Semana del Espanol

This week I spoke more Spanish than I have since Spanish 4 class junior year haha. I think I got a taste of what is like to be some of my buddies in Spanish speaking countries so hats of to them because my ears can barely hear that fast haha. Don't worry though it was still a way solid week in Århus so i didn't leave the mission boarders or anything...

Progress:

So those four way solid people from last week we met are still on vacation and getting married and all that... but we are in contact with them so we are pretty stoked to see what goes down when we meet with them again:) In Denmark it is pretty common that everyone just disappears to their various vacation spots for up to a whole month, so we are meeting with them intermittently but we have some good things set up for those coming home soon. This next week should be a good one! But in the meantime we have just made more friends so There is lots of work for us to do here in Århus:)

Monday:

Monday was pretty chill. We did the usual thing where we email all of you and then we did some fun stuff like buy Bang and play it for pday for four hours:)) (the insanely fun card game with cowboys and stuff) Elder Erickson also pulled out some Trinidad scorpion peppers that he had very discreetly bought at the average Danish supermarket. Don't know why they have those but they are in season four week out of the year in stock in Denmark and Elder Erickson happened to find them ( Our mission culture includes chili challenges...) We didnt' eat them that night though because they are the worlds second hottest pepper at 1.2 million schofield units.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was another quality day. Elder Erickson and I revived our companionship and went on splits for the day and picked right up from where we left off when i left Odense. We fasted for special guidance that day along with the other Elders and we ended up finding a combined 7 new people that wanted to hear the gospel, 3 of which represent families so that was awesome. It was way cool because we were kick-starting the other Elder Area because it was shut down for a bit due to lack of Elders so way good start. We most definitely felt the Lord's love and guidance for sure! I don't think we would have had some of the opportunities we had without the guidance of the spirit so I'm grateful the Lord is willing to use his 19 year old tools. Its quite humbling. We also all went basketball contacting and met two way chill guys from Somalia so they want to start playing more often with us:)

Oh yea... we ate those peppers on Tuesday night. We basically just toughed it out by sitting still for 20 minutes of extreme fire in the chairs on our back patio and then drank chocolate milk. I honestly think we do these challenges just because of the willpower it takes to beat it because otherwise it would not be worth it at all. That pepper topped the last by far though and for a while I couldn't feel my hands for some reason but our manhood increased by 9000 so it was a good experience. For all the mothers worried for my health out there... it is most likely my last time and there were no lasting effects so its all good. We even used one in our crockpot chicken haha.

I digress...

Wednesday and Thursday and Friday:

These days we went around to all the districts to give a training on goals and goal setting. We had a great experience with all of our friends around the zone and it definitely was edifying each time. We talked alot about how we can "eat the elephant," meaning how we can realistically break down our goals into bite sized pieces in order to achieve the larger goal. Good stuff. Also, Elder Erickson slipped a disc in his back so he has to lay low for a while so I babysat him on Torsdag so Elder Stephens could go out and work haha.

Sabado y Domingo:

So i got a call from a family that took missionary discussions in the past and they needed help with their computer because they had locked themselves out and it was in English. This family is from Colombia (shoutout to Jan) and they have lived here for three years. So they kinda speak Danish but mostly just Spanish. It is pretty hard to hear anyone over our phones but i attempted in Spanish and actually succeeded so that was a win. Something I misunderstood though was that they also wanted to employ me as a piano teacher haha. I thought they were asking to also help fix their piano... But we showed up on Saturday and brought the sisters because Sister Acosta is native Spanish from Spain and we are native computer fixers haha. We ended up fixing their computer and explaining we are not in Denmark to teach piano and taught a 30 minute lesson... well sister Acosta mostly did and i tried to help in my limited gospel spanish vocab and the other two just looked confused haha. It was amazing be a part of and they actually want to meet again so that was very cool:) The spirit is strong regardless of the language!

Also that night, we went to go and visit a lady who was having a birthday on sunday but we couldnt make it to her brunch thing due to it being the same time as church. So we went and sang her her favorite hymn instead and the sisters brought flowers for her so she was very happy. But guess what, her nephew was there visiting how had lived in spain for a long time so him and Sister Acosta went off in Spanish for the 45 minutes we were there haha.

Then to top it off, their is a man from Spain who is on a family history assignment for work from Family Search so he is living in Denmark for about 6 months. But he had his family and other friends come visit so there were about 18 only Spanish speaking visitors in sacrament meeting. It was rough to translate because Sister acosta doesn't speak a ton of Danish yet since she is newer so they didnt' get a ton out of it but it was all good. By this point it was like someone had dumped gasoline on a small flame because i was pretty conversant at that point and even made it through a conversation with a 12 year old who talks faster than i can in English haha. I'm going to give credit to the Lord for the help because it was amazing how much I remembered. So now our apartment is also on a Spanish hype haha.

Spiritual thought:

Something president talked to me in my interview with him was we all have a spiritual "bar" in a way... when we start being able to reach it and feel comfortable with it the Lord will often raise it to help us grow and develop our relationship with the spirit. That is why we often feel inadequate to do something but that is why the principle of enduring to the end and trusting in the Lord is so important. That is what will allow us to keep reaching for the bar and all the while drawing closer to our Heavenly Father.

Have a great weeK!

ÆlDsTe JePpSoN