8.26.13

Hej!

Another great week in Silkeborg! This city is the best. We had another really fun week. I finally feel like I'm getting to the point where I can start to have a little bit of personality with the work because I'm getting a lot more comfortable and experimental with Danish. Haha That means that I've had a lot more fails, but its been really fun at the same time. And we are going to Himmelbjerg (Danmarks højeste bjerg/høj) today after emailing with Stephen and Frederick, those two guys that I talked about in last weeks email, and a couple people from our branch! So in a couple hours we will be on top of Denmark! All 500 feet of it haha. It'll be pretty darn fun.

Yesterday was another funny day at church. I feel like church as a missionary is always just super funny and crazy when you bring investigators. Anyways, all went super smooth. Frederick and Stephen were present and on time and it was a great sacrament meeting. The members were awesome again and invited them to come to Himmelbjerg with us today, and they were super friendly and great to Stephen and Frederick. But then, all the sudden my hand started gushing blood haha. I had no idea why, it just did. So I ran to the bathroom and was trying to make it stop. And then one of the older ladies noticed and kinda freaked out and then all the ladies were like oh nej Ældste Ludlow! I was trying to tell them I was OK, but they wouldn't really listen. So they came running up with all these bandages and ice and all sorts of things and grabbed my hand and started fixing it up haha. There were like 4 ladies just huddled around my hand it was pretty funny. But I was still bleeding pretty bad. so they like shoved my hand up in the air so it was above my heart and kept working on it. It bled for like 15 minutes and I was starting to get worried. But then all the sudden it stopped, and there isn't really even a mark on my hand, so I have no idea why it bled that much. But it was a pretty funny to watch them frantically try and fix me up. They are all just like our grandmas we love it. So yeah that made for an interesting day.

Other than that, no too much happened this week! Just a lot of the usual knocking and visiting people and asking for referrals, but it was still fun and I loved it all!

Hope all is going good with everyone! Have a great week! Love you!

-Conner

8.19.13

So the fælles spisning he writes about is translated as "common dining" but I believe it is an "open house" after church where members stay and chat/hang out and eat.  Sounds like he is happy and well.  He makes me smile.  Love you all!  Thanks for loving and supporting this kiddo!  Crysi PS  He loves letters.......did I already say that? :)

Hej!

I'm spoiled so bad here! The members treated us like kings this week. I don't think I have ever eaten as much as I ate this week! There are only 2 couples in our branch, and there rest are just single ladies, and so we have pretty much become their children I think. We baked all the members cookies on preparation day to say thanks for all they did with getting our apartment all fixed up, and when we gave them to the members they just gave us buckets of food in return haha. Holy cow! It was all so good! We have been running like crazy every morning so that we don't get too fat from it all. But I can't complain, it's pretty great! Denmark is the best.

So we had our first investigator in church yesterday! We were pretty stoked about that! Last Monday we were walking around on the gågade after emailing and we ran into this guy, Stephen, who had been baptized in Russia about a year ago and he had just moved to Silkeborg, so we set up a time to meet with him so we could tell him about where the church was and what he needed to do with his membership record and things. So on Thursday we went and met with him when his roommate, Frederick, came down while we were talking and was like "Hey are you the latter day saints?" And then he explained how he had a bunch of LDS friends back in Ghana and that he wanted to start coming to church with us!! Crazy right?! So yesterday we had the members pick them up and take them to church! And man were the members excited about that!  Holy Cow. It was a madhouse. Stephen and Fredrick got attacked! Everyone was doing everything they could to talk to them and introduce themselves, which was really funny because Frederick and Stephen are both from Ghana so they don't speak a lick of danish... so the members would try and communicate in their English and it was just funny to watch. Haha and I think that Fredrick got invited to be baptized like 20 times by all the members, but he said yes every time so I guess that is a pretty good sign! It was the perfect day for them to come to church too. We had fælles spisning after church and so Fredrick and Stephen were able to talk to everyone in the branch and have fun and I think that they started to feel really comfortable, which is exactly what you want to see happen when you bring people to church. So we are really proud of our branch right now! Frederick is super solid and really fun, so we couldn't be happier about that! So that is the highlight of this week for sure. Other than that it was just a lot of knocking and trying to find people to teach! So not too bad of a week!

Hope all is going good at home and that everyone had a great summer! Good luck with the start of school! And everyone make sure to tell my mom happy birthday on the 23rd! I love you all! Have a fantastisk week!

Don't miss em!

-Conner

8.12.13

Hej!!

We have an investigator!!!! 2 actually!!! It was a great week. We finally contacted a referral that president had given us, and it was awesome! Her name is Tina and she is super cool! She was excited to see us and she gave us this awesome cake to eat when we first got there, so that was a really good sign right off the bat! We talked to her for a while and just got to know her then taught a quick little restoration message, and then she talked about how she loved the eternal families part of our church! It was a super fun lesson, and after she asked us for our number so she could have us over for dinner next time we come to teach her!! So it went really well. She has been out of town for most of this week but I can't wait until we get to go teach her again because there is a ton of potential with her and her family. And danish food is realllllllllllllllllly good. You should have seen this feast we had on Friday with some members. I wish I would have taken pictures it was so good! And then on Wednesday we went to go visit this former investigator, Kim, and we knocked on his door and they opened it and invited us in without us even saying anything! We were definitely surprised by that. Kim went on to tell us how he watches BYUtv all day long and how he even watched the district!! (the missionary training videos haha). He then started talking about baptism and how he would like to start working towards that again! And all of this without us really even bringing anything up! So it was super cool and we were really pumped about that! We went back and visited him on Saturday to invite him to church and he said he didn't really feel like going though, so that was a bummer. But hopefully something will come out of it! So we have investigators finally! Now its getting real. 

Man this week was so fun. On Friday we went to Kjellerop to contact a referral that we had received and to work out there for the day. The referral is for this lady that visited the U.S. and somehow visited winter quarters and was interested in learning more about our church! You should have seen where she lived.... holy cow! It was just out in the middle of nowhere and it was sooo pretty. To get there we just walked on this little road that wound through the hills and the fields and it was so cool! It's a good thing it was a fun walk because she wasn't home so it would have been quite the bummer if it wasn't a good walk. But we worked out in Kjellerop for the rest of the day and that was fun to work out in a little town like that! Yesterday we set off on this monster of a bike ride (40 KM) to a little town called Bording to visit a part member family. About halfway there we drove by this house and in the garage there was this massive Chevy truck and a 60's Chevelle and then an American flag! So of course we had to stop and say Hi! We knocked on the door and a guy walked up in this Miller lite jeans and we totally thought we had found an American! But then he said Hi to us in danish... and we were a little confused. Turns out this guy just has a massive crush on everything to do with America! It was pretty funny. We explained how we thought he was maybe american because of his cars and the flag and how hey! We come from America and he was really excited about that. I broke out a couple of pictures of America and he was just amazed, especially by the pictures of the Utah snow and us snowmobiling. He thought that was all just great! He thought it was great that we were from Utah because I guess Utah "has just the perfect weather to make your skin feel great!" He was super friendly and we had a ton of fun talking to him. His Girlfriend then came home with a box of some kind of danish bread and gave us some of that (again, it tasted so good!) and then we talked with both of them about how we are Mormon missionaries (she thought we were J dubs) and they said that once they get back from their trip (to America, of course) that we should come stop by and talk with them!! It was super fun, and I doubt that it was coincidence, so you best believe that we are going over there as soon as they get back!! How cool would it be if they ran into the church on their trip??? If anyone sees a couple of Danes in Texas ( Jared and Kyle) make sure to say hi!!! So those were some of the highlights of the week!

Hope everyone is doing great! I love you and miss you all! have a great week!

-Conner

Zone Champion at bowling. 177! . Whatup! 

8.5.13

Hej!

 

How is everyone doing? Things are going great here in Denmark! This week went by líke a blur! I think I have said that in every single on of my emails since I've been on my mission. There wasn't a ton of variety this week, just visiting inactives and knocking on doors!!  We figured that the members would be a good place to start with opening our area, so we got a ward list and made it a goal to visit every single member, inactive or less active. So that took up quite a bit of time from the week, just meeting with them. unfortunately, we didn't really get anything out of it... but that's ok! for the most part people just weren't interested in the church anymore and a ton of them had moved. Kinda a bummer, but nothing too bad. We only got through all the members in Silkeborg, so we still have to visit all the ones out in the little towns around Silkeborg (Which I am suuuuper stoked about because the danish countryside is amazing!) We did get a couple referrals from it though and we found a couple potential people to teach just by knocking the doors around the members, so it was still a success! Even if it wasn't too big of one. But yeah that pretty much sums up the week with what we did! Haha it was a lot better than it sounds I promise! Knocking doors was actually pretty fun. Especially when it was in all the little neighborhoods. And we did it so much that I was able to start to experiment with what I could say on my door approaches in Danish, so that was fun! There were a couple fails, but for the most part it worked pretty good! We are super excited for this area though. The members, even though there aren't very many, have been pretty excited about helping us, so we were able to get a couple referrals from them and are visiting them tonight! We know that its only a matter of time before we start to see things start to happen. Especially since the members are excited with the work. Anything can happen when the members are excited! We should see something start to change this week, so hopefully next weeks email will actually have some good stories about teaching people!

 

I still can't believe I'm in Denmark. Every time we go around a corner its something new and crazy and pretty. We got to go to a little branch activity (like 3 people showed up) this that was pretty fun! We went to a musuem of a tørv factory, and we got to walk a horse, so that was pretty cool! haha I don't know why but it was so exciting to walk a horse. That's what one of the pictures I attached was of, so I don't know what happened to the picture with the horse in it, so its just me. The second picture is just the Danish countryside and the last one is of a Danish playground. Pretty great!! I love everything I have seen in Denmark so far. It's all so great! Oh guess what! We talked to an American this week! It was weird. Danes are so much different! This guy was from Texas too, so It was definitely an interesting contrast. But yeah, it was a great week and I'm still loving every single second of it! It feels so great to be here and finally know that I can stay in my area and work and not have to worry about being transferred like it was in Fresno! Hopefully i don't have to worry about that at least... knock on wood!

 

Hope everyone has a good week!! Make the best of summer before school starts again! It's so great not having to worry about school starting again. I love you all and hope that everything is going fantastic back at home!

 

Med kærlig hilsen,

 

Conner

 

 

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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)

6.13.13

Hej!

Man it is hot here! I'm so grateful we have a truck with AC! This was a fun week!  We were able to teach a lot of people. We are teaching a family named the Baker's and we committed them to be baptized on the 22nd of June!! It was awesome! We have barely even had to teach them. They were totally prepared. The family a single mom with 8 ( and only 1 is old enough to be baptized) kids, and they are way fun! The mom, Rhonda, is very religious and she has some personal religious beliefs that matched up pretty well with our church, so she is accepting it really well. They have a son named Jacob. He is 7 and turns 8 in October. He was really sad when we told him he would have to wait until he was 8 to be baptized.  Jacob and I are pretty tight and he is hilarious. He always runs up and talks to us and prays for us (the other day he prayed that we would be able to help him find a new bike), and invites us to come swimming with him and stuff. Hopefully I am still here when they all get baptized! It would be sad to leave before that. I love getting to know all of our investigators and working with them. All of our investigators are doing pretty good. We have a couple that could be baptized tomorrow if they could just quit smoking, so we are working with them on that and it seems like they are making good progress! We started teaching this other lady, Michelle, this week too. She said she had prayed about our church and that she got an answer that it was true, but it kinda freaked her out she is trying  to run from it. Sometimes I hate agency. But Michelle is opening up quite a bit and is getting more comfortable with everything, so we think we will be able to get her to church this week and set a date. Fingers crossed! Things get pretty crazy since I am with the zone leaders, so we are usually pretty busy, but it makes the time go by really fast! I get to call the other Danish missionaries during language studies, so I'm still able to study Danish and it sounds like visas are starting to come through, so I could be leaving soon! But if I have to stay for a while, that's ok. There is a great mission culture here and I really like it and am having a lot of fun and learning lots, even if its a little toasty! Well, have a good week everyone! 

Jeg elsker jer! 

-Conner

sorry for the lack of pictures, one of these days i will remember to bring my camera!