Livet er Dejligt (Life is Lovely): Fish Hats!

We woke up and cleaned the whole house, and studied like champions, and it's been a great day already. :) Sister Hadfield is awesome. She is so funny! We are really enjoying the work and LOTS of good things are happening. We're becoming more effective servants of the Lord and the work is hastening right before our eyes!

Before I go on, I have some exciting news. Well, exciting for me! I hope you'll be excited too. My release date isn't until the middle of March! That's right... I'm EXTENDING! Surprise!!! I told President Sederholm a few months ago that I would like to extend if possible, but didn't hear anything back about it until yesterday. President Sederholm called, and asked if I would be able to stay until March. I said yes of course! I hope that's okay. :) It feels right and I think it's going to be AWESOME! More time to eat real pastries! ;)

Anywho everything is going great! We're teaching and finding all over the place - it's so fun. We had our first appointment with S, and taught him how to pray. It was the sweetest experience ever! The Spirit was so strong, and I've decided that teaching people how to pray is my favorite thing to do.

The ward is amazing, we had Stake Conference in Copenhagen yesterday and it was fun to see people from Slagelse (and Frederiksberg!) there. It was like home away from home!

On Tuesday we had our zone training/Thanksgiving fest/turkey bowl. The zone training was really uplifting and I learned a lot. I got to give my first training and I was suuuuper nervous, but it went really well. My belt fell off halfway through, but I played it off by kicking it under a table. Pretty smooth, huh?

President Sederholm's part of the training was so powerful. We all felt the Spirit so strong, and it really motivated me to want to increase the quality of my faith in Christ. Later on in the week that really got tested.

We were taking a bus out to Korsør and a girl named N got on the bus that I talked to in September. We had a pretty good conversation about God and I gave her a card, but not much really happened with it. When I saw her on the bus, my first thought was "Oh no, how embarrassing! She probably thinks I'm such a weirdo and won't want to talk to me again." But my second thought was "you need to go talk to her again." I fought that prompting for a couple of minutes, but then asked myself if I had the faith in Christ to be able to put myself out there and talk to N again. I sucked it up and went to the back of the bus where she was sitting. I asked how everything was going, and she told me that she was on her way home from work early because her boyfriend just found out he might have stomach cancer. It turned into one of the best experiences I've had, where we talked about how she felt and if she believed that God had a plan for her and her boyfriend. She said "Every time we talk you make me think more!" It's totally the Spirit, not me, because the first time we talked I was nervous out of my mind and afterwards felt like I hadn't really conveyed the message like I should have. When she got off of the bus this time, I gave her a Book of Mormon and she gave me her number. It was such a good experience, and Sister Hadfield and I pretty much threw a party after we got off of the bus.

The gospel is so good! And I've realized that opportunities to find people who are open to the gospel are only constrained by my own fear and doubt. Sometimes I think "oh dear, this is an awkward situation. I can't share the gospel!" When in reality, it's just me who's being awkward and the gospel can totally be shared.

Also, it is SO awesome to see Sister Hadfield learn and grow. She's getting so bold! Her Danish is getting better and better! She is so excited to do the work and loves the people so much. I am so impressed by her sincere desire to share the message and learn. Ahh it is great! I love it all!

Basically, it's been a great week. There have been ups and downs, but the ups always outweigh the downs. Plus Sister Hadfield and I both caught the football a couple of times during the turkey bowl, and made some touchdowns. No big deal. ;)

And I got the packages! Thank you! Everyone at zone training loved the fish hats! We wear them during weekly planning and we tried to wear them during football but they didn't stay on.