First Week in the Gladsaxe 1st Ward

Kære Familie,

 

No I'm not transfered, but I am in a new ward.  The exciting news is that yesterday they split the Søborg ward (biggest ward in Scandenavia) and put part of it with our ward and renamed our ward the Gladsaxe 1st Ward.  The original Søborg ward is now Gladsaxe 2nd Ward.  So that'll be interesting.  I've got a little bit more added to my area now.  We got some ghettos from Copenhagen and get this, Jack and Malene are now in my area!  The couple that I taught from Slagelse!  I'm so excited, hopefully, I can get them to go forward and get baptized.  It can't be a coincidence that they keep meeting up with the missionaries that taught them for so long. 

 

This week was pretty quiet work wise.  We had an appointment with this one lady who we started teaching who's been taught for about 10 yrs now and president came to our appointment.  It went really well!!!  We almost set a baptismal date with her.  She said that she really wanted to get baptized but didn't want to commit to something and then start smoking again.  So we're working with her to stop smoking.  I also started teaching this African guy that I taught a while back and things are going pretty good with him now. 

 

We had Thanksgiving this week!!!!  Can you believe that this is the last Thanksgiving on my mission!?!?  It's so weird to think about.  My year in the land mark is on Wednesday!  But anyway, Thanksgiving was good.  I'm attatching photos from the Turkey Bowl we played, where miraculously nobody got hurt!  Our team won!!!  We then had an ok dinner, and then New missionary meeting for trainers and trainees.  The next day we had a zone conference that was pretty uneventful.  So yeah, I've come to the conclusion that Thanksgivings just suck on a mission.  Now we have Christmas to look forward to now, so that'll be fun! 

 

Nothing else  really happened this week.  Daniel and Melanie's baptism are on Saturday!!!!  There is also a lady from Søborg that is now in our ward that's also getting baptized but it won't count as ours, but we will be able to work with her to help her get to know the ward here.  Hope you guys have a great week!  Love and miss ya'll!

 

MKH

William

 

Pic 1:  

Karla and Flemmings Baptism

Me with the Former Bishop and his wife

 

The triumphant Turkey Bowl Team!

Nielsen and I, right before he left for Greenland

 

November 21, 2011

Kære Familie,

 

Sounds like you guys had a good week!  My week, well it was pretty good, but Saturday morning made it FANTASTIC!!!!!!  First I have to explain, Daniel and Melanie's baptism got pushed back to the 3rd.  The Bishop felt like it was too fast and that they should take it a little slower with the lessons so they understood them.  But Flemming in Slagelse AND his wife Karla got baptized on Saturday!!!!  It was so amazing!!!  I don't know how to best describe it with words except for the scripture in D&C 18 about the joy of bringing souls to Christ!!!!  It just rocked!!!  Apparently, Karla wasn't going to get baptized yet, but at Flemming's interview she decided that now WAS the right time to do it.  So awesome.  Unfortunately, I don't have my camera with me with pictures, so I'll send them at a different time.  

 

On Wednesday evening, we went out on splits with the Bishopric.  I got to go with the Bishop, who I think is one of the coolest members in Denmark!!!!  He talked to me a lot about why I came out and asked if I felt like a failure for not having tons of baptisms.  I said not at all, because I've learned to measure sucess by other ways.  He said then basically the same thing that you have been saying for the past year.  He said that he knew what I was doing was right and that I was the one learning lessons that would prepare me to be a father.  It was just really powerful.  Thank goodness, the Holy Ghost keeps confirming things to us and doesn't get tired of saying yes this is true.  We also stopped by an older lady in the ward to give her a blessing, and when we knocked on the door you should've seen her face.  She was so happy to see her bishop there.  

We had our first apartment blow up yesterday.  Wright gets really impatient when Tolman eats his food that Tolman hasn't paid for and Tolman hasn't bought groceries except for one time and Wright doesn't eat them.  Anyway, they both flip out at each other cause Wright keeps yelling at Tolman to stop eating his food and then stole 20 kroner (not a good idea in my opinion) to pay for all the food Tolman has eaten.  Well, Tolman flips out about that and they both argue for a little while but they made up last night.  Just in time for Tolman to leave.  Kinda funny just to watch. 

 

Had to give my first talk in Sacrament meeting in Ballerup since I've been here.  It went really well.  The bishop really liked it too.  Gave me hug afterwards and said it was fantastic.  I talked about missionary work and how great it feels to help people come to Christ and basically said, I don't have to have this feeling by myself, you all can feel it too.  I hope they get motivated to do something, we'll see.

 

Anyways, that was my week.  Hope you guys have a great one.  Love and miss ya tons!!!!

 

MKH

William

 

P.S. Best Friend Bailey is going Zone Leader and living with me now!!!!  I'm District Leader now. 

November 14, 2011

Hey guys, how was your week?  Our week was super quiet in comparison to last week.  We moved the baptismal date up for the two kids to this coming Saturday!  And there is one of my investigators in Slagelse getting baptized on that day.  So with any luck, three people that I taught will get baptized on Nov. 19!  So yeah, one really cool thing that happened in our appointment with the two kids was that the oldest, Daniel, told us how he found out that he needed to be baptized.  He was sitting in a class in Aalborg and they were talking about baptism in the class and while he was listening he got this overwhelming feeling like he needed to get baptized that it felt like the most right thing to do.   The Spirit was way strong while he was bearing this testimony.  It was so cool to see the influence that that one feeling had on his life.  So they are way excited for Saturday!!

 

Yesterday was the Primary program for our ward.  It was weird because in Slagelse the primary program was the week before I got there.  So it kinda feels like I've come full circle.  Oh yeah and the next one, I'll be in NC for the primary program!  :)

 

Well that was my week.  Hope you guys are having a good time with the vacation!  Love and miss ya tons! 

 

MKH

William

Best week ever work wise!!!!

Kære familie!

 

Read the subject cause this was the best week of work ever on my mission!  Some stats:  We had 53 hrs of work, 7 member present lessons, 1 new investigator, and drumroll........2 BAPTISMAL DATES!!!!!  Yeah, for the first time since March, I've got somebody with a baptismal date, but this one IS going to happen!  First, I'll tell ya'll that story!  So we finally got an appointment with those two kids.  I think I mentioned that last week.  But the lesson ended up going really well!  We taught the Plan of Salvation and I just taught it like Dad used to in FHE.  They understood everything.  They were way sharp (one of them has read Alma 32 by himself and understands most of it).  They were way excited when we made a baptismal date with them, even asking if they could get it a little earlier, but we have to have time to teach the rest of the lessons.  Those kids are way cool.  I loved teaching them.  The parents are also way cool people too.  Oh man, I was so excited after we made the date!  It was just a testimony to me again that the Lord answers prayers, but we still have to make the effort. 

 

We also found some cool old investigators this past week that we started teaching.  So, hopefully, that will turn out pretty well.  I've been trying to get members to more of our appointments to try and get them more excited about missionary work.  So far so good.  Hopefully, these baptisms will also get them excited too.

 

Yesterday was Stake conference.  That was good and it was it was a lot of fun to see people from Slagelse I hadn't seen in a while. 

 

Otherwise, as far as exciting news goes, President Andersen announced this week that he was sending two Elders to Greenland on Thursday.  Elder Nielsen (ZL living with me) and Elder Ence.  They leave Thursday and are very excited.  President went to Greenland a couple of weeks ago and tore it up so he decided not to wait until the spring to send Elders there, but to send them asap.  If it's too cold to work effectively then they'll come back to Denmark.  But otherwise, both of them will be finishing their missions on Greenland.  Crazy eh?

 

Well hope you guys had a good week.  Love and miss ya tons!!!!

 

MKH

William

Ballerup Report Nov. 1

Kære Familie,

 

How are you guys doing?  Sorry I haven't been able to email on Pday for three weeks in a row.  This whole house thing is really annoying, but I'm pretty sure we're all done!   Yesterday, they inspected the new apartment at 10am so I couldn't get out and email until alot later and we had to leave for the Halloween festivities at 12pm.  The inspection went well....for me at least.  The ZLs got chewed out because they're some of the messiest people in the entire mission.  They had just stuffed stuff into cuboards and closets and got called out on it.  But they commented and said that all my stuff looked very neat.  :) 

 

Well, it was another very hard working week.  We got over 50 hours again (Standard of Excellence for the Mission is 40).  Our hard work is starting to pay off.  We got 15 potential investigators last week.  The trouble is calling all them.  So things are going really good on that front.  We had  a missionary from the ward come back a couple days ago and he really wants to get out and help us teach so that'll be really good!  We have an appointment this week with the two kids that we're going to baptize.  We're going to set a baptismal date for as soon as possible.  So we got some really good things going on right now!

 

On Sunday the bishopric was reorganized!  We had probably the coolest bishop ever who got replaced by the coolest member in Denmark!  It came as quite the shock, because, the bishop we had before was only in for a little over a year.  (He was from Finland, played pro hockey in Finland, just awesome guy!).  Apparently, there are rumors that part of the Søborg ward will join with our ward so that will also add to the interest, but we'll find out on Sunday.  Another big surprise was that we will be moving church buildings!   For a long time, we've been meeting in the mall and that has actually helped alot for getting investigators to church cause it's just right above the train station so it's really easy to get to and describe where it's at.  But now we're moving to Søborg which is about 40 min away by bus.  That's going to make it a little bit challenging. 

 

Oh well, I hope you guys have a great week and I'll talk to you on Monday I promise!!!  Love and miss ya tons! 

 

MKH

William

Weirdest Week of My Mission

Kære Familie,

 

How was your guys' week?  Our week went really really well!!!  We worked a total of 50.5 hours this week.  I'm was tired to say the least!  Working that hard makes you feel really good at the end of the week.  Even though we didn't see that much huge sucess, we felt so good about what we did, that we worked as hard as we could.  We got some good plans for this week and we hope that it'll all pay off! 

 

This week was not the members week apparently.  We had two families forget our appoitments.  That wasn't fun but oh well.  On Tuesday we were supposed to have half day splits with the Zone Leaders.  Well, as we were going to work, Koop called from Fredricksberg and told us that he needed two of us to come teach with him, because he couldn't get a member to their appoitment.  So, Nielsen and Hansen, ZLs couldn't decide who wanted to go so obviously we all went!  Wait what?  Yeah, I don't know how we all 4 ended up in Copenhagen.  The agreement ended up being that Nielsen and Wright would go help Koop teach and the Hansen and I would contact around F-Berg.  Well, while I'm waiting for Hansen in the bathroom, Wright and Koop companion McDonnell come downstairs and said that a member showed up randomly and so they didn't need all the missionaries.  So Koop sent McDonnell and Wright to go contacting.  The two greenies!!  Hansen comes out and we split up and go contacting.  (the reason we didn't just go home, was that I needed some stuff from Koop so I had to wait until he got out).  It was a lot of fun contacting in Copenhagen.  A problem here in Ballerup, is that it is mostly residential so there isn't alot of oppurtunities to contact.  So that was fun.  We came back and all went to lunch and soon it was 3pm and we all decided to spend the day working in Copenhagen.  Æ. Poulsen and I worked on Amager which was also really fun.  So that was very spontaneous. 

 

They were also working on the stairs in our apartment entry way, so we got kicked out of our apartment for two days.  So we lived in Allerød for most of the week.  That took any comfort out of the week and just added to the weirdness.  We had splits with Bailey and his greenie on Friday!  It was the first time during this whole past year that I have gotten to work with Bailey.  It was fun!  He's the DL now by the way. 

 

Well that's the crazy week.  Love you guys and miss you!!!! 

 

MKH

William