Bicycles, Break-ins, and Blocking out the Haters :)

Guess what... it just gets better! Also harder! But that makes it better:) Its been a good week and i am becoming much more accustomed to everything than last week. Thats not to say everyday is a new experience but i am more used to the schedule and stuff. Anyways here comes the highlight reel:

Exchanges:

So this week we had exchanges starting monday at around 6 PM till the following day at the same time. It was a super fun experience for me getting to know another missionary better. This exchange was with the district leader Ældste Vance who is an awesome guy! He is from Texas and enjoys doing fun outdoor things so we had a lot to talk about! He has great Danish and is a great teacher and i definitley learned form him so i see why we do exchanges now :) But we had some fun experiences..... and here they come haha.

1. We taught a older lady from Croatia who has had a rough life but wants to learn about the gospel because her son is a recent convert and he is an awesome guy! The only problem is that he has to transalte from Croatian for us so its pretty difficult. But anyways we walked into her flat which ablsolutely reeked of cats (which i strongly, strongly dislike...) and sat down and started to talk. Everything was going well and it was a great conversation... until she went off on a tangent about some wild story that i don't care to try and expalin to you right now haha. So she starts becoming increasingly passionate about it and is raising her voice and flapping her arms everywhere, and in turn, he son becomes increasingly more frantic to try and translate to us what she is firing off. So here i am, don't speak a lick a croatian and am still learning Danish, but because he is talking so fast i dont understand either language.... but they both are staring at me as if im google translate so i just nod and smile. So im basically just sitting there being bombarded by two foreign tongues and then i start to die inside. It was all so surreal that i wanted to burst out laughing!! haha And i almost did but Ældste vance (who knew there was no recovering from this tangent)v looked at me and said... Do you understand any of this... so i said no and then we both smiled and asked if we could close with a prayer. The minute we closed that door behind us we lost our minds haha:)

2. This one is much shorter. We went to go visit a greenlandic lady who is an investigator except she is always drunk according to Ældste Vance. So we go knock on her door and she comes to answer it except she is so drunk she cant work the lock and the door handle haha. So we ask if she needs help and then..... from a tiny 100 pound drunk lady (she actually is that small).... came the loudest pound on the door that reverberated throughout the entire apartment complex stairwell. I dont know if she put on some brass knuckles or what because she was going to town on this door haha:) So we decided now wasn't a good time and exited the building

So that is why missions are so much fun:))

Service:

We got the chance to do some service at some members house on Wednesday which was sweet. I actually miss yard work so it was a nice experience. I got to know the members more and they have a son named Adam who is 4 and he demanded in Danish that i hold the rake in my hands in a way that he could hand from it like monkey bars haha. Really reminded me of Stella (you could say i miss her.... :) ) But we just cut these big bushes for him and cleaned a whole tree worth of pine needles of the sidewalk so that was a fun little service project Denmark edition for me. Im sure there are more to come.

Bicycles:

So i finally got a real Mans bike haha. No more 12 year old girls wheels! Ill send a picture but it fits my needs and then some. It was nice because we got it on sale! We spent about 2 hours looking around to make sure i got a good deal. The only bad thing was is that we had to put it together so we spent about an hour extra in front of Thanses cycle butik assembling it :). We then realized halfway through that we might need some tools to actually make it stay together so i had to go back in the store and get more stuff. So needless to say i have the biggest most legit bike tool from thansens cycle butik (that was also on sale too :)) I think id make Brother Florence proud with my bike assembling skills haha.

Break ins:

NO I didnt get robbed i know your all probably thinking that haha i just thought about that ;) So on the same day as the bicycle adventure we went out to go teach an progressing investogator when halfway through the lesson i realized i forgot the keys.... so i decided to forget it until after just because that made me a little flustered haha. How does one forget the keys to EVERTHING! its still a mystery but we took about an hour to get back into our apartment and heres how.....

step 1: wait until someone else comes to open the back courtyard because it could be possible to pick the lock on that old door in the back

step 2: get schooled by the lock while looking like criminals because some smart building owner doesnt want people to pick locks on "that old door"

step 3: kick in the basement door because youve seen it in movies and those are legit life skills lessons

step 4: kick in apartment back door because step 3 worked so well and you feel like a complete animal when you do it

Ask me if anything broke... glad you asked, nothing did :) The doors are old enough that they just bent in so the lock popped out so the building owner needs a more sturdy wood. Win for the Odense 1 Elders

Investigators:

Heres more of the actual highlights (although those are fun :) ) So we have a investigator that is from Vietnam and he has lived in Denmark for like 40 years since the Vietnam war. He has had a pretty rough life up until coming to Denmark but he is an awesome guy! He loves having us over and we recently committed him to baptism. He loves the gospel and especially loves the fact that God is there for him and will always help him. He constantly is relating everything back to that fact. So he is a great guy. And he loves to give us juice everytime we go over there haha he is the best.

We had a girl named C contact US two days ago! She is such an awesome person! She had a large trial a couple months back that has kind have had her wondering on life after this life. So she asked a friend who is a member in Copenhagen about some of the gospel and her friend told her to go to church. So somehow she got our number and asked us when church is and where! We actually took here on a chapel tour and she really enjoyed it and then came to church the following day! She has such an awesome spirit and is really willing to learn! So we are rigtig glæde that Heavenyl Father put her in our path.

Blocking out the Haters:

In Denmark some people think its fun to make fun of us and chant things like "Mormoner, Mormoner, Mormoner" and stuff haha. We find it pretty funny because they are usually plastered and its the alcohol talking. There is one guy in particular that we see often that loves to do stuff like that. I know him by crazy steve because 1. I dont know his actual name and 2. he is crazy. He loves to do that chant and try and do hail Hitler type salutes except it usually turns into something that looks like he is summoning the rain haha :) But for any mocking we get we just play along which kinda catches them off guard haha. Plus, the Danish people so far aren't very intimidating and i wrestled with Clint and Dave and Dirty Mike so im not actually worried about anyone here haha.

Lessons Learned:

Be yourself! Its kind of a cliche phrase but alot of people here are trying to fit an image and those people are sticks in the mud to talk to. They are the usual... i dont believe in God and my faith is in having a good time in life and living it up. Thats very common from people we talk to here. But there are some who like to stick out in there beliefs or otherwise. We talked with a girl that had blue hair and a interesting (attempt) at clothes haha. But she was one of the nicest people we had talked to that night and she was very open to just be herself and express all her beliefs. She didnt want anything to do with the gospel but i learned a great lesson from that!

Love everyone! Just try it!

Thats all i have time for but missions are for real! Heavenly Hather loves everyone and has a plan for everyone and that is more apparent to me than ever now!

hav en god uge!