kofford and I gave out a couple books! It was great! It
also rained a ton, which was pretty exciting.
Friday was a
bit slower, but because of appointments. We met with Kaj again, which was the
same as the last couple times. There's basically very little that we can
actually do for him. But he gave Ældste Jensen some fancy cloggs, which he's
stoked about. We also met with Thomas, who really wants to get baptized but
we're waiting for permission to baptize him. He's currently reading through
Mormons Bog, so we read and discussed it with him. He's incredible! We then
went knocking for a while, which was fun! The last thing of the day was an
appointment with a Jewish American named Jonathon. It was a weird apointment.
He basically just wanted to talk with us and is reading the Book of Mormon, but
just because he promised a friend that he would. He invited us to dinner this
coming Friday and told us we had to have something to teach, so that should be
better. That might be the last time we come.
Saturday
started off with some good old soccer in the rain! It was really fun and really
wet! We played with Niklas Kjær (a super cool return missionary), Steffan, and
Nicolas (Steffan's friend and a professional curler!!). It was pretty exciting!
And then Nicolas also mentioned we could try curling in a couple weeks!!! I'm
super incredibly stoked for that! After that, our appointment with Faris was
cancelled. We ate lunch with Steffan though, which was good. Then we had Weekly
Planning and Finding and such. It was a fast day.
Sunday was
also super fast. We had church, which was great! It was a homecoming (after 3
weeks) of Christopher Grabe. He's really cool too, just lives in Copenhagen
now... We took the sacrament to Erik Houmborg, had some studies, got some food
dropped off from the Grabe family. We also went out knocking, which was super
weird!! We were in a little complex where we had just talked with a Satanist
for a while, then a girl came down the steps so we contacted her, but she
quickly shuffled back up and then told someone "there are missionaries out
there" in perfect English!! (come to think about it, she had no idea what
we said in Danish, so...) But the apartment building was packed with a bunch of
young people that wouldn't pay us any attention, so that was sad. We also met
an American girl studying to be a Ship Diver! That was cool! That was about all
for the day.
My spiritual
thought comes from President Olsen who shared a quote from President Eyring.
It's super inspirational for me. It really makes me want to purify my
motivation and do everything I can. Please read it and ponder what you can be
doing. It's awesome!
"I must
go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till I know, and work till He stops
me. And when He returns for His own, He will have no problem recognizing me. My
banner will be Clear."
Have a
wonderful week everyone!!
--
Ældste
Bryant Jepsen
- Zibar's Baptism day: Ældste Ellis, Zibar,
Erik Toft, and Ældste Wright
- The White
Men of Esbjerg (as missionaries call them)
- A fuzzy
little hedgehog friend (it's honestly not very prickly but not actually fuzzy either)
- Our rainy day Soccer group
- Our rainy day Soccer group
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