All the Small Things

Missions are a just the greatest thing They are 98% hard, rain and sweat and bikes and being tired and sore and chasing busses and... i think you get the picture. But the accumulation of lessons learned and trials conquered and people helped and purposes fulfilled make up the 2% that makes it all worth it. And I would say, at least from my experience so far, that the two percent outweighs the 98 percent by a land slide. This week was an accumulation of little things that really spurred me to reflect on what this whole experience so far means to me... hence the opening line :)

Highlights coming at you quick:

Progress:

Juan from Colombia: Still going strong! He was coming back from KBH this weekend so he wasnt able to make it home for our appointment so we moved it to this week:)

Juan from Panama: Wayyy awesome guy. Super lovable and he has super stong faith....pretty inspiring! We met him on a bus again ( I met him my second week in Århus) and he invited us out for dinner tonight so that will be cool!

C*: C* is still going strong! She is listening to the Book of Mormon on audio and she processed something like 15 chapters and had a bunch of questions. We taught a lot about the gospel of Jesus Christ but also got really in depth into the Chapter where it talks about the tree of life and the iron rod. Great stuff:) Elder Bennett called a way funny audible and decided to show a talk that is called "stay by the tree".... wayyy heavy talk. It is the one that throws down pretty hard and has the line "swan dive into Babylon!" in it haha. We had planned on showing a talk and had tentatively decided but he pulled it up because we had just talked about Lehi's dream. The problem was that neither of us had seen the talk.

I recommend that you preview things before you use them.... life lesson I guess. We had a pretty hard laugh though at the bus stop about it so no worries. She took it well:) haha

Y* : Y* is a way hip girl from London and is here studying journalism. Actually it is a cool story because Elder Bennett and I fasted for how we can raise the bar in our work because we have been let in a ton this week and have taught a lot of sit down lessons in other peoples homes but for some reason things don't stick. So we wanted to find people the lord would guide us to that would listen intently and sincerely. Well, it just so turns out that the first door we knocked was Y* and she told us that she was going to shower and clean her house but that we could come back in one hour. So we knocked around and then came back and taught her the whole plan of salvation. She was very into it and said she would give it a shot and pray about it:) Prayer and fasting works!

Other things:

On splits, Elder Erickson and I went out to a far away town called Trige on a prompting. We spent 2 hours there trying to figure out why the heck we felt we should go out there haha. We knocked a door we felt inspired to knock, which held people that weren’t interested but that referred us to the neighbour. So we knocked the neighbour and he laughed and said no. So we tried the other neighbor and he was a recluse with a cat... haha. So then we walked out to the literal sticks and tried to knock but it didn’t feel right so we went back to where we were. We tried to get more inspired so we went to a house next to the Trige church and tried that. No one was home. I remembered that Elder Erickson was talking about having ancestors from Århus area so we maybe thought we were supposed to find them in the church cemetery, So we looked at every possible match to no avail haha. Then we triend going to a store because it felt right and then it was closed.... I really think that the Lord was just testing us :)

After that though we missed our bus on the way to an eating appointment so we had to walk and find the other bus stop. We ended up taking a broken bike we had found on the side of the trail and we revived it and rode it to victory down a hill and to the bus stop. Good times:)

https://youtu.be/1W06ju5P6NU  (Biking adventures: broken bike down hill, two missionaries, one bike :) )

We ate dinner with our friends from that one awesome night! Well actually only two of them from the OG night but they brought two more friends. So we are slowly becoming a part of that whole friend system haha its great. We had dinner with them and then we talked about every subject it felt like. It was a way cool experience though! They didn't want to get super into doctrine so we respected that and answered the surface level questions. Great night:) Then we walked through the second most dangerous part of Denmark in the dark at 9:00 pm so I am glad we didn't get shot. 

Elder Bennett might be cooler than me than me because he hiked Patagonia and has done some crazy awesome things. He has been recounting his adventures and I realized that humans need more adventures. Go adventure people:)

Spiritual thought:

Well this week I was thinking about how important it is to know God's character. that is a game changer in a lot of ways! Think about who he is i thought of some quotes from prophets and apostles that rang true:

The God of heaven is not a heartless referee looking for any excuse to throw us out of the game. He is our perfectly loving Father, who yearns more than anything else to have all of His children come back home and live with Him as families forever" -Elder Cornish

God loves us not because of what weve done, but because that is just who he is.

I hope you all ponder your relationship our Heavenly Father:) He loves you, and me, and all other people because we are his children. Period.

Fred Ud,
-- 

Ældste  j

Zone conference. Just a bunch of Aces and no less:)

Some crew photos

The Danish wilderness

Classic Danish House

A church from the Old Days

Zone conference

Elder Erickson

Elder Bennett