The Waffle Bowl

This week turned out pretty well:) We had some fun, some interesting, and some great things happen. But hey, Let me tell you about them...

Progress:

So the main thing for this week was J*. He kinda needed a pause for 5 days so we gave it to him but at the end of those 5 days we came back and wrote out a calendar leading up to his baptism and what he is going to have to do by certain dates to be on track for August. He has some pretty high hurdles to jump but hes got it:)  He got way determined on Saturday when we met with him and he came to chruch the next day for the first time in a while. Like 3 months! So that was huge for him. He said he loved the talks and the good spirit he felt there. He already is exceeding his goals with stopping smoking and stuff so I'm definitley pulling for him:) He is a good egg. We learned this week that he was actually a marine for the Danish Armed Forces so that was pretty surprising actually haha. But it is going well with him.

We have been finding like an old lady in an antique shop and getting tons of potential future converts to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have been burned a bunch this week but we are determined to meet with some of these people. (Being burned means people cancel things haha)

 They really do want the gospel in their lives... they just don't realize it yet:) It is like eating a banana versus putting it in a smoothie... Life could be so much better haha.

Here are some other highlights of the week:

On Tuesday we went and visited a 90 year old member and her non member husband. They fed us weird old people food ( nursing home weird...) And we tried to share a thought with them but the member happens to be deaf and so she ended up sharing like 5 experiences that had to do with her hedges and made absolutely no sense. Her husband just doesn't really care to learn anything because he thinks he is too old, so we ended up watching him kinda doze off over his food while she kept sharing her hedge stories... gotta love it, haha

Oh yea i forgot to mention something last about last Sunday! There was this random building BBQ in front of our complex and we were just walking home from church and we got invited to come and eat hot dogs with all of our neighbors haha. It was super casual and we got to know some of them and they all think we are normal humans now haha. So that was fun:) It was also way funny because we stayed to help bring a bunch of the equipment and extra food down into the basement storage for some guy and i got handed a huge case of cans of beer haha. It was way funny because the other Elders weren't close enough to hear that the lady asked us to carry it down for them so they thought they were giving stuff out and that I took all the alcohol hahaha. It was your average awkward situation because I wasn't necessarily confortable with it either hahaha.

So lesson learned. Avoid the apperance of evil:)

Anyways, This week we also had Zone conference here in Århus. It was sweet because all the missionaries on fyn and Jylland all came up and when we have zone conferences we have a big lunch and stuff and then do something cool. This year we played football and Me and Elder Bishopp were in charge of the whole thing. We made cool medals out of belgian waffles from the equivalant of the Dollar store and called it the "Waffle bowl". SO everyone got way jazzed and actually played pretty seriously haha. Sadly, my team lost in a heartbreaking game but it was all around good fun. (Our team was named the Chive Tribe after the chives we had at lunch haha)

This morning we woke up and made a bunch of pancakes because the new sister from Spain, Sister Acosta need some extra integration into Denmark. It has been harder for her because she doesn't really speak spanish or english haha. But we had a a sweet pancake breakfast with the sisters from århus and horsens who were up on splits. We made it a surpirse for the århus sisters (the horsens sisters were in on it) and so they "went on a morning walk" and we had it all laid out. So i think it helped releive some stress :)

Spiritual Thought:

 

Here are three quotes I heard at zone conference that stuck out to me:

"When we give all that we have, we get it back infinitely more"

"When you're sad to leave someone or something, take heart. You've done your job. When you give you heart for something, it will always come back more full then when you gave it"

Some of the best revelation comes sideways

I don't know why they stuck out so much, but they did and they helped me to see things a little differently. Hopefully you can take something out of it too:)

Have a great week! Enjoy the beginnings of a new summer:)

Love Elder j

-- 

Ældste  Jeppson

SK8 Break

Some street art

Me and the stick man

Making the waffle bowl medals

Me and most of my companions (Elder Gardner was in the bathroom...smh)
Elder Bishopp, Elder Shuppy, Elder Erickson, Elder Amos, Elder Jeppson, Elder Jensen

Found him haha
Elder Gardner 

The church building here in århus

Århus IV: A New Hope

Well it has been a good first week of the transfer! It is always a pretty crazy scramble to get everything situated after transfers but nonetheless, its going swell:) If your wondering what the title means... we (the members of the Århus apartment) started a new morning workout dynasty. So we are all still going strong of our streak of 7 days so far haha. (It is most likely the longest in the mission right now ;) haha) .

But here comes the real stuff:

Progress:

So with our boy J*... he is doing great:) He is progresslvely more sober the more we visit him and he has come down in number of cigarettes a day overall. He has yet ahead of him, but it is amazing to see how far he has already come. He keeps telling us about how he used to play soccer and stuff and not have to stop because he couldnt breathe and stuff like that and he is determined to turn it around so he can get back to that point. He is surprisingly active for a smoking 60 something year old haha. So great stuff there.

As far as Guliano, he is still working on getting some things worked out personally but it is all good!

Oh Yeah! Caroline is getting baptized on the 11th of June! It is pretty set that she will be able to so I am super stoked!! Send some prayers her way:)

We are doing a lot of finding right now to make sure that we have a large pool of potential people to meet with. A lot of those we have been trying to get in contact with that wanted to meet have been busy or dont want to meet anymore. So we have done a lot of finding this week among the craziness of the schedule. But we have been able to teach a lot from our efforts.

One example... 

So There is a guy we found named S*. He is a pretty "doesnt matter" kind of guy but last time we talked he said "why not" to meeting with us and so we were able to come back and teach him. His apartment was pretty gnarly... he had two gineua pigs just running around free reign on his floor. Also he had a good 5 strips of fly paper hanging around.... wellll actually more like hundreds of dead flies hanging around on paper ;) haha. But aside from the unpleaseant living conditions, it was a good lesson in a weird way. We taught him all about the plan of salvation and why it is important to not procrastinate the day of our repentance. He still was whatever about it but i think that in a way it changed something inside of him. So we will see where that goes.

Other stuff:

Right now in the mission we are really emphasizing our mission standard of "teaching Repentance, and baptizing Converts". We want to be able to bear our testimony to them and teach them how they can return to live with Heavenly Father so that they will make the choice on their own to do so or not. The reason being that it is better that we focus on helping one person gain their own presonal conversion than to go out and just see how quick we can go through the process.

Elder Bishopp is a great comp. He has a pretty level head on his shoulders and is a solid guy to be around! We have been having a great time together so far!

haha i forgot my planner and my journal so i honestly am spacing on what happened exaclty and when...

Spiritual thought:

This week i was studying and i found something that expounded on last weeks spiritual thought i shared on the interweb with you all haha. I thought more about why we have weakness,opposition, trials, etc. and i was reading in the Doctrine and Covenants Section 136 verse 31 where it says: "My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom."

As i was reading this scripture, i thought about how the Bible talks about the refiners fire. The refires fire refers to the fire used by blacksmiths to refine metals such as silver and gold. In doing so, they get the metal very hot and it gets out all of the impurities out if the metal. This applies to us as mortal because we have to go through this process of refinement. That may mean that we are put in the flames, set on the anvil, and pounded while we wonder why this helps at all. In the end though, we come out a much better, more pure piece of Gold (or whatever metal you want to be:) ) 

Im greatful that we have opposition and trials and weakness. Even though we still have not reached the end product, we are able to feel the refinement process make us better through our spiritual and temporal burdens.

Have a great week! You all are awesome:)

Venlig Hilsen,

Ældste Jeppson

A 6 hour train ride back from KBH becasue the train got delayed (Me, Elder Bishopp, Sister Orr, Sister Ferguson, and Sister Sørensen

 

A GIANT leaf i found.... it blew my mind!

My New specs

El Libro de Mormon es Cierto

Well Big things are happening around here. Father Time may have been robbed because transfers happened again. That means a lot of things... 

#1- Elder Amos will be transfering to Skive to finish up there with someone from his group and then sisters will white wash the area after they leave. Don't worry, they aren't doing anything wrong haha. The mission is just switching somethings up.

#2: So Elder Bishopp is basically just moving a bed because he is now my companion haha. It is going to be way sweet because i already know him and he is a good egg. He hails from Renton Washington and likes to randomly break out laughing haha. He is also a extremely capable missionary so that is going to be great.

#3: Elder Milward gets Elder Eaves who is also a beast. So Århus is getting pretty stacked:)

#4: Other things haha

Progress:

This week we met with J a couple times. He is doing better but he had a slight relapse yesterday so we stopped by him and encouraged him. I give him major props because he is fighting very hard for this. He didn't drink for an entire day which was pretty impressive given the circumstances. So we are still pulling for him. 

As for Guliano, he said he still believes the Book of Mormon is true but he wants to hold up with meeting with us for a bit so he can find himself. But he is still very open and loves to chat with us over text. So not too huge a concern.

We met wit R* again. If you don't remember, he is the British guy who overthinks things and then some. We almost had one complete train of thought yesterday before the train derailed and all of the cars went their own seperate ways off on twenty different topics haha. So we will see what happens with him. 

Bible studies:

So we are now a part of two Bible studies (going on three). We figure that all of the religous people here are in church haha which is completely true mind you. My boy J* became a new investigator this week and we had a great discussion. (this was all outside of bible studies). It was a pretty good discussion and he said he would read the Book of Mormon. It was actually pretty sweet because we could have had a member present lesson if he was a member. What i mean by that is some Romanian guy came to clean the building and ended up sitting down and all three of us taught him a little and discussed some things. Talk about teaching when you find, and finding when you teach haha. So that was sweet:)

We also got invited to another bible study called the Kings people. They are a radical christian living style group and its actually pretty good. We got invited by a Romanian guy (no, a different one haha) to it and we went and ate there and then had too long of a sermon... it was 3 hours and it was a mix of christian singalong and a guy getting way heated and passionate who I couldn't  take seriously everytime he did that haha. But it was sweet!

You're probably wondering at this point why the title is in Spanish. Well I've had a lot of spanish influence this week. At the Kings people, i met a guy from Panama named Juan. He is a super, super awesome guy who used to hang out with the Elders in Panama on p-days back in his day (he is probably 36). But we had a way great chat and I also refreshed my spanish a little:) 

Then on Sunday the sisters brought a guy from Spain to church and I hit it off with him too. He is super chill and i took him to third hour of church and stuff so he is another spanish friend I've gotten:)

Then i found out Sister Baggaley is training a sister coming into the mission from Spain. So I'm pretty stoked about the sudden olas de espanol :)

Other things:

We did a blits splits down in Silkeborg. That means that for a day we stuck 12 missionaries in one area and went to work. It was way sweet because i got to work with both Elder Gardner and Elder Zielger again. I love those guys haha. We had a great time down in the beautiful Silkeborg!

We went to the museum here in Århus called Aros. It was pretty sweet i'll include pics but the coolest thing is a 36 rainbow panarama of the city on top of the building that you can walk

On the way back from Slkeborg, we met this small group of school kids. This kid named Peter started talking to me and told me my accent was different. I told him i am different and I am from California haha. So he got super stoked and started to talking to me haha. Then his older brother chimed in and we had a great conversation. Our train was delayed so we talked for a long time. He was such a fireball haha. He was saying things like "Man, typical train system. They still haven't figured it out" and "I want to be a thermo-energy scientist when I am older" haha, So it was a comical ride home. Also, one of his small classmates around Stella's age gave me a flower and said i need to keep it haha. I'm definitely a fan of all the little random awesome things that come with a mission:) 

Spiritual thought:This weeks thought comes from a story shared in seminary by Brother Englebrecht that i finally traced down in George A. Smiths journal of discourses. It is a Chinese proverb he shares:

“A man travelling through the country came to a large city, very rich and splendid; he looked at it and said to his guide, ‘This must be a very righteous people, for I can only see but one little devil in this great city.’

“The guide replied, ‘You do not understand, sir. This city is so perfectly given up to wickedness … that it requires but one devil to keep them all in subjection.’

“Traveling on a little farther, he came to a rugged path and saw an old man trying to get up the hill side, surrounded by seven great, big, coarse-looking devils.

“‘Why,’ says the traveller, ‘this must be a tremendously wicked old man! See how many devils there are around him!’

“‘This,’ replied the guide, ‘is the only righteous man in the country; and there are seven of the biggest devils trying to turn him out of his path, and they all cannot do it.’”

I thought this was way great because as we face opposition in life it is usually always hard. That is why it is called opposition. And the more we feel the less we sometimes want to keep climbing the proverbial mountain to higher spheres of life. But, if the harder we try, the harder it becomes, we need to take heart because so it is with the greatest people who have ever lived. So if the demons of opposition are getting bigger and scarier, just know it is because you arent something of small matter to the adversary. it is because the you are rising to the top because the strength coming through the resistance of opposition.

Well have a fantastic week!

Ældste  Jeppson

Blitz Splits in Silkebor, almost the whole MTC crew

Elder Jeppson, Elder Gardner, Elder Ziegler: MTC crew

The brothers Peter and Jacob 

My Flower

A tiger skinned rug made out of thousands of cigarettes 

Other art stuff

"Stay in the Boat" 

The Rainbow panorama (it was by far the coolest part)

Here is the whole experience on camera :) 
https://youtu.be/Tb-ogkVCPsU

The trip mirror room in the museum.  I was in there for a while having some fun :)

Museum exhibits

Happy Mother's Day!

Forhåbentlig du kan alle sammen læse dansk fordi jeg vil gerne skrive min hele email på dansk ;) haha. Just kidding though.

But Happy Mothers day to all!! 

Progress:

This week J* started to pull his stuff together in his life and you can really see the difference! He has been a heavy smoker and drinker for a large part of his life and is beginning to really turn it around! It is very inspiring and deserves a lot of props because he is a very tough old guy haha. We had the opportunity to give him a blessing and after we finished he said he could really sense Jesus was with him and loved him. He then looked at his pack of cigarettes on the table and determinedly expressed to us that he wants to make that pack his very last. So he is making some steps forward:)

Fun story real quick...

So there was a lady me and Elder Shuppy met up in Fredrikshavn named Trine. It was kind of a miracle how we met her so we were really hopeful. Because of the circumstances we didn't get her information but we thought we would see her again at the same place as last time, which ended up not happening. But, Elder Shuppy and Elder Francis gave me a ring Tuesday night and told me they had some news. They had been having a tough day knocking (which was very similar to the day we found Trine) and they decided to take a break. They did that and recollected their thoughts and stuff and then went back at it. The second door they knocked on was an older lady who was pretty believing. She said "Where does salvation come from?" And Elder Shuppy told her that through Jesus Christ all may be saved. So she invited them into a Bible study that was going on that very minute and lo and behold..... there sat Trine!! Tears were shed and it proceeded to be a faith promoting mission expereince which I won't talk more on as to preserve the beauty and tenderness of it:)

But I know That Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways and is a God of Miracles:)

Other stuff:

We went to the Bible study with our African friends of the New Covenant church and my brother Christian pulled me aside and was way excited to share his faith with me and an expereince where faith healed someone. That was one thing I thought a lot about because He has some awesome faith! And it pours out of him like a beam of sunshine. It is very neat to see the light of Christ in others. Everyone has it and recognizes it to some degree, and this week I noticed it to a large degree in Christian:) 

We used slacklining to contact people in the park and it worked surprisingly well! We met a guy named Lasse who just ran up and asked what 4 Americans are doing out in a park in Århus and if he could join in haha. It was super neat to use it. We also met a Chilean guy who was super nice and gave us his info so we could talk some other time and slackline again haha. Missionary work is so cool because if it is being done how preach my gospel says, we will dynamically be finding while we teach and teaching while we find. It is pretty great:)

The weather is becoming beautiful.  Blue skies now for most days and it feels nice at 77 degrees.  I definitley took the California sun for granted because the Danish one hides for a large part of the time haha. So find the things you take for granted in life and be greatful for them again haha.

Skyping home was great! As missionaries it feels like we get four christmases because thats how stoked we get for it:)

Spiritual thought:

This thought came to me in church yesterday: "As we strive to act out in love, and strive continueously to serve without guile, the pure love of Christ will possess us"

I have thought a lot about the role that charity plays in the gospel of Jesus Christ. One thing I have learned (from splits with Elder Zielger) is that when we talk about enduring to the end, a part of that is developing charity. In Alma 7:24, in the Book of Mormon it states:

  "And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works."

So I think that really is a major part of what we are doing when we are trying to hold to the end. Have faith, hope, charity, and abound in good works.

Thus, let us act out in love and serve without guile:)

Well have a good week! Don't let time go by without leaving an impression on the timeline! (-me) haha:)

peace love and Cruesli

Ældste  Jeppson

No we didn't just jump on for the picture :) 

Elder Amos (red shirt), Elder Millward (beanie), and Elder Bishopp (green shirt) all trying our the line. 

Elder Millward

Elder Bishopp

Of me of course haha 

A mermaid shaved into a tree (they do that a lot here) 

The Arhus Clan

Cinco de Mayo 

Indiginous species to the århus habitat

Picture sent to Chloe :) 

Elder Millward acting as "John" (our practice teaching role plays)