7.26.13

Hej!!!

 

I made It!!!!!!!!!! And I have no idea where to start... Denmark is AMAZING. The food is to die for. The pastries...... wow. I'm going to get so fat. And it feels sooooo good here! Its been sunny and 70 all week! Everything is just way too perfect for this to really be a mission!

 

I landed in Copenhagen around 11 am and then for the rest of the day we just got to go sight see in the city. I'll send a bunch of pictures from that. I only took about 300. Everything in københavn is just so crazy! All the buildings were super old and there were canals everywhere with castles and cathedrals and all of those things and it just blew my mind! We went to Vor Frue Kirke and saw the original Christus statue, which was super cool! We also went to Nyhavn which is the place that comes up first whenever you google pictures of Denmark. That was just unreal! Me trying to describe it doesn't even come close to how amazing Copenhagen is! I guess you will just have to see the pictures. I'm going to go through a memory card a week! But we just explored Copenhagen and then went back to the mission president's home for dinner and stayed there for the night, and then in the morning we went to the train station and went off to our area!

 

I wish you could see my area! We live in a city called Silkeborg and the area includes Silkeborg and about a 30ish km area around it. Holy cow! Seriously, this area is perfect. Totally worth the wait in Fresno. I had my fingers crossed the whole plane ride that I would be out in the countryside in a small town and this area is more than I could have ever hoped for! It's a really old small town up in the "mountains" (himmelbjerg, Denmark's highest point at 500 ft., is in my area!) of Jylland (the peninsula of Denmark) and it is just crazy beautiful! I can't even describe it. Look it up on google or something. It's built around a couple of lakes and is super foresty. Its supposed to be the prettiest city in Denmark. That's what all the Danes say at least. But I believe it! It's so amazing! It's a brand new area, so we are opening it up. We are starting from scratch and I couldn't be more excited about that!  The branch has been super excited to have us here. I was supposed to come here when I got out of the MTC, so they have just been waiting for me to get my visa. They all new about my visa situation and they were way excited when I got it because now they have missionaries! It's pretty fun. The whole time that I was waiting on my visa they would just work on our apartment to make it look nicer, so our apartment is suuuuper nice (its the white house in the second picture I attached). Its 100% brand new on the inside, and its inside this really old house on the edge of the lake. So our front yard is a lake... yeah. So great! Church yesterday was nuts. There are only 12 members of the branch!!! Can you believe that?! It's crazy! That's small even for Denamark! Yesterday we knew that our branch president (who isn't even from Silkeborg, they had to import him from Aarhus since there Aren't enough priesthood holders) would be out of town as well as a couple other people, so we were seriously prepared to be the only ones at church. Luckily a couple people showed up and a guy came down from Aarhus to fill the spot of the branch president so we had some other priesthood. It is going to be so much fun working here! I'm so excited! We spent the first couple of days just visiting the inactives, members, and knocking on doors just to kinda get aquainted with everything. We have a lot of work to do here! But I'm so excited for it! I still can't believe I'm in Denmark. Oh, and my companion's name is Ældste VanDenBerghe from Riverton. I almost forgot about him woops. I just have so much to tell everyone about and It's all just kinda a blur and it's kinda hard to type because the keyboard is different because its in Danish haha! I'll just have to try and get it in over the next couple weeks emails.

 

But I'm loving every second of it. Hopefully you can tell how excited I am! Everything is so fun! Even when I don't understand Danish (which is most of the time, everyone in Silkeborg speaks jusk, which is like super hick danish. It just sounds like mumbling with a bunch of S sounds thrown in. But its sick because that means that'll be what I will learn to speak!) its still great becasue I'm just so excited to be here!

 

Hope everyone is doing great and I hope you have an amazing week!

 

Jeg elsker jer! Dont miss 'em!

 

-Conner

 Our house is the little white one next to this lake.

 

7.15.13

Hola!

 

So guess what! I got transferred again! I got a call Saturday night and was told I was getting moved up to Atwater in the morning, so now I'm up in Atwater! Sorry for the lack of updates. It has been a crazy month. I have been transferred 3 times since the last time I wrote a big letter to everyone. So I'll try and get everything in!

 

To start I got transferred to Selma the last week of June. Selma was really fun! My companion was Elder Lantz from Ephraim, UT! I got my first taste of biking and I actually really liked it! HOT, but I liked it! It gave us lots of opportunities to talk to people on the streets, and to ball it up with all the gansters. (That was one of my mission goals so I had to do it, sorry mom). The gansters were always my favorite people to talk to, even if it did get a little sketchy at times! They always opened up! Without fail! They would be hesitant at the beginning but as they started to feel the spirit they would always open up and start being happy. I love it when that happens. It's crazy what the spirit can do! We always are talking about it, but its so fun to see it actually happen. We baptized a 20 year old named Jonathan who had been an investigator for a long time, and that was really awesome! We were just the lucky elders to be there when he finally said yes to being baptized, we never really taught him any big lessons, just things to help him realize how baptism was important. But it was still a really cool experience and he was really fun to be with!

 

So after being in Selma for a week and a half I was put back into another trio at real transfers (July 3rd). My companions were the zone leaders in Fresno, Elder Larson and Elder Brown, and they were way too much fun to be with. We were over the YSA (Young Single Adults) ward in Fresno and it was a blast! Our apartment was right next to Fresno State and when we weren't teaching we were just talking to students who were walking around, and they were always really nice and fun to talk to about the gospel, because they were so easy to relate with. It was so great!! Snd I was in a movie! We had an investigator who is trying to become a movie director/producer. He hasn't made any big movies yet but he has one coming out soon that will be in theaters, so he was pretty excited about that. He came to FHE and made a movie with the YSA ward and we got to help out! He posted it on his website, I'm not sure what it is, but I'll put the link in my next email so you can all go watch it.

 

Then I got a call on Saturday and they had a missionary get emergency transferred so they took me out of the trio to replace him in Atwater! And that's where I am now! I don't have any stories for Atwater yet. But it seems like it will be a good area! I'm back in the Merced zone, so my old companions, Elder Thompson and Elder Rader are my zone leaders, so that will be pretty fun! And it's not as hot! So I definitely can't complain.

 

And I finally got a thing that makes it easier to get my pictures on a computer! So I have pictures! Hope all is going well with everyone! Thanks for the letters and the prayers for my visa! I still don't have any word on it, but hopefully it will come soon! I found a danish church video though so at least when I get to Denmark I will be able to say the things in that video--haha.

 

Love  you all and Miss you!

 

-Conner

 

These were my companions in Fresno. We wore matching ties everyday haha (YSA loved it)