Week 15 - Happy Christmas Harry. Happy Christmas Ron.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY

GOD JUL!

GLÆDELIG JUL!

A Week of Miracles:

mandag:

Able to help an Icelandic friend clean her house, she hasn't been super receptive to our message ever before but because of all the service we've been doing for her and her Family she's asking more questions and understanding that we really love her and her Family and just want to help.

tirsdag:

Made it to Lyngby the night before safely to go to another doctor's appointment in Søborg in København. The doctor was super classy and really fast and it was just a crazy not super Danish experience. Søster Perkins says that it was the nicest hospital she'd ever been to in Denmark.

onsdag:

Back in København for Christmas Zone conference. It was so good and just a beautiful experience. We watched Inside Out. What a great movie. It really demonstrates how important empathy is in our lives and the perfect example of an empathetic person is Jesus Christ. Because He 100% knows what we're all going through in our lives.

torsdag:

We had a super awesome Family history lesson with this really classy flower-children married couple in our Ward. They're so great. He paints and is the choir director and is just so funny and the wife is so kind and loving and they both are just such gentle people. We really helped them and inspired them with Family history which was really awesome.

fredag:

Another really awesome Family history lesson with a member Family! They had another friend WHO is a Jehovah's witness and she seemed super interested with Family history as well! We're going to be meeting with her to help her with Family history and see where it goes from there!!

lørdag:

We had a super hyygeligt lunch appointment with a less active friend and her kids and her husband. He ate æble skiver and sang some songs and just really felt that awesome Jule spirit that comes when we're celebrating our Savior's birth. Better yet she came to church the NeXT day with her 3 Little boys! It was so great and so incredible that they could be with.

søndag:

We had 7 less active friends in church! Oh it was a Christmas miracle! I just felt such love for these people and their decision to bring them and their families to church! Oh it was so great. We were able to go out yesterday night and sing to some less active friends and get some of them to commit to come to the Church service we have on Thursday because Danes celebrate Christmas on the 24th and we'll have a church service on that day. Oh it was so beautiful!

CHRISTMAS!

"Got that ol Christmas feeling, singing what I'm doing, ya ya!" - Candace from Phinease and Ferb

The sun came out for a few moments this morning. That was a beautiful thing.

Have a happy Christmas week everybody. Be happy, be safe, give people hugs, make people Cards, be happy because Christ was born.

P.S. Keeping the tradition going with Sister Perkins JO TAK

I love you Guys.

Luke 2:19

Knus og Kram,

Søster Chesssee

(So far for my name I have heard Danes try to pronounce it Chelsey, Chess, Chessee, Dresley, Chesney, Cheslew, Chessoo, etc, etc, etc it's great fun.)

Week 14 - Friends

Last Monday was so glorious. We went and explored this old Castle ruins that live super close to our Apartment. Antvorskov Ruins. The sun was actually OUT and it was just so lovely.

So much has happened this week. I don't understand how life goes by so fast.

Ok I think I've mentioned our lovely old German friend before. She's adorable. This week she came to this Christmas Concert that some really talented missionaries put on and afterwards me and her were talking and she was telling me all about her life. How she was born in 1935 and doesn't remember Hitler's rule but remembers in 1945 when the Americans came and saved them. "I was ten and just so happy when they came. My dad was a priest and teh Americans asked if they could use our church to do their service in and we said 'of course!' and they were all in their uniforms and so handsome." She then talked about how even though they were saved they weren't free for long. She was living in Eastern Germany and soon the Russians came in and took away their freedoms and she learned russian in school and all this stuff. She confuses her languages sometimes and talks in a mix of Danish, German, and English. Anyways, she is just the cutest thing. People have such interesting lives.

We also had a Ward partyyyy for Christmas. My first Danish Christmas party! We danced around the Christmas tree and ate so much food. flæskesteg, risen grød, rød grød, kartofler, det hele! Oh it was so great. It was so fun to get to know the Ward better and just to help out and feel the Jul spirit!

THAI FRIENDS! Ok Tuesday we go and visit our Thai friends and they always forget when our appointments are. But we go over there and they ask if we're hungry, they bring out this huge bowl of Soup for both of us and tell us to eat! Oh my goodness, I had never tasted thai food before but it was SO yummy. Duck, pork, pineapples, green onions, celery, some other weird vegetable thing, and man they are too good to us. They had a friend over and they all told us "We just want to talk about God and Christ when you two are over." and we said "Perfect! that's all we want to talk about to!" It was really awesome. The language is definitely a barrier but one sister can speak pretty good Danish and English so she translates for us into Thai. And we'll be getting some Thai material soon.

One big thought I've had this week is strengthening my testimony of Christ through sharing my testimony of Him and following His example. I want to share my testimony with you all on my Savior Jesus Christ. I know He lives. I know through following His example I can have the happiest of lives. His grace is sufficient for me and it is the only thing that keeps me going on some days. I know it's only through Him that I am here now in Denmark after a long wait. He is my strength, He is my light and my warmth on some of these Cold, dark Danish days. Because of His infinite and eternal sacrifice I can be made clean, I can have the Peace and comfort and joy that comes through using His Atonement in repenting everyday. He is my redeemer, He is my friend. I know that He understands me better than I can even comprehend. He makes my weaknesses into strengths and pushes me to better myself. To keep progressing, to keep strengthening my conversion. Because of my conversion to Christ I am here in Denmark spreading this message that families can be together forever, that we can all be repentant of past mistakes, we can all be made strong through His grace. Not only do I know that I am saved by His grace, but I know that I am forever changed by His grace. And I will continue to change for the better because of Him. I love my Savior. I love the opportunity I have to serve Him and come closer to Him. He is the reason for this Christmas time and I love that I can be out here and help people come closer to Him everyday. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

I love you all so much and appreciate the support you all give me.

Have a happy Monday and a happy week!

Eat some chocolate.

Med Kærelighed,

tt

Antvorskov ruins - we'll be going back sometime soon in regular people clothes so we can actually climb and stake claims on this old Castle. 1500s-1700s

I like it here. The Antvorskov Castle Ruins go pretty far Down and pretty far back. It's weird that they're just on the side of road in a random field. Anybody can just go and climb on them and check them out.

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Went on Splits this week with the lovely Søster Mann in Lyngby. This Picture, as dark as it is was taken at 3:30 in the afternoon. The sun was gone and about 30 minutes later it was completely dark.

Week 13 -DISKOTEK

So we got invited to a diskotek this week...that was fun. We didn't go, but maybe next time...

This week has just gotten me more in the Jul spirit. We helped a lovely member who is always so kind to us, she's great,  we helped her clean and decorate another member's house this week. She has two little 4 year old twin girls who are so cute and so fun and so it was really great that we could decorate for them. Then we helped another friend who has a hard time coming to church find a Christmas tree which was so hyggeligt. THEN we made decorations and ate risengrød and æbleskiver with another friend, which are both huge Danish traditional Jul foods. So yummy.

We decided to treat ourselves with some American DOMINOS pizza! We go to Næstved every week and at the station there's a Domino's and we decided that Saturday was the day to feast. It was beautiful.

We have been out a lot finding people to teach, we've been working really hard with asking inspired questions and it's just so awesome when people will stand and talk to us for a little and we get to learn a bit about them and they can learn a bit about us. 

ALSO - we have this adorable teeny tiny Thai friend who came to church yesterday! She originally was super stand-offish from us and we taught her sister but she's finally opening up and came to church and gave me this super sick dragon pin. She's the cutest.

Speaking of church yesterday, it was fast and testimony meeting. I love it. One of our less-active friends was there with 2 of her little boys, one of them is 3 and the other is 6. The 6-yr old is so funny and so loud and the little 3 year old just follows his older brother around. Danish kids are typically loud. They just are. So our friend goes up to bear her testimony which was so awesome and so sweet and so special. Her two boys were out in the foyer area because they can be louder out there, and as soon as our friend, B, starts sharing her testimony they run into the chapel and the 6yr old runs up to me and in the loudest danish whisper I have ever heard "Hey! That's my Mor! Oh man, brother, look it's Mor!" I try to get them to sit down next to me but they declined all my attempts and ran up to their mom and just stayed up there on the stand with her until she was done bearing her testimony. It was awesome.

We also got to visit another less active friend, M. She's from the philippines and the only member in her family and she cracks me up. I love her so much. She's so tiny and so fiery and just so fun. We talked about Christmas and how Christ's light brings a peace into our lives and into our homes.  There was a article in the Liahona by Elder Christofferson that talks about finding peace during this Christmas season. It's so great.

https://www.lds.org/liahona/2015/12/be-at-peace?lang=eng

The wind has been really crazy this week. We haven't been able to bike a few days because the wind will just blow you over and it just feels like you're trying to ride through a wall. 

I'm grateful for the opportunity I have to continually better myself. That this church is based off the idea that Christ lives and we have living prophets on the earth and everything is just alive. That we can receive personal åbenbaring for our daily trials and daily questions. That this church is living and breathing and always moving forward. It gives me such power and such strength. I love it. I'm grateful I get to share it with the Danish people. It's a beautiful thing. 

Life is good friends. Danish food is good. My body is healthy and strong and happy. 

Love you all so much! Have a great 2nd week of December! Only 18 more days into Jul!

Everywhere around Denmark, just randomly everywhere there are these old WWII bunkers just incorporated into Danish life. That's an apartment building right behind me and then I'm just there on top of an old WWII bunker.

Daus Daus,  Happy Monday 

Søster Chesss