Happy Day

Happy Day!  The water is running again!

However, you will note that the cupboard and mirrors above the sink have not been put up again.  They will come back Monday to do that.  But at least we can use our shower and toilet.  Happy Day!

Family History

I imagined I would have plenty of time to work on Family History while here.  That is not necessarily happening.  It is a good thing most of my Danish lines have been taken back as far a they can go.  But I found I can scan and add a few pictures and histories to My Tree,the Church's site.  I'm feeling quite clever at figuring out the technology.

 My grandmother and the history of her mother and grandmother written by my Aunt V.

 And here it is for everyone to enjoy.

Camp Living

They are replacing the pipes in all the F apartments in our building. They did the A - Cs earlier.  We were without water on Monday, now we have a spigot hooked up in the bathroom so we can at least have cold water.  However, the toilet doesn't flush and the shower doesn't work.  Fortunately, the Hoges, a missionary couple, live in the C apartment on the floor below us and are kindly sharing their bathroom.

 I'm so grateful I only have to carry water from the bathroom, I think of all those in the world who have to carry it from rivers and wells.We are so blessed.

Out For Dinner

We enjoyed dinner at the Koch's tonight with the temple missionaries. They had homemade curry tomato soup with shrimp and peaches.  It was such an interesting combination and so good!

Monday Adventuring

Monday is my day to get out and about and do a little adventuring.  Today I went out to the Rødovre Shopping Mall. It is about 6 kilometers, if you don't get lost.....A fun mall with a huge diversity of stores and businesses.  There are two major grocery stores: Fotex - which is the Danish Target; Magasin, a big department store; a paint store, craft shop, theater,  etc, etc.  I will definitely be going back.

 There are three or four major areas with focal points.  This four level circular staircase around the fountain was beautiful.

 There is a large check-in play area for children

So many places to meet and eat.   The find of the day was sour dough bread at one of the bakeries.

There were several ways to get to the Mall from our apartment.   I biked by Damhussøen on the way, and on the way back up a parkway.   So many great green spaces around.

Daylight - Gone

Denmark fell back an hour last night, a week before the US.  This is now 5 pm.

About 6 we were thinking it was time to get ready for bed.  One of the blessings of working in the temple,.. it is always light and busy with work to do.

Good-by Bro. Sailer

We have been in the temple a year on November first.  We have replaced our engineer and today was the last day for our secretary in the office,, Brother Goran Sailer.  He has worked in the temple for seven years during which time he met (on line) and married a good member in the Philippines.  He has finally decided to pull up roots from Sweden and move to the Philippines to be with his wife and step-children.  It has been a long hard decision to make, but he feels good about it.  We will miss him. He has been a whiz at languages: Swedish, Danish, English and German, maybe more. He will be a great asset to the church there.

We had four or five good applicants, two of which are our good friends.  We turned the decision over to those  up line and Jesper Paulsen is the new secretary. Hans Andersen, another good friend, would have been good also and there were some from Sweden.

Family Friday

A new experience in the temple today.  We sealed a family with 6 children ages 16 - 6 months. It was a second marriage and the 16, 14, and 13 year old were from a previous relationship. The wife joined the church in 2010 and someone connected the two because they are both from Chili.  Since they were married they have had a 2 1/2 year old, a 11/2 year old and a 6 month old.  They were a darling family and the older kids were so cute with the little ones.

The sealing went well except for the 18 month old wasn't pleased about having his hand held.
  We also had two new endowments tonight. with  a full session to support them   .Elijah has been excited about coming for months and finally got here.  He needed cuff links, which of course we didn't have,  but we did have a pair of  hoop earring in the lost and found which worked. great.

Gardening

Our little balcony "garden" has managed quite well this summer.  It is actually looking really good now that it is about to get cold and freeze, though I had some geraniums last year until February when a sincere freeze came.  It was a pretty moderate winter, I am hoping for the same this year.

 There is a great cherry tomato plant at the end and several of the bamboo plants I pulled out of the dumpster.

They have done well and everyone on the floor has enjoyed them.

Fall is Here

Fall is definitely here.  The trees are turning colors and loosing their leaves.  Bro. Bishoff who takes care of the temple grounds is constantly trying to keep the leaves up.  He is one of our coordinators and told of one day there were so many leaves and it was quitting  time.  He talked to Heavenly Father and explained he couldn't do it all by himself and asked if He could give him a little help.  The next morning he came and the wind had blown them all into a corner and he easily picked them all up.

Knudsen's for Dinner

The Knudsens are a wonderful couple who have the missionaries over every 3rd Tuesday. Her mother did it before her.  It has been a tradition for 30 years.  We have missed the last couple months for various reasons and were so glad to be back for a fabulous fleskestaeg dinner with an apricot/whipped cream and macaroons. dessert.
 There was a new couple, the Brooks, from Orem who do not speak Danish but are here on a  digitizing mission.  They are working on the records for our Frederiksberg Commune.

 There were 21 including these cute young missionaries who left a message and song.

Halloween at Tivoli

Tivoli is decked out for Halloween for three weeks.  I have a Gold Card that gets 4 people besides myself in free and we called Elder Thorne from the mission office who also has one and all ten of us enjoyed a fun couple of hours there.

 Part of the traditional boys' band were playing Disney tunes as we walked in.

The decorations were darling and mostly real plants and thousands of pumpkins everywhere.

 There was a stage show with the traditional Harlaquin and ensemble of wtiches and the two ballet dancers. They even threw in a bit of "Thriller" per Michael Jackson.

 Loved the brooms under the swing ride.

We ended with a delicious fleskestaeg sandwich for dinner.

Malmo Stake Conference

This weekend was  the Malmo, Sweden Stake Conference.  I was invited to speak last night and Jim this morning.  Elder David Homer an Area Seventy, living in Switzerland,but from the US presided.  His wife was with him.  A lovely couple. Their situation is a testimony of the Lord's dealings across the world.  He works for General Mills and was called to the Seventy while living in Canada.  The church needed him here and "coincidentally"  his company transferred him.
    After the meeting last night, we went to Pres. and Sister Clark's  (the stake president) home for dinner with President and Sister Beckstrand, who preside over the Swedish Mission.

Beckstrands                                  Homers                      Williams                     Clarks                             

Last night's meeting was in the Malmo Chapel, today they met in an Auditorium in a hotel, a mini-Conference Center.

We love these good people from Sweden.  Jim spoke slowly in Danish and read the scriptures in Swedish.....he had practiced.

I spoke 5 minutes on Hastening the Work, really 2 and a half with translation, but it went well.

We've Survived!

Everyone kept talking about Week 42.  I now understand why.  It is the biggest week of the year at the temple. We were open Tuesday through Saturday from early morning until night and did more ordinances in this week than in a month or several months for that matter.  It was wonderful to see so many in the temple.  Besides all the baptisms, we had 5 people receive their own  endowments this week and today we were totally full in all the ordinance sessions.

          About half of these people from Bornholm were at the temple today to support the Mogansons who brought their son to the temple.  He will be serving in the Salt Lake West Mission.  His younger brother is serving here in Denmark and was able to come to the temple to meet the family today.  The younger two sisters did baptisms, the youngest for the first time. It was a big day for this family.

Copenhagen Youth

Today was the last day of  the Copenhagen Youth Conference.  This was their final picture on the temple steps.. It was a big undertaking but everyone seemed pleased with the experience.  We certainly were. Today I was thinking what a a privilege it is to be able to be in the temple all day almost every day.  We are grateful for the opportunity.

On The Nose

   It has been fun to see such large ordinance numbers at the end of the day.  It is all driven by baptisms so this has been a good week.  Today we hit 1800 right on the nose.  The Copenhagen Stake brought .youth.  They had a bigger challenge as many of the youth come fairly often to do baptisms.  I think it was a sort of mini-youth conference with those living outside of Copenhagen staying in members' homes in Copenhagen. Next year they are planning to combine with the Aarhus Stake.  That should be exciting..Such good youth and leaders.  If they can hold on to all of them the Church should explode in Denmark.
     No new pictures today as we were in the temple from 9 to 10. We didn't quite go in the dark, but we certainly came home in it.  Our days are definitely getting shorter.

Day 2 of Week 42

We were at the temple at 6 a.m. to welcome the first group of baptisms for the day at 7 a,m, The Aarhus Stake came again so every youth had the opportunity to be baptized two days.  They had all been challenged to find and bring family names and many of them did. The letters read: Temple Challenge.

The four groups finished up by three so they could have a testimony meeting and then get on their way home.  The leaders figured they had 85% of all their youth participate.  Some units had 100%! We were so impressed with the organization of the leaders and how reverent and prepared the youth were.

These are the leaders that came to support and direct. Everyone stayed in a school which is the normal procedure for youth conferences etc.

These are the beautiful 15-18 year old girls. Their smiles tell you a lot about the experience.

Week 42

Week 42 all the schools close and it is basically Fall Break.  Traditionally all the Young Men and Young Women from the Aarhus and Copenhagen Stake come to do baptisms for the dead.  Today and tomorrow is the Aarhus Stake.  They were wonderfully prepared and organized .  There were 51 YM and 45 YW.  They had prepared this little pamphlet for each one.  It contains church articles about the temple and a detailed schedule for the three day trip.

They divided into 4 groups: Girls 15 -18 came from 8-10 am this morning,  boys 15-18 from 10-12.00, girls 12-14, 12.30-3.30 and boys 12-14- 3.30-5.30.  They have been doing this for 20 years. The first few years there was only one bus.  Today they brought 3 with many leaders to help.

Tonight they are having a dance with the Copenhagen youth.  They will be back for baptisms on the same schedule tomorrow, then a testimony meeting and then bus home. We were all so impressed with how smooth everything went and what fine young people they are and what great leaders. They did everything except the laundry..all the cleaning etc.
   One boy was baptized for his deceased father. He did 14 other names and then everyone stopped and watched as he acted as proxy for his father.  His sister stayed behind and watched and cried.  It was a very tender moment.
   We did a record 2364 ordinances,

Family Fun

Six of our children and 18 of our grandchildren gathered several times while we were home. Chris, our oldest, who lives in California, is coming to Denmark for Christmas so passed.  Realizing how chaotic that many people can be, we tried to spend time with each family individually plus collectively  and found it worked well for all of us.

Our youngest grandchildren ... until the end of November.

 We had several family meals and nights together.

 All ages mixed and the cousins had such a good time together. The Arizona cousins had their fall break and were able to come.

 We planned a special night to watch Frozen since we had never seen it and it is after all about Scandinavia and based on Hans Christian Andersen tale of the Snow Queen.  The best part was at the end when they played "Let It Go" again and almost everyone in the room stood up and sang and danced with it.

 We caught a few soccer games and this track meet as well as some musical rehearsals. All of our children were with the Clayton Performing Groups and now some of our grandchildren are enjoying the same great experiences. So fun to watch everyone.  It is amazing how they all grew in a year.

    Loved seeing the mountains again.  Denmark's highest point is 485 feet

Before we knew it, it was time to say good-bye.  We had a fabulous time and are so grateful for  supportive family and friends.  Thanks!  See you next year.