Written by Elder Kolby Madsen, serving in the Denmark Copenhagen Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, speaking Danish.
(Note to reader: Some names are omitted for privacy. Clicking on highlighted words will link to additional information.)
If I were to title this week it would be: Work hard, play hard! We started off with a normal weekly preparation day and all that. Monday night we got a call from J**, asking for help moving some things around. We told him we could only come for little bit because we had some people to see. So we went over and did the service then had a great day of appointments with T** and Coach.
T** was great. He got a little heated when he started to read from the Book of Mormon. He did his homework, and we were really excited to answer the questions he had. When we got there he pulled three verses from the 2 chapters we gave him to read, and he read them to us. These three specific verses talked about how we all need to have faith in Christ, in a nut shell. We told him, yes, we definitely need faith in Christ, but if you read further, we also need to be baptized in Christ's name with faith that we will be clean from our sins and a promise to take Christ's name upon us. Then he went on for a bit and said, "I found it in your book. All we need is faith and we will be saved."
It's really hard to teach someone about the restored gospel, and the important step we need to take in order to live with our Heavenly Father again. When they believe only through faith in Christ, without works, without showing our faith by going to church and others things, it's very difficult. We have been praying about what we need to do, and we are going to implement it this week.
With Coach, again, whenever we start talking he brings up homosexual relationships. But this week we got a little further. He was asking about Christ and we talked about his birth and his life and death. The hard thing about Coach is that he believes that the Bible is just a bunch of stories. So we just continue to show him the truth, and it's going with him, slowly but surely.
Wednesday came around, and we had some really good plans for splits. We went to our district meeting, then we met with G**, a man who took his name off the records of the church, but loves missionaries and helps us out with the people here. He set up a basketball game with the college team in the area, so we went and played against them. We thought it would just be a pickup game, but they had refs and the works! Even fans came. It was funny because it was me, Elder Metcalf, and Elder Meacham, representing America. Obviously Elder Wilsher played, but he hasn’t played much. He did good for only ever playing once in a real game. We had a Dane on our team as our fifth man. Long story short, at half time they started to play man on the Americans and left the Englishman and the Dane alone. I don’t know why they even tried to block me. I am terrible, especially since I still don’t trust my knee fully, so I taking it way easy. Well, we won. It was great!
After the game, we just talked with the team and made some good friends. We got a couple phone numbers and we are going to try and meet with a couple of them that were interested in hearing more about the church. Missionary work at its finest. Playing ball and teaching lessons. Total of six hours; one for travel, three for basketball, two for dinner with the team and travel home. Needless to say, we were all dead after that.
We woke up bright and early the next morning, and all four of us went to J**'s house to dig out his whole basement. We only got one room done. It took us five hours and we had to leave because of another appointment with a little girl who will be getting baptized in April. After our appointment, we had a great time with her family. Her mother and father own a hotel with a kitchen, so they made some really good Danish chocolate covered marshmallows.
We went out Friday to help G** move out of his apartment. Six hours later, we arrived home. Just after 7 o'clock Coach called us up and asked if we wanted to come and help him coach the receivers at his football practice. I could not pass that up, so we went and had a great time. We got to teach Elder Wilsher how to play football, and I got to talk to a couple of the players. They love Americans here, especially when it comes to football and basketball. After practice we went home to bed, after three really long days of work.
We had previously made a breakfast appointment with Coach, so we woke up got ready. When we showed up, Coach said we looked like to zombies. After breakfast we went home and did weekly planning. After three long days of hard work and play, our bodies were so done and we felt it. Now we're good, and ready to work hard this week. We have been very blessed with service opportunities and teaching opportunities. Our Heavenly Father is really watching out for us.
God has a Plan (February 17, 2014)
Sometimes We Get Side Tracked (March 3, 2014)
