January 26, 2015

Hey ma and pa

Hey guys!  So this week, well let me just tell you about it ;) 

This transfer has just been cruising on by. Having been with Elder Geslison and Elder Millward has been a privilege, and guaranteed that there has never been a dull moment, and that's definitely the biggest reason as to why things are flying by. Luckily, I've been keeping a pretty good account of everything going on, because this has also been an eventful week.

Helsingor Train Station

‘J’ found a time to talk with Bishop Nelson, and now has a temple recommend. We're planning on going this Saturday to perform baptisms for the dead.

Other great exciting news is that ‘V’ wants to be baptized!! She has been thinking over it a lot over the last few weeks, and finally called us yesterday to tell us she was ready. There isn't a set date yet, but it sounds like sometime in March.

Other than that though, we found one investigator this week who seemed super excited to hear about our message, and she took a Book of Mormon, only to get a call yesterday that she isn't interested, and wouldn't give a reason to the sudden change in opinion.

It's been rough finding, but ‘J’ is also inviting a lot of friends now with her to church, and we will be expecting one of her coworkers, and one less active (‘V’s friend's mother) in church in the coming week. We also have ‘B’ and ‘M’ who have been sick over the last week, and still want to meet. The transfer presses on, and I'm so grateful to be here. 

This week has been a week of big ups and downs.  Really big exciting news, and a few other kind of dead times.  Things are going in any case, and I'm still happy to be here, I just feel kind of drained from this last week.  Lucky me it's p day, hopefully I can relax and have a good rest of the day. 

Zone Conference

We actually went to a fire side at our ward mission leaders home in Frederikssund last night, and ended up having to spend the evening in Birkerød with the Birkerød Elders, adding to a lack of relax time. 

I asked my two companions for a blessing this morning though, and I feel much better than I did, so I'm looking forward to another great week.  Such an exciting time to be here!  I love my mission. 

I miss you guys, and I hope you have an awesome week.

Ældste Pitcher

January 19, 2015

Great pre game talk pa :) 

I was looking at some of the pictures of me playing, and ‘L’ told me that he had seen my Eagle Scout video when I was laying some hits on some kids and how awesome he thought it was, and I started to really miss hockey.  I hope I'm in at least some kind of shape when I get back.  I'll hop over to mom's email now, and send you back something about my week.

Hey Ma and Pa :)

Just to answer your question ma, the couple ‘B’ and ‘M’ got sick, and so we're planning on rescheduling for this week, so I'll let you know. 

This week has been a blur. It went by so fast with so many exciting things happening. Our investigator ‘S’ has really been struggling over the last few weeks, but we were able to have a really spiritual lesson with him, then prayed about, and set a baptismal date further in advance so that there is a goal in mind that we are all working towards. After the appointment he had a new hope, and I could tell that he was happier.

July 11th 2015 is the date that we are working on now. The plan is to look at everything that stands in the way, and everything that needs to be addressed before that date, and then work backwards to see what the steps are, and then work as a team from today on to make those steps. I have a lot of faith in ‘S’, and I hope he acts on his faith with this plan as well.

'I love this family'

Now we have ‘J’ who WAS baptized this week, and she is doing awesome!

I felt the spirit very strongly as we stood in a circle, all the missionaries who have taught her, and myself, as I performed the confirmation.  Definitely the greatest experience of my mission, and words can't describe how awesome it was. 

The baptismal service was so great, and the entire family kept thanking us for a wonderful experience. I could tell that ‘V’ was especially touched, and last night we had a really good opportunity to talk with her about the God head, and who they are, and answer some of her questions. She wants to follow her Mom, but not blindly, which is good.

I think she just has to have a deeper desire to know right now. She is happy for her mother though, and ‘J’ REALLY wants ‘V’ to find out for herself, so it's still looking up. It's been a long week, we've all been exhausted, but it's been a great week. ‘J’ even talked about going to help the Hillerød Elders teach their investigator (who was also at the baptism)!

I love this family, I love Helsingør.

I'm happy to hear that everything is just sailing on back home.  I miss hockey a lot, I miss family a lot, but I still get irritated whenever someone tells me how long I have left or say that I'm an 'old missionary' in the mission. 

We got some water from the ocean where 'J' wanted
to be baptized, and put it in with the rest of the water

I guess Dad's prophecy from the farewell is starting to really come true, and I indeed have shed a lot of tears thinking about the people here that I will eventually have to leave.  Everything about this experience has been incredible, and I'm really glad I still have the time left that I do have. 

Still counting up, not down :)  Love you both, have an awesome week.  Pictures to follow...

Love

Ældste Pitcher

NOTE from Dad:  I thought that this gesture of adding ocean water to the baptismal font was one of the most thoughtful things I've seen.  'J' wanted to be baptized in the ocean, but since there was a font nearby it is the Church policy to use the baptismal font.  I thought adding the ocean water was a great way to make this special day even more memorable for her.

January 12, 2015

Hej Mor og Far!!

I gave a lesson in guest class this last week about the importance of the Book of Mormon. 

I had people describe to me what testimony, or a witness is.  Made a list on the board of some things like 'someone who sees an event take place', etc.  Talked a little bit about what it means on the front of the Book of Mormons that we hand out where it says 'Another TESTAMENT of Jesus Christ’ , and then had someone come up and draw a map of the world. (That was fun to lighten everyone's mood, and test geography) ;)  Then circled the areas where the Bible and Book of Mormon took place. 

The Lord had to establish his church on both parts of the world because we didn't have airplanes or the internet back then.  There had to be two records.  Talked about the scriptures in Matthew, and 3rd Nephi that talk about the other sheep of Christ's fold.  Lastly I talked about how the Book of Mormon is also important because it is divine witness that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and bore testimony. Now you have no excuse, I just gave you an entire lesson ;) 

We had an awesome couple of experiences this week with finding. Helsingør for the past few weeks has really struggled with finding new people to teach, but this week, we've started making some changes with that. We went out one night with the intent of finding someone who would be willing to listen to us, and we ended up with finding 3 new potential investigators all in one area, and even had the opportunity to share a full lesson with one of the women. We're making some good progress.

We also had a crazy event take place just last night as well. On the way home from ‘A’ and ‘S’s, we came across a couple asking for directions. After talking with the man for a minute, he told me that I was the person they were looking for, and that he knew it was me because he recognized my voice. Hmmm... This was news to me.

I asked him for his name, and after another few minutes of really racking my brain to figure out who this man was, and after he had already shown us our number (which was a little creepy at first) I figured it out. ‘B’. I've been trying to get an appointment set up with this man for months.

Elder Lester in his six months here never even had the privilege of meeting this man face to face, and here he was. He had met with missionaries in another town in our area, and after talking with them decided he wanted to hear more, and said he was searching for what the 'real truth' as he put it.

He fell off the map a little bit though when he moved here to Helsingør, and we've only had contact with him over the phone, trying to set up a time to meet. He's been searching all over the place, and he is really excited to learn about us. We got his address and set up an appointment for this Wednesday! This was so exciting. It was almost too much to take in all at one time, but we made sure to take a minute after to stop and thank Heavenly Father for putting ‘B’, and his girlfriend ‘M’ (whom is also interested) on our path last night. Such an incredible spirit. I'm looking forward to Wednesday, and of course Tuesday with zone training, and of course Saturday when ‘J’ is going to be baptized and confirmed!!

Another crazy thing that I just remembered with ‘J’s journey towards baptism this week was that this last weekend she actually started to have some doubts. We went over one night to try and lighten the mood, and in the middle of our meeting she suddenly said she was feeling completely confident again. The crazy part was that it wasn't until later that we found out that Ældste Lester's mother had earlier that day (around the same time we were at the Dalberg's place) taken ‘J’s name down in the temple prayer rolls. What a wonderful confirmation to us all of the simplicity and divinity of prayer.

We've had an incredible week.  I also got to go through the temple this week, because Elder Millward taught a man who got baptized and was going to go do baptisms for the dead.  Elder Geslison had never been through for a session in Danish either, so we went through together.  Great experience, as it always is. 

Love y'all, have an awesome week :)

Ældste Pitcher

January 5, 2015

Ma and Pa

The gifts were all great mom ;)  The tie is awesome, and I got myself a really nice sweatshirt that has a really high collar on it. I'll send a picture :)

The first thing I should talk about before I throw on the rest of the weekly email is the experience with 'J's name change.  She's been considering it for quite a few years actually, and only just recently had gotten very serious about different name ideas.  She just always thought the name 'V' was too hard.  A few weeks ago after finding out that I would be doing 'J's confirmation, I had a dream about how the actual ordinance would go.  In my dream I put my hands on her head and pronounced the blessing just as it would normally go, but after sometime it almost switched into a baby blessing type mode, and I felt impressed to give her a name.  The name in the dream was 'J'. 

Thinking it was really weird that I'd had such a distinct dream about it, and having in mind that she’d been looking for a new name, we told her later that day that I'd had this dream about this name.  

She stared at us shocked for a second before telling us that that had actually been on one of her old lists of names to consider, and that she had given up on it because her mother didn't agree with it.  

Come New Year’s Eve, she made the change legally, and she is officially 'J S W D'.  CRAZY story.  She seems to be pretty happy with it, and everyone around her is pretty supportive of it now so I guess it worked.  The surreal part is now going to be when I actually go to confirm her :O  way weird..  

Anyway, the rest of this week has been pretty awesome.  We got an addition this week.  An Elder going to Iceland is still waiting on some of his paper work so he got sent to us until further notice.  I'm loving being in a tri-panionship. Both of these Elders are great, and they love being out doing missionary work. It keeps me excited about the work, and though I've been a bit stressed out taking over the area this week, they've both been really good to help support me, and help me to relax.   

I've noticed I typically have kind of rough time when I get a new companion, and have to take over the area. I just get a little tense knowing that I'm leading, and get down when I don't do things the way the last Elder would have done them. It's a learning experience though, and I'm grateful for it. 

I've actually felt like this has been one of the easiest transitions taking over an area thus far on my mission, and I know it has a lot to do with how helpful my companions have been about helping talk me through things. Ældste Millward and Öldungur Geslison are awesome. We're going to miss having Öldungur Geslison around, but we're still praying that he gets to get up to Iceland as quickly as possible. 

I'm really looking forward to 'J's baptismal interview here on the 8th, and then of course the baptism and confirmation on the 17th. She is still stressed out about some things, but as she always has, she's been putting her faith first, and knows that this is what's right. What a great way to start off the New Year.

I also found out this week that Sister Henderson from my MTC group just recently lost her father.  He had been sick for a really long time, and that's about all I know, but I'd appreciate it if you all kept her and her family in your prayers.  She's a great friend, and an amazing servant of the Lord.  She's opted to stay and train to finish out her last three months despite her father's passing.  She's an awesome example to me, and my MTC group feels very protective over her since she was our only Sister having to deal with 8 teenage boys.    

I love y'all, and I'm glad to hear about what great adventures the family has, Congrats Kylee!

Love you,

Ældste Pitcher