Hej Hej Hej!!! [Hello Hello Hello!!!]

Ældste Wright and I representing the Orem Sharon Stake!

Good to hear from you all again! I always love reading all of your emails!

This week was a little bit of a slower week...we've been trying to work as hard as we can but it seems like we've hit a little bit of a rut in this area. All of our investigators have either not responded to our calls or texts, been too busy to meet with us, or have cancelled our appointments (without necessarily telling us that they cancelled them). We're just going to have to increase our faith, work a little harder, and find those new investigators!

Gladsaxe Ward Building in Copenhagen

We had Ældste Gifford with us this week because Ældste Crank was on Bornholm doing his Indian Hoop Dance for Folkemødet. So we've been working both of our areas. It has been pretty convenient to be in a threesome the last few days because we've been able to visit all of our single women investigators as well.

We met with A****** who is a young lady from the United States who is up here nannying. Apparently some previous missionaries knocked on her door and when she found out that they were Americans told them to come back. She doesn't really know why she decided to come to Denmark. She has a Bachelor’s Degree already and had a great job in the States, but she said she just had this feeling that she needed to come to Denmark even though she had no idea why. So she did. Up until right before I got here she was mostly just interested in talking to them about their lives as Americans here in Denmark. But because Ældste Strong was just about to go home in just a few days, he used it as an excuse to give the Book of Mormon as a parting gift and bore his testimony of it to her and challenged her to read it.

Zone Training Meeting

At Zone Training

So I come in, take Ældste Strong's place, and we visit her to find out that she actually has read in it. She said it's beautifully written and has really enjoyed reading it. Her only concern is that she's scared that if she keeps reading it she's going to find out its true and have to convert, and she doesn't know how her family back home will react to that. But she believes that she can find an answer, so she's just going to keep reading. We're excited to see where that goes with her!

Up in Virum we went to visit one of Ældste Gifford's new investigators. This was a pretty different appointment. This lady is from Iran and is a Christian while her husband is Danish and is a converted Muslim. You don't see things like that too often! She is pretty hard to understand, though. She has a really strong Iranian accent when she speaks Danish, so when we were first introducing ourselves she asked if we could go to a specific place to meet. We couldn't understand what place she was talking about, so eventually we all just said yes. Turned out the place was McDonalds...because we were American she thought we would really appreciate going to McDonalds. Haha. Not an ideal place to teach a first lesson, but actually, it turned out really well. Both she and her husband are really open to the things that we have to share with them. There wasn't a single point that we talked about that they didn't disagree with. They even think the Word of Wisdom is great! Both of them are definitely looking pretty positive.

At Zone Conference

We've also been having some great success in the Zone. After looking at our numbers from last month we realized that we have been doing really poorly as a zone at inviting people to baptism. So we decided to set a goal to achieve a certain number of baptismal dates. In one week we've already achieved more baptismal dates than we had all of last month!

We also made a goal to speak Danish all the time outside of the apartment as a zone. It seemed that as we gathered as missionaries it would always be in English. But now we've set the expectation to always be speaking Danish with missionaries over the telephone, outside the apartment, and even our District Meetings are going to start being held in Danish. We felt that as we set this expectation as a zone to do this, the amount of Danish spoken would greatly increase because we would all be helping each other. And it has! I definitely have experienced myself that the more I speak Danish the more natural I am at the language. The Zone seems to be having great success with that as well.

I'll end with this funny story I had the other day on the train. There weren’t a lot of seats so I sat across from a couple of boys, probably eight or 9 years old. It ended in a way funny conversation. I'll just write what exactly went down...

Boys: (while he looks at a newspaper he has he looks at me and says) Se her! De tor at de har fundet nogen fremmed (alien) i Mælkevejen! [Look here! They say that they have found no foreign (alien) in the Milky Way!]

Me: Wow! Det er rigtig Fedt! [Wow! That is really great!]

Boys: Vi er spejdere og vi gik 10 kilometer i dag! [We are scouts and we walked 10 km today!]

Me: Hold Op! Jeg var spejder tilbage i USA. [Hold Up! I was a scout back in the United States.]

Boys: Woah! Hvad laver du her i Danmark? [Woah! What are you doing here in Denmark?]

Me: Jeg er missionær for min kirke. [I am a missionary for my church.]

Boys: Hvad betyder det? [What does it mean?]

Me: Det betyder at jeg går rundt og taler med folk om den kirke jeg tilhører. [This means that I go around and talk to people about the church I belong to.]

Boys: Du har meget pænt bukser. Og et meget pænt skjorte! [You have very nice pants…and a very nice shirt!]

Me: Mange tak, det synes jeg også! [Thank you, I think that too!]

Boys: Og du har en rigtig flot slips! Er det silk? Hvor fik du den? [And you have a really nice tie! Is it silk? Where'd you get that?]

Me: Ja, den er det! Faktisk, var det en ven der gav den til mig. [Yes, it is! In fact, it was a friend who gave it to me.]

Boys: Jeg vil meget gerne få sådan en slips. Og Jeg kan godt lide dine sko! Jeg skulle har købt sådanne sko, men jeg købte de her i stedet for. [I would love to get such a tie. And I like your shoes! I should have bought such shoes, but I bought these instead.]

Me: Tusind Tak! Jamen, Det er mit stoppested. Jeg håber I har det godt! [Many Thanks! Well, This is my stop. I hope you are doing well!]

Boys: Ok, Forhåbentlig Vi Ses so snart som muligt, ok? [Ok, hopefully we will meet as soon as possible, ok?]

I just thought that was a funny conversation. I didn't really have time to go through and think about the funny expressions in English, so have a fun time translating!

I love you all and hope you have a great week! I promise to take more Pictures this next week!

MKH,

-Ældste Wawro.