Danmark er bare så dejligt!

Happy Valentines Day!!! 

Hey guess what? You can also celebrate MY SIX MONTH MARK on Valentines Day! 

Wha? 

That's so weird to me. 

Danmark er bare så dejligt! (Denmark is just wonderful!) It's warming up and there is sunshine out today! I didn't have to wear a heavy coat outside which is always a happy event - so I don't look like so much of a marshmallow. 

We are teaching some awesome people! M, who I've told you about (he's 15 and so amazing) knows more about the Plan of Salvation than I do and is just so sweet and sincere. He loves reading about the church and has just started reading through the Gospel Principles book, and ordered Jesus the Christ so he can read that too! 

Tonight we're meeting with J and J, who we've taught since I got here (my very first lesson was with them actually) and we're going to teach them about the temple which is my favorite favorite thing to talk about! 

We're also still teaching A, who I told you about last week (this week she told us that she biked to work every day from when she was 53 to when she was 60, and she biked like 50 kilometers a day!! how awesome is that?). 

We have a first appointment tomorrow with a new investigator who we knocked into last week, so hopefully that goes well!! 

Søster Barrett and Søster Packard

Søster Packard is doing just great and is such a good friend. We're having so much fun! I didn't see Søster Grant or Hale (her MTC companions) in Copenhagen, BUT Søster Hale is in my zone now!! She's serving in Århus so I'll see her at our zone training this week, WOOHOO!

It has been a weight-gaining week. And by that I mean... this week we had an eating appointment with Ly Thi Lam. She is an 80-year-old Vietnamese woman, who doesn't speak very good Danish and no English whatsoever.

The food after some of it had been eaten.

The elders have eaten with her before but this was the first time she invited Sisters. From what the Elders have told me before, she makes a LOT of food. I knew they weren't over exaggerating, but I didn't think they were under exaggerating. Holy. Cow. 

Too much food!

We walked into her apartment to a table literally covered in plates of food. The six of us (The Middlemases, Elder Crank and Clawson, and us) sat down to enough food for 20 people, and Ly told us to "Spis de hele!" (eat everything). I think it's a cultural thing, but Ly didn't sit with us or eat any food while we ate - instead she was in the kitchen making more food. 

Ældste and Søster Middlemas at the appointment

And then she came out with bread for us - a loaf of french bread for each of us. I am not kidding. We stuffed egg rolls into Sister Packard's bag, and it didn't even make a dent in how much food there was left for us to eat. Every once in a while Ly would come back in to the room and tell us to eat more! Or she would say "Do you not like the food I made you? Eat!!" 

The best Ægtepar 

It came to the point where we literally could not eat anymore, so she divided the rest up into left overs for us (enough leftovers for a full meal) and then had us sit down in the living room, where she brought us... cake! and cookies! and apples and oranges! 

At the end of the appointment.

We were pretty sick the rest of the day, and I think my stomach got stretched to twice its normal size. It was the sweetest thing ever, and Ly worked so hard to make all that food! But man oh man was it too much for me to handle! 

Søsters and Ældste after the meal

One of our less-actives we meet with every week told us this week she's going to try to come to church on the 16th! Which is so so exciting because we've met with her since I got here and it's the first time she's ever really considered it. Missionary work takes time! I think it's easy sometimes to give up on people because they don't want to make a change in the first or second lesson, but you can't ever give up. Obviously you use your time well, but you can't just write people off! 

Also... our bikes broke again. I got a flat tire on Tuesday and fixed it, but then Sister Packard's bike got a flat tire and when we tried to fix it, we couldn't get the gear off so we asked the Elders to help, but it turns out they didn't really know what they were doing sooooo... Sister Packard's bike is in the shop getting its gear put back together. I've learned my lesson! I will never try to fix anything myself again! I will leave it to the experts! But before Sister Packard's bike broke, we went out to an area where we have a lot of potentials/less actives/members, but we took a different route up. It took us on a road by a beautiful church and green, wonderful, wide-open Danish country. Oh it was lovely, and so worth all the hills we had to bike up!

Last night we had a half an hour left until we needed to be inside, so we decided to walk around and contact anyone out walking. We stopped to talk with a man and I kept thinking "I don't know where from, but I recognize this guy!" So I finally told him I recognized him. Turns out he plays basketball with the ward on Wednesday nights sometimes, and he was there one of the nights we came to play! We asked him if he would be interested in learning more about the church, and he said he'd love to, and that he could come an hour early to basket on Wednesday night to talk with us about it. It was so cool! We think that probably he's always come to basket, and no one has thought to ask him if he wanted to learn more about the church.

It's been a great week over here, and it's just going to get better! We have a lot of good appointments coming up - like I told you about J and J and our new investigator, as well as the basketball guy, and some members of the ward. I'm really excited! It's going to be great! I'm finally really getting why prophets in the scriptures and today are so urgent about inviting us to share the gospel - there are so many people in the world who need the chance to hear the gospel before it's too late!! So keep on being awesome missionaries on the homefront, and I'll keep doing my best out here! :))

Great Grandma Barrett's funeral sounds like it was really special. The Barrett family really is awesome! Sydney and Emily both wrote me emails and told me that they had a lot of fun seeing everyone (Emily is so funny - she said she didn't realize she was related to so many Barretts, and that it seemed like there was a whole congregation there, there were so many people!). And I think it's so funny that people still remember the bubble gum song, I don't think I can even remember all the words! 

I wish I could have been at Great Grandma's funeral, but I wouldn't really want to be anywhere other than here right now. :) I love it! I don't ever want to leave Aalborg, but my time may be coming, next transfer. Ahhhhh! 

This morning for our exercise we jogged to the pastry shop for breakfast!   Healthy, right?

Anyways I better go! I love you all so much!

PS - the key story - so funny! (I had written to her about something our Elders here in Rapid City told us - they were vacuuming out their mission car and managed to suck the keys up into the gas station vacuum... luckily they were able to get them back. I knew she would like the story, because it seems like keys are sort of slippery for her - they are always disappearing!)   Wanna know something else that's really funny? I lost our keys too... on an s-tog (a city train) in Copenhagen. Ahh! Luckily we have a spare and we figured out how to break into our mail box, but the sisters in Copenhagen are checking up at the train lost and found for the keys for us. Just another classic Søster Barrett moment! My whole mission so far has been losing keys and phones and breaking bikes!