Dåbs Dato!

 Hello Everyone,

This week we had a lot of good opportunities to find and to have some big lessons. The biggest thing from this week is definitely with our friend Janik as we put him on... BAPTISM DATE! This is a big thing for me and for the Denmark mission in general as baptisms are not the most common thing here. We have been working hard to get him closer and he has finally felt the prompting. We are so thankful for him and all his faith. One experience for me in particular that hit me really hard was the meeting we had with him where I got to read the baptism questions in preparation. This experience showed me the faith that can grow in someone when they are touched by the spirit. After each answer it became clear that he was ready and that he was feeling the spirit! It was so powerful to be overcome with the spirit in the room and to feel the desires of his heart. 

Something this week that also made me really happy was all the success we were seeing with social media. It is often really interesting to be able to see all the different things that might seem like they aren't as spiritually guided but the truth is all of it requires you to think about how you can best spread the gospel and love of Jesus Christ which invites the spirit. It kinda renews my faith that technology can be used for more good in the mission than bad and in fact can be a great tool in aiding with finding those that are searching in our areas. 

We had a zone conference this week also! We got some great training from the Elders and the Sisters. They talked a lot about testifying of Christ and being a witness of him. We have been able to focus on that the rest of the week and truly make it a goal of ours. I can already tell it brings so much more purpose to have something that even in the smallest ways can help someone. For instance we often go around and just share simple truths such as God loves us or Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. Zone Conference was amazing though and we got to see all the missionaries and just have a fun time. Our zone really is the best!

Overall this week has been pretty normal and just has shown me what normal missionary work is gonna continue to look like. I hope that everybody that reads this can feel that God loves them and that Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. 

I wish everybody an amazing week and hope that everyone is staying safe!

I love you all and appreciate your support.

Vi ses næste uge!

Elder Lines

Zone Conference

 

"The Storm"

 Hello Everyone,

This week has been filled with a lot of activities and we have just been busier than ever. We have been doing a much better job at contacting and finding those that are ready to learn. I attribute that completely to other missionaries who have taught me and to the Lord who has given me the strength to talk to everyone that I can. It really does open your world view a lot to just go around talking to random people and getting to see their points of view. There has been so much that happened this week so let's get into it!

Tuesday was maybe one of my most favorite days as we got to go out to one of our friends houses and help him with some yard work. He is a native Hungarian and speaks like 6 languages. He made us some native Goulash (probably misspelled that). The time we had with him was the best and we got to teach some important principles that he seemed to understand pretty well! We hope to be able to meet with him again and bring him closer to the Savior. Plus, I really love having opportunities to provide service.  

We also had a lesson with one of our friends named Janik! He has always been so fun to meet with as he helps us with Danish and is a super talented cook. This time however we were given the opportunity to talk with him more about baptism and he said he wanted to! His only setback is that he is a bit afraid of water. We have been praying and we hope the next lesson we get the opportunity to talk to him more and quench his fears. His faith really inspires me. I enjoy meeting with him and have found him to be a good friend. 

We had a lot of good times this week and found some people that we have just had some amazing talks with. Just random people we meet along our way. My companion and I have been able to share the gospel very well together and it has honestly been a very big blessing as we have been busy this week and not just had a bunch of random time to figure out what we need to do. There is nothing better than having a set plan that we get to hold to and follow throughout the entire day. 

As for the title of this email, we have had a lot of stormy days this week and got a weather warning from the embassy to stay safe! The biggest part of the weather warning that affected Aarhus was the large amount of wind that we received. It felt like trying to bike with a parachute on our backs and sometimes on our sides. It definitely added an element of fun to our bike rides. 

This week we got the opportunity to also have splits with the ZLs and I will say that every moment was great. The ZLs have always been a big place to look to for advice about how to go about certain aspects of missionary work. 

I have seen how drawing closer to Christ can be so powerful in my life and in the life of those I get to share the gospel with. I continue to be in awe of His goodness and I'm grateful to be a missionary that wears His name on my tag. It is very joyful for me. 

Thank you everyone for reading and I wish you a good week!

Vi ses næste uge!

Elder Lines

Being Sick and Eating Well

 Hello Everyone,

This week has been a lot of good things and some hard things to come with it. We have been having an amazing time this week in our lessons and teaching. The members have been kinder than ever and the ward is so accepting of our friends and their families. We got a new ward mission leader who has been so helpful in organizing activities and just been willing to come to our lessons if needed. 

Speaking of lessons, we had some pretty good lessons in the time that we had! We got to meet with some people that we haven't been able to in a bit of time and have a good time with them. There are many people in Denmark that are noticing the cold and darkness and finding people on streets has become a lot harder and more difficult. I will say that the weather has not been stopping us from getting out and talking to everyone we can. One of the lessons that we had this week was with a man named Roman. He had gotten back from a trip in Portugal and wanted to meet with us. After a very long lesson I invited him to come to church and he said yes. So, I'm excited about that!! He is so cool and got us a cake to eat. Which was so nice. There really are many good people.

This week we had eating appointments everyday with members. They are all so kind and so caring with their time and resources. We have been able to prepare some cool and interesting spiritual thoughts to share. Along with the spiritual thoughts was of course some very tasty food that includes some Danish but also just normal food too. The best thing we ate this week though was pork chops that a family made for us!  I was very happy to get to eat with their family again. It's so nice to be in the homes of the members. 

This week has also been a bit of a slower time for us due to me and my companion being sick. I have been very happy to get some extra sleep during this time and just be able to embrace the time we have to rest a bit. But, I'm happy we are both feeling better each day. The best part is that we have still been able to get some work in and this allowed for some productive conversations and fun planning of activities. We hope that sickness will not continue and that we will be able to get up to full power shortly. 

At this point of my mission I have been able to learn a lot of things already and apply some things to my life that I can use for the rest of my life! Two of the things that I have learned on the mission thus far would be to remember that this isn't my work or my decision to lure people to church as they will feel it when they take part of it and feel the joy and peace that comes through Christ. And, I have also learned that as missionaries the best thing we can do is do things for others as when we focus on ourselves we lose track of what matters most to the work we are doing. It is about losing ourselves in this good work. What a blessing.

Thank you everybody for the support and I hope you all have amazing weeks in your respective places!

Vi ses til næste uge!

Love, 

Elder Lines

En hel masse regn og jeg var syg.

Hello Everyone,

This week has been a mix of things and a lot of fun. We have been busy with the first week of the transfer trying to arrange our lives and get ourselves out on the streets to talk and invite others to come unto Christ. A big thing I realized is that the name of Christ is a scare for some Danish people as they have been basically Atheist most of their lives. Often we start out with questions about what their beliefs are on the purpose in life and what their ideas of life after death are. This usually strikes up good conversations but I know there are a lot of things to try and attempt before we rule them out. I am just happy to be in a place where I get to increase my skills and love the people with all my heart and all my mind. It really is a blessing to not worry about yourself as much and just try and worry about others. On top of that I have felt my Danish increasing in strength over the last couple of weeks which has been a huge blessing as I can now hold conversations on a few different topics!

So this week started out with a bit of rain. By a bit I mean a whole lot as we were soaked biking to the Church Building one day this week. We had to spend some of our studies drying off and since I have remembered to keep my rain pants and jacket in my bag so that does not happen again. This week has been a very good time for eating as we have been eating members everyday of the week. We have some very good and classic Danish meals and hope to be able to eat some more. Along the lines of food, one of our friends Janik is a professional chef that cooks vegetarian food and I will say it has got to be some of the best food and by those means the best vegetarian food I have ever tasted. (My parents once tricked me with a veggie burger that I swore was real meat...funny to think now I appreciate a bit of vegetarian food). We made some apple sauce with him and now I can say that I know how to make it! This has also been good as we have been able to connect with the members and have had them help us out with all of our lessons. I'm grateful.

The ending of this week was quite a bit more sad as on Saturday morning I woke up and noted to my companion that I kinda felt sick. Later on that day I had a 101 fever and a massive headache. This led to us staying inside all day Saturday and Sunday. Luckily, today I feel much better and have been able to get everything done that we need on this P Day. Part of me being sick meant that we became very bored so I turned to sleep on Saturday to recover but then on Sunday decided to watch some of the Book of Mormon videos to help time pass. In the end, it was a good time and since I am feeling better we have been able to cut back on our restrictions of going outside. This week will take a bit more energy as I did not sleep for the last two days though. I will say I am happy to feel the energy coming back! Sleep and health....both blessings.

One challenge this week that I will share on this email that kinda opened my eyes a bit is the shortness of the time I have to do this work. Two years seems like it is going by in the blink of an eye. I have seen almost 5 months pass me by and more to come in this work. This time goes by so fast and part of the joy is that we get to cherish the things we learn for the rest of our lives. Something that happened when I was sick was that motivation for me to work and do anything seemed to just disappear but something that brought me back to it was to hear the good experience one of our friends had with the members of this amazing ward! He responded to our text and said that the Church was amazing and that a member had been invited to help out with the ward. There are so many small things to be thankful for and I just wanna learn to see them all!

I hope you all have had amazing weeks and I wish the best to all that read this email!

Love from Denmark,

Elder Lines

Transfer Week and A Whole Bunch of New Missionaries

 Hello Everyone, 

This week we have had a lot of things going on for our visa paperwork and for transfers. Although we have been busy,  this week has opened my eyes to the dedication that missionaries have in their work and for the love that everyone has for the people of Denmark. There are some amazing leaders and many dedicated members in this country.

One of the things we did this week was that we got to attend a culture course in order to complete a part of our visa. This course was fun and boring at the same time as we were learning about Danish marriage and divorce law as missionaries but we also (thankfully) got to eat some really good food and just play games on our pieces of paper we were given. We played a mixture of massive tic tac toe and battleship and just had a good time together as missionaries. There is no test on the marriage laws,  but there is an exam we need to take as Resident Permit requesters that tests basic Danish language skills. Just basic phrases and stuff. 

We had transfers this weekend and so I I have been paired with the one and only Ældste Jakobs. He has been on his mission for 9 months and has been in the mission office doing a lot of work to keep our mission running. We are all very thankful for the work that they have done to keep the mission afloat and give us the resources we need to do our work properly. He expressed his happiness to finally be out of the office and I hope Aarhus gives him the opportunity to practice his skills and hone them to a new level. And, he grew up mostly in Farmington, NM (although his family does not live there anymore). So, the 2 New Mexico Elders are going to do some good work this transfer. 

This week we had 9 missionaries come and 8 of them were Elders. They looked so excited but they were also very exhausted. A couple of them got sent to our zone which is cool because it means we will get to have some really cool missionaries to start leading the work and giving us new ideas. Elderly Jakobs drove back to Aarhus on Saturday and got to have a fun time yesterday listening to some of the General Conference sessions and being able to hang out with some of the members introducing my new companion. 

I was happy that I got to stay in Copenhagen for a long time and help out with some prep. We were able to visit a couple places that have been really fun and see the traditional aspects of Denmark. Loved being in the city of Copenhagen with the good people and the busy city life AKA more bikes than people. Additionally, we had the ability to use our Danish a bit in Copenhagen which just made me want to go there and serve there even more. It really is an amazing city. 

A good spiritual thing this week for me to focus on and for anybody that might read this is to be a true disciple of Christ in all that you do and try to represent him and what he stands for in any situation and in any place you might stand. This means for me treating people kindly, cheerfully serving and being true to what I know. I look forward to finishing listening to General Conference. The time change has allowed us to only listen to all of the Saturday sessions so far. 

We are gonna have a great transfer and we are happy to be in a place where we can serve the Lord and be able to practice our language skills a lot. The nice part is that our language skills have had a big boost and that will continue to happen as we serve. I'm grateful for this miracle. I'm feeling more and more confident and continue to feel so excited to be part of this work. I'm working hard and doing all I can. 

Love you all, 

Elder Lines