Ballerup w/Tolman & Wright - Oct 17, 2011

Hey guys.  So first email in two weeks.  Sorry about that.  We were moving in the whole day last week so there wasn't enough time to email and then the same thing happened over the next couple days, so there wasn't any time to write a legit email.  So we're moved in and almost everything is unpacked.  Last Sunday, a member, who's really cool, came up to me while Æ. Tolman was in the bathroom with these two packages, saying this is for you guys.  When I gave it to Tolman, he's like, uh-oh.  "everytime I've been at their house, I've had my socks with holes in them.  They probably gave me socks and then, so that you wouldn't feel bad, gave you some too."   So on the way to our eating appointment after church, Tolman opens his package and its.......SOCKS!  HAHAHAHA.  It was so funny.  And, of course, I got socks too.  But it was one of the funniest things in a while. 

On Tuesday I went to Slagelse for the first time in about 5 months.  It was weird!  Really weird!  We got some good work done, but its the same Slagelse.  But it was a good experience. 

Wednesday: TRANSFERS!!!!  We had to be there at10am.  I was very nervous.  I didn't want to let my greenie down, and I wanted to do all I could.  But I also wanted to know WHO I was getting!  So, of course, we didn't find out who we were gettting for TWO hours!!!  I was going crazy.  It's not like you could just guess who you were going to get, there were 12 of them!  Finally, the time had come!!  All of us are sitting in the chapel and President starts announcing who is getting whom.  Apparently, President was changing things up from what he originally decided while he was at the pulpit.  Anyway, I was one of the last ones to get someone.  I got Elder Wright.  He's tallish, with glasses, but he's pretty cool.  He's a way hard worker.  He's from Georgia and is the oldest.  On Saturday, we had 10 hours of total work.  I was exausted and if I had had any other companion, I would've gone and taken a break, but he works me harder than anybody else.  So it was a way good week, work wise!  But after we found out our greenie, we went to Fredricksborg Slot in Hillerød.  That was cool.  I'll take you there when you come visit. 

The highlight of the week, came yesterday at church.  There is a family that just moved into the ward from Skive.  I had heard that their kids had gotten some of the lessons in Skive.  I talked to the dad and he said that he needed us to do something for him.  Give his kids the rest of the lessons and get them baptized as soon as possible.  I was like YES!!!!! RIGHT ON!!!!!  So I'm hoping to have two baptisms (these two kids) in early November. I'm really excited.  But yeah, so it was a good week.  Hoping things go good this week too.  Love and mis ya'll tons!!!

MKH

William

The family still in Denmark (William and Ence are brothers since they were both trained by Elder Mauler)

Sept. 29 group on our year mark, missing one.

Æ. Wright and I with Pres. and Sis. Anderson in front of Christus

Our whole group was training.  Us in front of Fredricksborg Slot

Æ. Veach Ballerup - Oct 3, 2011

Hey guys, how was you're week?  It sounds like last week was better with conference.  This past week, was good but frustrating.  On Tuesday, we had splits with the Zone Leaders.  They have responsibilty of Nykøbing which is closed right now and so they go down there once a week and do work.  But they go on splits so that they can still work in their own area.  That's all well and good, but that just killed our area this week.  I was working in Søborg Tueday and most of Wednesday.  I had a cool experience though while we were on splits.  We went to visit a new convert who had just moved from Portugal.  The problem was that she moved with her two children with NOTHING!  They had a couple plates and forks and one mattress.  The kids slept on the mattress while the mom slept on the floor with a single blanket.  It was really humbling to see these people move here trying to find a job but they had nothing.  They got money from a friend and they used all of it so that they could rent an apartment to sleep in.  It was really humbling because I haven't really seen poor on my mission.  Because of the government, even if you're poor, you have money enough and it doesn't look too much like this.

On Thursday we had interviews with President Andersen.  Again I was told that I was training, but I still don't know where.  It's pretty likely that I'll stay, but it's not for sure.  You'll get another email this week when I find out.  So it should be interesting. 

General Conference was fun but tiring.  On Saturday night, we had the Sat morning session, and we were the only one to have investigators come, that felt really good!  Pachara, our Thai investigator came AND he brought a friend.  I think they were a little bored, but it was good that they could see it.  I went to watch it in Danish with them and was surprised to see that I was the only missionary to watch it in Danish.  In fact most of the members watched it in English! 

But yeah, hopefully it'll be a better week this week.  Love you and miss you tons.  I don't know if we'll be able to email next Monday because we will be moving into our new apartment next Monday!  But if not, we'll email on Tuesday, and then transfers on Wednesdays!  Should be an exciting week.

MKH

William

One Year Down - 9/26/2011

Kære Familie,

How are you guys doing?  We had a pretty good week.  After we emailed you on Tuesday, we went to Hanne and Henrik Olsen's house.  They are way cool.  They have a son who went on their mission the same day as I did.  So I kind of relate them to you guys, just because they're in the same boat kind of.  They love telling us about their son and what's going on with him and comparing his experiences to ours.  There is actually a picture of him in my MTC pics if you remember.  That was a lot of fun and I love hanging out with them they are so nice and so fun.  We had an eating appointment Wednesday and Thursday with some really cool families.  Despite eating with some cool families, the work this week has been really slow.  There's no one who wants to stop and talk to us. We decided to knock on this kolligium that hasn't been knocked in a while.  I love knocking there.  It's like college dorms and there are only young people there.  The young people are more rebellious, but much more open to hearing about new stuff.  If you were to look at all the baptisms in the mission most of them are younger Danes.  So yeah we're going to start that this week.

This upcoming week we have only two eating appointments.  But on Tuesday Tolman and one of the ZL's is going to Nykøbing (Area Tolman came from, but is closed right now because there isn't enough missionaries) to visit some investigators down there.  While the other ZL and I are going to Søborg to work for the day.  I'm excited because I'll get to see Jack and Malene who moved there a couple months ago from Slagelse.  And then we have interviews on Thursday in Roskilde and we'll hopefully find something out about Transfers.  Oh yeah, thats our year mark too!  :) 

Speaking of a year, I decided to give you guys a little thing that probably is just my selfish skewed opinion of what I have learned over the past year.  So first off, a new language.  A year ago, zip zero notta Danish in my life.  Now my life is almost nothing but Danish.  I can now hold my own in conversation and convincingly fake that I understand what people are saying.  But yeah, hopefully I'll be even better in a year from now!  Another thing I've learned is how to talk to people and how to be patient with others around me.  Something that I definitely struggled with before my mission.  I've learned more about the gospel than ever before.  It has strengthened my testimony so much!  I've come closer to my Savior since coming on my mission and that has helped me be happier in my everyday life.  So that was really short and probably disappointing, but hopefully I'll have more next week, after I've been here a year ;).  Anyway, love and miss ya'll tons!!!!  Have a great week. 

MKH
William

P.S.  My camera is being weird right now so i'll get on the computer and send you some pictures tomorrow.  We're in Helsingør today!  Top of sjælland!

Less Than One Year Left - 9/20/2011

Hi guys!  How was your week?  Things went ok last week.  Sorry I didn't have time to write yesterday.  We were moving stuff out and cleaning all day.  From 8am to 430pm.  It was a long day to say the least.  Ballerup house has been the storage place for the past 10 years so it just has a ton of accumulated junk all over the place.  That was what we worked on getting rid of.  We had our whole district and the APs have a huge van that we loaded up three times to take to the dump.  Not exactly what I wanted to do for my Pday but what can you do.  Our move date is the 10 Oct.  So we still have three weeks until we move the last of the stuff in.  The house is so empty.  Literally all we have is a couch and our beds and dresser.  About as much as I had in Slagelse but if you could've seen it before you'd be shocked at how empty it is now. 

 

The work is still going slow, but we are plugging away and knocking a ton.  We had splits last week and that was really good.  Had some good appointments and it's always fun to hang out with them.  Anyway, this is another one of those not so much to report weeks.  This coming week, we have eating appointments every day until Friday, so that's always nice.  Yesterday, was our year left according to our tentative release date (Sept 19, 2012).  That feels so weird.  I was talking to Koop, who is two groups ahead of me and we feel like we just got here.  It feels so crazy to be half way done.  Anyway, love ya'll and miss you tons!!!!!

 

MKH

William

One Year Since My Farewell

Kære Familie,

 

It was a very good week.  Of course, having an apostle come made it all that much better.  It was so cool.  So Wednesday we came to Copenhagen around 1pm and Elder Bednar came at 2pm.  They lined us up for the picture.  He just walked in and it was like, whoa.  That's Elder Bednar!  So we all sat down, and his wife talked first.  She talked about a family she knew in Wyoming with 14 kids and like 200 grandkids and 900 some odd great grandkids or something like that.  The point was that what you do now influences others forever.  It turned out that one of the 900 was one of the missionaries and he got to tell that story.  But after that Elder Bednar got up and asked us to introduce ourselves individually.  Oh, that was cool.  Just talking directly to an apostle of the Lord.  When I introduced myself, he asked if I was a Dukie, I respectfully said, no sir Tar Heel!  He's like my son would be glad to hear that.  I'm like, whoa, he talked to me!  But yeah he then opened up the room to questions.  It was really cool to see him teach to our needs and answer questions that weren't even asked.  Some of the example questions were, "How can we reach our full potential?" and "How do we know we're recieving personal revalation and its not just us?"  So it was really good.  Two funny parts were when he did an impersonation of the Cookie Monster for a Sister from Sweden who didn't know who Cookie Monster was.  Never really thought that I'd see him up there saying, "I want cookie now!"  But after the Zone Conference he had a fireside for the whole country and the area including Sweden and some of Germany.  But he did the same thing that he did when he did the fireside in NC.  He opened it up to questions to the whole congregation.  One little kid asked him if he liked being an apostle.  He asked the translater how to say absolutely in Danish and the guy said, Helt Sikkert.  Bednar tried to say it and couldn't get it out. it was so funny to watch! 

 

So one thing that I learned and tried to apply this week was something that I've been worried about for some time and has quite honestly been keeping me from doing all that I can.  President always talks about when he was on his mission how he fasted for back to back days and then was inspired where to knock even down to the exact house of baptism.  Of course everybody has been trying it including me.  It has gotten to the point where I have spent more time trying to find a spot to knock then it would've taken to knock it.  But Elder Bednar stressed that if we are already working and doing the thing that we should that the Lord will bless us and inspire us who to talk to and where to knock.   So right after the conference I decided to visit some less actives and then knock or contact in the area where they lived.  The idea was that I would find people to teach after visiting and getting to konw the members.  I wanted to work up in Ølstykke where missionaries haven't been in a long time.  We visited a couple of less actives, but they weren't home.  But the last one we tried ended up being home and after talking to her a little bit, she said that we could come back later.  I then said that we should bank in a neighborhood just over from her.  It started off really slow, but we ended with back to back come backs that seemed genuinely interested.  I was really glad that we could be blessed by just trying to do what we're supposed to and trying to be super hereoes. 

 

The rest of our week consisted of getting ready to move out.  So we cleaned and packed and got stuff ready to be taken out of the house.  Not that fun but whatever!  I hope you guys have a fantastic week.  Next week there is a service project to help move.  Love and miss ya'll tons!!!!

 

MKH

William

 

William is on the back row behind Elder Bednar.

 

Copenhagen Denmark Mission September 7, 2011 with Elder and Sister Bednar

 

September 5, 2011

Hey guys!  How are we doing??  This week was pretty good.  Still quiet, but not as bad a last week.  Here are some of the hightlights.  On Tuesday we had district meeting and district work day in Søborg which is the sisters area.  That went well.  We were able to get some good work done for them.  Nothing really exciting happened until Thursday.  At about 930 in the morning Kjeld Rasmussen calls us and asks us to do service in the morning.  I was a little hesitant because it was very late notice and I wanted to knock the whole day, but I said why not and we agreed to come at about 10am, in a half hour.  About 10 min later, I get a call from Æ. Willden one of the APs.  He asked us if we were home to which I said yeah and then he told us that they were on their way to look in our house for a phone that had been left a couple of years ago (trust me, it's about as weird as it sounds, but that was their reason).  I'm like sure, but we have service in a couple minutes so make fast and then as an afterthought he mentions oh, and President is with us.  Booom!  Uh.....ok thanks for the heads up, I'm getting off the phone and going to start cleaning.  Mind you our house is a bomb!  So we are scrambling with ten minutes notice to try and get it kind of  presentable.  But, of course, ten minutes wasn't near enough warning so President walks into our very messy house (it does look a ton better than it did 10min before mind you).  He doesn't say anything bad about the mess just like you guys know that you need to clean so I won't tell you.  President and the APs left without the phone that's been lost for 2 yrs (shocker).  We found out later that President was just checking it out to confirm his choice to move us out of that house, which we found out will happen in October.  That was a little nerve racking, but we survived. 

 

This morning we're in Roskilde again and Pierson and I went to the supermarket so that Koop could have some stuff to make French toast.  We come out and I look down at the wheel and it is completely flat.  I'm like oh shoot!!!  So here I am in the rain changing this tire for the first time ever really.  But we got it fixed and yeah, that's the story haha. 

 

That was so crazy to here that Bishop Close ran into Roth!!!!  (See the story below)  Man I miss that guy so much.  He really was so much fun!!!  Sniffles!  You'll have to say congrats to Johnny from me when you see him.  (A young man in our ward was called to the Novosibirsk Russia Mission)  We are really excited about Wednesday!  We have Elder Bednar Zone Conference.  It's only with our mission so it's a little intimidating too.  I'll let ya'll know how that goes.  Love and miss ya'll tons!!!!

 

MKH

William

 

P.S. GO BYU!!!!!!  

 

So our recently released Bishop came up to me before church started to tell me that he had been visiting his son in Utah and got asked if he'd like a crossbow.  So they go over to the neighbors' house to look at the crossbow and the gentleman is telling Bishop about his family and his son that just returned from a mission to Denmark.  So Bishop says, "Oh, I know someone serving in Denmark."  So the man calls his son down and Bishop asks him if he knows an Elder Veach and Roth says, " Yeah, he was my last companion!!!"  So they talked about William for a few minutes.  William was also glad to hear that Roth was doing well.  He really enjoyed his time as Roth's last companion in the field.  There are pictures in older posts.

August 29, 2011

Hej guys!

 

How are we doing without two kids???  I'm glad to hear you got home safe and the hurricane didn't do too much damage.  It's been way easy this week to tell people where I'm from.  Where's North Carolina?  The place that the Hurricane is hitting first.  OH.....  But yeah this week wasn't that good.  Mostly because Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday we had service.

 

One cool experience that happened this week was with Donna.  She's an American lady from Florida living in Smørum while she's visting friends.  She's an inactive member that we ran into at the bus station and we showed her where the church was.  She came that next Sunday and I translated for her.  Our mission leaders wife gave a really good talk about faith through trials.  As I translated, Donna just cried that whole time.  She looked back at me and said that that was exactly what she needed.  I'm really glad Heavenly Father was able to help me translate clearly so that it could help this woman.  Anyway, we had gone out contacting on the Gågade Saturday evening and we ran into her again.  She was crying again and told us that her dad had stage 4 cancer and that she was going home asap.  We talked to her for a little bit and she said, "Thank you so much.  You guys just appear right when I need you."  It was a way cool experience.  If we hadn't taken that exact bus, walked left down the Gågade instead of going to buy food we would never have found her and helped her.

 

So we found out that we might be moving this coming month.  The Zone Leaders are moving out of there apartment and are going to move in with us.  There is plenty of room for them in our house, but the house is so run down that the mission is going to fix it up and sell it and rent out a members apartment.  So we'll live closer to the bus station and church and the apartment will also be in nicer condition.  The only problem is that it'll be a little bit crammed. 

 

So all that is about the most exciting stuff.  We are knocking a ton still.  I really want a baptism by the end of September and I think we can get it if we just work as hard as we can.  So that's the goal.  Love and miss ya tons.  Hope BYU beats Ole Miss this week!!  Love ya'll!

 

MKH

William