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.

Add caption

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

Week - 12 Ukelele, the ER, Jul, a new transfer, and Gratitude

Happy mandag friends!

Hahahahaha this week...oh man..........ok....so I was super sick until Thursday or Friday and we went to the hospital because Insurance said to.So we spend 2 hours trying to FIND the right address...turns out it was just the Emergency Room! Wow! The Slagelse hosptial is like 25 Buildings that span over a long way...it was rough. THEN 4 hours in the actual emergency room. They took my blood, did an EKG, and tested me for everything under the sun to tell me I'm fine and to go home. I knew I was fine and I wanted to go home...but c'est la vie. The whole time Søster Perkins and I were just laughing about the fact that I did not belong there...but the nurses and doctor were all really nice and helped me with my Danish and health.

I'm healthier now and back to full-fledged Work which feels so so good. I love it.

We had zone conference this week on Wednesday which was so fun! We had a talent show, talked about gratitude, and just had a good time as all the missionaries on Sjælland met together to be better. Søster Perkins and I had an awesome talent that we did with our dear Assistants to the President friends, Elder Reimschussel and Elder Mogensen. The night before Søster Perkins taught me 5 chords on the Ukelele, the Elders found a missionary, remix, rendition of Dr. Seuss' green Eggs and Ham and Sister Perkins and those Guys did a read-aloud while I played the ukelele. It was so funny. The premise of the book is there's Brother Lurch and can not will not learn about the Mormon church. Also during this here Zone conference, we went around the room of about 40 missionaries and stood up and said one sentence of what we were grateful for. It was powerful.

I said i was grateful for my Family the knowledge I have that I can live with them for eternity.

Saturday and yesterday were finally days where we could go out and Work and it felt SO INCREDIBLE! Oh my goodness. Honestly I will take biking in Wind and rain from one appointment with friends to another rather than staying inside when there's WORK TO BE DONE! HOLLA! I was so pumped to get out and talk to people.

The Danish is still coming...tehe.

Also, I don't know if I told you all yet but I will be training in February already because they don't have enough sisters. So that's fun!

So Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. Something about a penny in the old man's hat. If you haven't got a penny, a half penny will do. If you haven't got a penny we still love you.

CHRISTMAS! (Pronounced "yool" here in Denmark) Is coming and I am so pumped. The new Christmas video is out and I love it. Here's the link

https://www.mormon.org/Christmas

it's good everybody. Lights are up everywhere and there are silly Little Charlie-Brown-esque Christmas trees up EVERYWHERE just on the street. It's funny. I'm so excited.

They have these Little Things in Denmark called Nissen (neesen) that are Little elves and they come and just help out around the house and are so cute. Søster Perkins and I are making a house for them in our Little Apartment.

HEY something else that's really exciting - I finished my first transfer of 6 weeks here in the beautiful land of Denmark! Today marks the start of a new transfer and I am so excited for it. This is Sister Perkins last transfer which makes me less pumped because she's great and I am going to really miss her when she becomes a normal human being Again. Oh well..

But I did it! i survived my first 6 weeks in Denmark. Weird, eh? I think so.

Ok, Thanksgiving was lovely. I am so thankful for this life that I have. i love gratitude. It's probably my favorite thing ever. The impact gratitude has on our lives. Honestly, when we're grateful how can we be sad about anything? We've been asking that question to people on the streets this week "Hvad er du taknemmelig for i dit liv?" aka "What are you thankful for in your life?" And the responses and conversations it sparks is incredible. I love when people demonstrate their gratitude and hoenstly when we have that gratitude in our Hearts, life gets better and we can demonstrate our love to our Heavenly Father, isn't it so great?? Oh man I love it.

LIFE IS GOOD EVERYBODY!

LOVE YOU ALL! HAPPY DECEMBER TOMORROW!

Knus,

Søster Chesley

(pic swips - me in the ER, such a silly thing *and the cool church in our neighborhood with lovely Jul lights* and a hat from grandma Chesley - I wear it all the time)

Week 11 -I'M THANKFUL FOR YOU

Ok there's so much to write about from this week. We had our one month training meeting for THREE DAYS! It was so great to see my MTC distrikt again and to party and just enjoy life and missionary work.incredible. Really all of it was so incredible. On our first day we did some training and then went to Frederiksborg Slot . This MASSIVE castle in Hillerød. I took too many pictures and I was in heaven. Like a kid in a candy shop. But a history major in an ancient Danish castle in Europe that's been around since the early 1600s. There was a very special energy there. We got to see the original Carl Bloch paintings that the church uses all the time and that was 

The second day we got to go to the København temple - that place is so special. I love it so much and I was so happy to be there again. What I great gift we have on this earth today. Temple time=Fun time. We also ate at this huge buffet and took 3 trains to get there. What a day. Also watched the Book of Mormon documentary while we hygge'd.
OH MY GOODNESS I HAVE NOT EXPLAINED WHAT HYGGE IS! (pronounced hooga)
Hygge is a very danish thing. It's a word that doesn't directly translate to english. The closest thing I can get is warm, cozy, togetherness. It's used as an adjective hyggeligt i.e. That dinner appointment was very hyggeligt, thank you for the hot kokoa!
Or as a verb i.e. we can just hygge for the evening. 
It is my favorite thing about denmark. One of them at least. hygge hygge hygge. 
Anyways, everyone should watch it, it's great. The third day I got on a train home to Slagelse. Where Sister Perkins and I were reunited and it was great. 

Saturday, it snowed like crazy except nothing really stuck on the ground...

And yesterday I was confined to my bed all day due to this silly sickness that has befallen me. But alas, I'm sure I'll be up and at it again in no time! It was weird not going to church yesterday. I hated it haha. I think that's one of the worst things about being on a mission is when you get sick and can't do missionary work. 
BUT I've learned something while in training, actually a few things I want to share. 
1. We cannot let our enviornment influence our happiness. Life's too short and it's not healthy. We need to constantly be fighting for our happiness. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Our happiness is so important in life and we should see it as something to constantly strive after. 
2. When setting goals I should always have a Christ-like attribute that that goal is helping me increase. For example: learning danish. A goal for that is learning 10 new vocab words a day and learning to utlize them. Great goal, yeah? BUT add this to the mix. Learning 10 new vocab words a day to help me increase my knowledge and diligence to be more like the Savior and help the Danish people more fully. It's the idea of good, better, and best with goals. I've been a lot more conscious of my goal setting while on the mish. Good stuff.
Happy early thanksgiving everyone! I'm thankful for you all! 
Love youu guys oodles!
Love,

TT

love you guys!

So the mission president's mom Søster O'Bryant also has a mission blog. There are a lot more pictures on it. And it's kinda fun! http://cop-den-mission.blogspot.dk/ 

there it is! There's a lot of me recently from my one month training meeting!

Weel 10 -chokolade

Man oh man....I don't know where the weeks go. I've been in Denmark for a month come one of these days soon. It's weird. Still don't know half of the danish that is spoken to me but I guess that's what makes it fun, ik? (ik=right/yeah/words said to gain some sort of confirmation) But because I've been here for a month i will be in Copenhagen from tomorrow to Friday doing stuff with my MTC distrikt with the Mission president and his wife which is exciting! Some more training, sight seeing (I'll take pic swips) and THE TEMPLE! WOO!

Awesome Denmark

MY WORK PERMIT CAME THROUGH! I am now LEGALLY allowed to be here in Denmark! Fancy dancy pantsy visa holding Denmark missionary lady - that's mee!

A day in the Life of Søster Chesley:

6.30 wake up, do some poor excuse for a work out

7.00 get ready for the day and eat breakfast and stuff

8.00 personal study time

9.00 companionship study time

10.00 training time

11.00 leave the apartment to go do stuff

12.00 lunch (usually)

13.00 language study time

14.00 go out and do stuff whether it's lessons or talking to random people or what

17.00 dinner (usually)

16.00 go out and do stuff

21.00 come in and plan for next day

21.30 rest time

22.30 bed time HOLLA

and then we do it all over again. It's typically like this unless weird stuff comes up.

SLÆGTS FORSKNING! AKA FAMILY HISTORY!

EVERYONE DO IT! MORMONS NONMORMONS IT DOESN'T MATTER! Family history is so excitingggg and I love it so much! What a way to help people out by teaching them about their family's and whatnot! We've been helping people with their family history and it's just such an awesome experience getting to know where these people come from! We have a friend who is from Syria, He's lived in Beirut and Lebanon and Italy and he has his family tracked down to the 600s! WHAT?familysearch.org has one of the biggest databases  for family history finding and whatnot and the best part? IT IS FREE! Oh man...the Spirit of Elijah has been super strong and very much there in my heart. yes yes yes.

Mathilde, a cute less active did our nails today

We had a super awesome lesson with a less-active member who is so cute. She's the sweetest thing and gave me a little cactus candle! Oh my goodness it's perfect because candles are fiery and hot just like where the cactus grows in ARIZONA! ugh. she's so sweet. Anyways, we talked about how it isn't a sin to be weak. How God doesn't forgive us for our weaknesses, through His grace we are made stronger and learn more about Him and don't necessarily get over our weaknesses but we develop tools to make coping with it better like charity, love, faith, humility, knowledge, patience, all of those CHRIST LIKE ATTRIBUTES! I was emailing Kyley about this and she put it perfectly by saying 

"Christ had weakness but no sin and how weakness  are given to us by God and sometimes satan will get us confused between what is sin and what is weakness and he will use these divine weaknesses against us to make us feel worthless when in fact God gave us these weakness cuz he loves us and he wants us to have them so we can turn to him and humble ourselves and that's beautiful." - Kyley Lauren Chesley

It's just something we can all do better at remembering I think. 

baby ents

Anyways, as the wise Langston hughes once said "Life is fine, fine as wine, life is fine!"

I've never had wine but I'll take good ole Langston's word for it.

Love you all! Have a beautiful week!

Enjoy the sun the moon and the stars everybodyyyyy

also keep people in Paris and in Europe and around the world in thoughts and prayers. 

Love you all!

love,

Søster søster 

Week 9 -Danish Word of the Week: FORVENTNINGER

FORVENTNINGER aka EXPECTATIONS

what a great word. I was having a crazy hard time this week with Søster Perkins being super sick and us having to just stay in and roost in our little apartment I had a lot of time to think...hoohay, amirite? Well I had been feeling pretty low on energy and low on life, it had been a number of days since the sun had shone and the wind was knocking people over and I can't understand things anybody says to me and it was just like "what in the world is this place that I'm living in?" 

Well...Monday night and Tuesday we had splits with our Sister Training Leaders, Søster Reed and Søster Mann. I was with the wonderful Søster Reed and we had a good talk while walking in this park. She said what really helped her at the start of her mission was during her prayers to God every morning she would ask Him what His expectations of her were for that day. Nothing else, just for that day, and that would be what she would focus on and put her efforts towards. Smart sister right there...There's a lot of expectations of us in this life and God expects a lot from us BUT He doesn't expect it all at once. So out came the paper and pen and splitting it in half. One side: what I'm freaking out about and on the other What am I going to do about it. If there wasn't anything I could do about it, such as weather, people's receptiveness, etc, it got crossed off and then realizing I don't need to be fluent in danish right now but I do need to try and talk to these people and talk during lessons. 

Anyways, that's the dansk word of the week - forventninger.

yes.

cool church that rings every hour and some cool fog lighting

Ok other fun things from this week other than splits...Søster Perkins is super better now, so we were trying to visit people and riding our bikes and whatnot and we were stopped to ride across the street when this old lady stops us and just tells us her life story while holding Søster Perkins' hand and resting her hand on my shoulder. She moved to Sjælland from Jylland to marry this man but now he's dead and everyone's dead. She also said that religion is so interesting to her and she believes she'll be with her husband again. Then she continued to talk about how there's a storm coming tonight so we better not be out in a few hours or else the wind will knock us over because the wind has knocked her over before....

so fast forward to that night: 

With the old woman's last words of "Pas på piger!" (take care girls!) but being the diligent missionaries that we are and the time during this day being 20:30 we decided to continue kontakting but it was raining like crazy and the wind was insane. And off we went! It was so funny and just a crazy time of Søster Perkins and i trying to talk to people and just getting blown away. It was a hoot. With the old woman's words ever ringing in our words "Pas på piger!"

what a day...

And then i thought...this message is too important to keep indoors. This message needs to be shared in rain and wind and snow and sunshine and all of it! It's so important! It means so much! 

Yesterday was Stake Konference for all of Sjælland. There are only 2 stakes in Danmark...but still...we had two investigator friends come which was so awesome! i was nursing a borderline migraine so I couldn't concentrate too hard on the dansk but it was just so cool. And it was just fun to be in  Gladsaxe and København with all the members on Sjælland...so cool.

Also BIG NEWS: I HAVE OFFICIALLY TRIED MY FIRST DANISH PASTRY THIS WEEK. It was heavenly. I already know weight will be gained on this here mission of mine. What with every meal consisting of potatoes and bread and some form of delicious pastry or dessert. It's inevitable. But as Søster Perkins says "We're on a mission, not a diet..."

Also today, we actually MADE some danish pastry - vienerbrød. It was so scrumptious. Man, danish food may be the death of me...that just reminded me....I thought I was going to die last night at this dinner appointment we had. I just finished stuffing my face with potatoes cooked in milk and cheese, frikadellers (some danish meatball), and bread and this yummy apple cake. So I am so full like if I eat any more I will probably burst...and then they say "eat more cake..." and I thought "this is it...this is when I die...this is how I go, death by cake like Marie Antoinette..." but then I ate more and lived to tell the tale...

Well, that's it! 

One more thought for the week: Luke 17:32 "Remember Lot's wife."

How often do we look back longingly at our past lives instead of looking towards the future with a firm faith in God's plan for us? As Elder Holland said "Faith points towards the future."

love you all! Have a happy week and a happy Monday and just a happy all of it!

Love,

Søster Chesss (beacuase Danes can't say my name)