Year 1

Down by the Sea

What a great week! So many good things have happened, especially with General Conference! Why does it seem so much better on your mission? Definitely a lot of things that I've learned. I still haven't seen Sunday afternoon’s session, so I look forward seeing that a little bit later on in the week. Ugh, my computer is set to Danish so it keeps doing weird things and capitalizing things where they shouldn't be. So judge not these things, for if there are mistakes, they are the mistakes of man! ;)

General Conference was way fun! I watched 4 of the 5 Sessions. I watched Saturday Morning Session on Saturday at 6:00 PM, Priesthood Session on Sunday at 11:00 AM, Saturday Evening Session on Sunday at 2:00 PM, and Sunday Morning Session on Sunday at 6:00 PM. So I was at the church all day yesterday watching conference!

I got the 1-year package as well and look forward to opening it on Thursday! Can you believe it's been 1 year? I really don't know what to feel. In some ways it feels like it's just all flown by so fast. In other ways, I try imagining having to do everything that I've already done all over again and that is a Little daunting. But It really is starting to hit me that time is short, and there's no time to just sit around! I'm also very grateful that this next year I'm not worrying about trying to learn a new language, ha.

As for my doings...

We started off on Monday with splits with the Svendborg Elders. We had an essential-preparation day because of our zone-activity, so right after we bought food and wrote home we went to the train station to meet up with them and go our separate ways. I went down to Svendborg with Ældste DeMordaunt and that was a great experience!

Some pictures of a cool house we found while on splits in Fredericia!

So, as a district, we've had this goal to pray and find 1 unplanned service opportunity every day. I hadn't found a chance to really go out of my way to serve somebody yet that day, but luckily, we were blessed with an opportunity that night at a member’s house. We went to eat with this member and found out that her daughter is being made to learn clarinet in her school and is really struggling with that. She is only around 10 or 11 years old which is really young to start an instrument like clarinet. So, I was able to give her a clarinet lesson! Who knew that my clarinet experience could have helped me in the mission field? But the mother was so grateful for the help. It has been really stressing her out to see her daughter struggle with the clarinet and she, not being musically trained, had no way to help her. Because she lives out in Svendborg I won't be able to go down again and help, but I will be spending some minutes after church in the future to help her daughter some more with the clarinet. Huzzah for helping people!

The rest of the time in Svendborg was going a little slowly. Ældste DeMordaunt was feeling a little bad because our appointments had cancelled on us so we were left just going by and visiting people/contacting on the way. Nobody was home (of course). We then went to one investigator that I was pressing to meet, but once we were standing at her door Ældste DeMordaunt turned to me and said, "You know, I really feel like we need to visit E***. I don't think now is the time to visit this person." So we turned around and made our way across town to visit this other person. We knocked once at his door, no answer. Knocked twice! No answer. We were going to leave but decided to knock just one more time, and what do you know, he answered the door! Not only was he home, but so was his friend who turned out to be really interested in learning more about our church! Turns out E*** has been talking to him about it, and when he actually met us he became really interested to learn what we were all about. He agreed to come to meet with us again, he watched the Joseph Smith Restoration film that evening with E***, and I last heard from the Svendborg elders that at their next lesson with him he expressed his desire to be baptized!

Danish Coastline

We had Zone training this last week in Fredericia, and the focus was on the Book of Mormon. It's a great book, I highly recommend it. Afterwords, we had splits with the Zone-Leaders. It was a little weird to be on Jylland [the western peninsula part of Denmark] again. It's amazing the differences between Jylland and Fyn [the island Elder Wawro lives on now] even though they are so close to each other. Difference of language, people, feel, attitude, and even the all-around appearance of the cities! I suppose it's very similar in a lot of ways as well though. We had a great time though!

It was super funny, we ran into the Vejle Sister Missionaries while we were going around visiting people. They had contacted somebody on the street that we needed to go down and we didn't want to freak this guy out with missionaries coming from all sides! So we took the long way around the block. When we got there we saw the sisters coming towards us so I put my hood up on my jacket, Ældste Gines (my old district leader who is now Zone Leader in Syd-Jylland Zone) put a binder in front of his face, leaned against a brick wall, and we played masters of disguise. They didn't even give us a glance as they walked right past us. I could have literally reached out and touched both of them, but we were so efficient in the art of disguise that they didn't even notice us. We even had our nametags out in plain view! We are so funny, yet, so awesome.

Elder Wawro and Elder Gines

We taught T***** again this week about Frelsesplanen [the Plan of Salvation]. He's our paralyzed investigator. He absolutely loved it. It was really powerful when we got to the part about resurrection. He smiled so big, looked and us and said, "I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but I'm really looking forward to it. I love my life here, but I am excited to have a perfect body where I can walk and run and do whatever I want." It definitely has given me an appreciation of being able to use my body in this life. T***** continues to remember what we've been teaching him and loves our visits and the ward.

We've also been meeting with Martin to help him get ready to go on a mission. We got him a Preach my Gospel in Slovakian and showed him the chapters inside of it and described a little bit about all of them. His desire to serve is definitely growing and I've heard him tell a few people that he's going on a mission! We know that he wants to wait until he's finished more school, but that won't be for many more years down the road, so we hope we can help increase his desire to serve and go soon.

Other than that, it's really just been General Conference! Of course that was great. Oh! also, tell Uncle Jeff to tell Elder Jewkes's Dad [who trained Jeff on his mission 34 years ago in Sacramento] to [make his son] give us back our blender! When we were gone in Fredericia the Svendborg Elders went to our apartment and stole our blender! Some people’s children... ;) Don't worry, I will get that blender back by any means possible.

The cat that snuck through the window into the Svendborg Apartment while on splits. We didn't want to get the couch dirty, so we just played with it on Elder Jewkes's bed instead. ;)

Love you all! Have a great week!

MKH,