Life Lessons, Parole and Flight Plans

Hvadså everyone!

This is my last time writing from the MTC and you could say im prettttttty stoked. This last week has been fantastisk and it just gets better and better here. Here is the highlights of the last week in the MTC:

Life lessons:

So this week we had some power lessons and they all had a couple fantastic points to take away from them. They really are inspired because every time i heard them id say to myself..... hey, thats exactly what i needed. The Lord is always happy to help!

1. Yet another great analogy from Brother Williamson! He gave us a great analogy about a garden. It requires fresh, rich soil. It requires diligent weeding and other maintenance. it requires constant nourishment. (ETC..) So, as long as you take care of it and put your heart into it, you will yield a great crop. However, if you say, "Ill just water it tomorrow" or " I'm pretty sure the birds wont eat my stuff" then you will end up with no yield. The main point is that there will be a product of this garden, but it is us that decides what that product will be. Will we commit to keeping our garden in good care? will we decide to settle for a bunch of weeds? That is the question we answer in time. This was very relevant to me because i can go out and mess around and do what makes me happy, or i can fully commit myself to caring for the garden and do what makes the Lord happy. (And im not comparing Danish people to vegetables here haha). This also applies to YOU in some way shape or form so apply it!

2. We had a lesson on learning to love the people and the place we are serving. One of the teachers taught about how he had a prideful companion who was sure that America is the best country in the world and he needed to preserve his Americanness. So basically he didn't get the language at all, he didn't understand the people, and he didn't love the country. Basically.... he didn't do anything productive on his mission except grow weeds (see it applies to a lot haha). We were taught after this that we need to be like The Prophet Ammon who goes to the Lammanities to serve them with all he has. We read in Alma 17:23 that he said he desired to dwell with the Lammanites (and serve them), even until the day he dies. The main point of this lesson is that we need to lose ourselves in the work and assimilate with these people. The teacher told us that the more we try to become like those we teach, the more we understand them and are therefore successful in teaching them. He said that the blessing of doing this is a great love for the people and the country.

3. For the future missionaries, we had a devotional by Emeritus General Authority Elder William Walker. (thats a mouthful huh). But he was a fantastic speaker and talked on 10 ways to be a more happy and successful missionary. It was really great to hear as i prepare to leave the MTC:

1. Focus on the Lord

2. Love the scriptures

3. Forget about yourself! (My personal favorite)

4. Love the people... really love them

5. Follow the mission president

6. Learn the language of the spirit

(This one is cool because he said he was listening to President Monson at a missionary devotional and President Monson said that every missionary needs to come home bilingual, if not trilingual! Thats was a really neat thought.)

7. Work HARD!

8. Be exactly obedient

9. Be a Preach my Gospel Missionary

10. Prepare to return home and live as a faithful member and continue to serve your fellow men

These were awesome for me and had personal study on many of the scriptures that he mentioned with these points. I know this is a sure way to be sucessful and have no regrets.

Apply these as you will haha.

Parole (not really though):

So for early Monday morning service we went to clean one of the buildings again and guess what job we got... Scrubbing Brick Walls!! So basically we died laughing in front of the cleaning manager and he didn't seem very amused which made it better. I call it parole because i felt like a juvenile community service volunteer scrubbing graffiti off walls (like The Santa Claus 2 movie haha). It was actually pretty fun and we had races to see who was the Scrub King (emphasis on Scrub). Anyway for all those coming, try and get the white board washing job. I have no clue how that helped though because after we scrubbed it for about an hour and a half guess what... still just a brick wall!

Flight Planzz!:

Friday was the golden day for us because we finally got to see the light at the end of this timewarp tunnel. We get to leave Monday the 27th at 6 in the morning for the airport. Then we fly from SLC airport to Atlanta Georgia. After that we have an hour and then we board a fourteen hour flight to Amsterdam!! When we get there we have one hour to get to the next plan which is a three hour flight to COPENHAGEN! We all "rejoiced exceedingly". It was a little hard to focus in class for a bit after that but we somehow got back on track. I'm so excited because ive never been out of the country! Ældste Ziegler thinks this is hilarious because hes a proud Swissman and likes to tell us how many places he has been in Europe (which are all ironically better than the USA in his opinion) haha.

Language:

I have continued to progress in Danish a lot since Sister Paulsen got here! I mean yea... she talks faster than most 13 year old girls but it has actually helped me a lot to understand better. Im really excited to see where my first transfer is to because im hoping i go somewhere in Jutland where its mostly country and its beautiful! We will see how well i actually do but its the same for all missionaries so im just gonna roll with it.

Misc:

Shoutout to the LeBarons for ending my districts mail drought! The cookies went down in the pantry history (that's what my large food stash is called) haha. All of my district are convinced that my family reunions must have the worlds best food haha. Thanks LeBarons!

For one of our lessons we decided to sing to him! It was really cool because it kinda caught him off guard that we actually sounded pretty decent. That actually made the lesson 5x better so i was happy we did that even though it was kinda awkward at first!

We get 12 new Danes today! Its exciting to meet them because they are potentially future companions! I mean the wont replace the Fire Stør Dansker (Its what we are known as throughout the MTC haha it means the Four Great Danes) but its exciting!

Thats about all i got from this week but I love you guys! Holde ud til ende oh altid tjene andre mennisker! Gud elsker I og onske I at vende tilbage til ham! Du can gør svært tinge!!

Mel Kærlighed,

Ældste Jeppson

Hallway Inception