6-29-15

Min Kære Familie!

The sun is shining, but the blessings continue to POUR down in Nykøbing! The work has seen such a huge surge forward in the last two weeks. Just a quick reminder, before I got to Nykøbing there had not been an investigator in church in over 1 1/2 years!! Well just this week we had TWO investigators in church for the second time in a row and then we had a ward activity on Tuesday where we had THREE investigators!! Isn't that awesome!! But I must quote Alma 26:12 when he says that I must not boast of myself, but of my God who is capable of everything. I feel so lucky to be in this area at such a great time. I've really seen that missionary work has much less to do with missionaries than I thought. It's all about being in the right place at the right time to be lucky enough to be there when God does his work.

*T* and *J* and doing wonderful. We started reading with *T* from the Book of Mormon in English, but it was going too slow because he isn't proficient enough in English, so now he's blazing through it in Amharic! He says he cannot make his decision about the book until he has read it all the way through. Fine by me!! Our guest classes with him have been quite intense. He just has so many questions and brings up so many good points. I love investigators like him that actually think and question things. It makes it more fun for us and I always learn things in the process.

Tuesday night was Sankthans Aften which is the celebration of the summer solstice. It was so much fun! We had a bonfire on the beach with the branch where we roasted hot dogs and told stories and sang traditional Danish songs as we watched the sun set on the horizon of the ocean. It was a great time. I even got a chance to bust out the guitar and we all sang what hymns I knew how to play in Danish. So much fun!! Things are just going well in Nykøbing now. It's a shame I'll have to be leaving soon. I feel like that's how it always goes. I get to an area, the beginning is hard, but we work hard and then just at the end the area is perfectly ready for some other missionary to come and get some good ol' harvest. Oh well :) Same team, right?

Well I'm healthy and happy and wish the same for all of you!! I love you all!!

-Ældste Jed Bradshaw

6-22-15

Woah!!!

Haha okay this week was just incredible! I don't know where to begin! Well first off Things are going great with Elder Gudmundson. He's sooo tall and we look quite funny walking down the street together, which just adds to the weird looks we get :) We have a great time together though. It's tons of fun getting to know so many different companions and hear all about their life stories. It's also quite interesting to be the senior companion now... I feel like it was forever ago that I was in Elder Gudmundson’s shoes.

Anyway you have to hear about our miracle story this week!! Okay so on Monday we went out to contact on the streets when we ran into this man from Iran. We had a quick encounter and managed to figure out that he had a Book of Mormon and had met with missionaries before. We asked if we could grab his address so we could come by and talk again, but he just kept pointing in the direction he lived and saying ''just knock over there! You'll find me''... Well that was hopeless because he pointed towards a complex of thousands of apartment buildings. So we went on our way and didn't think about it. Then a few hours later the mission office texted us a media referral! It was the man! He had gone online and entered in his address for the missionaries to come by! Anyway his named was *A* and we stopped by his address a few times the next two days with no success. Then on Thursday night Elder Gudmumdson was saying his night time prayer when he suddenly shot up and said ''We need to change our plans and go try *A* at 12:00 tomorrow!'' Well... it sounded like revelation to me, so the next day at 12:00 we knocked on *A*'s door. Then we rang. Then we knocked again. He wasn't home... well, I guess it wasn't revelation. So we walked away from *A*'s place with our heads down for a few minutes, but I managed to stop looking at my feet for long enough to see a man walking towards us. Ugh... I didn't want to contact him, but I knew I should. So I stopped the man in his tracks. He didn't speak Danish. No problem. I switched to English and told him who we are and gave him a card with our info on it. He looked at the card for a minute then looked up at us and said ''this is the church I want''.... woah! So we got his address and set up an appointment for the next morning. (his name is *T*)

The next morning we get to his Apartment and he lets us right in with a smile and a handshake. We walk into his place and I quickly noticed that he owned next to nothing. There was another man there sitting on the bed who introduced himself as *T*'s brother, *J*. There was nothing in the room other than a sofa, a bed, and one small table. Nothing else. And that was the entire apartment. We quickly got to know them and learned their story. They are both refugees from Eretria (a country run by a corrupt dictator just above Ethiopia). They spent weeks traveling on foot through the Sahara desert and across the Baltic sea just to get here. They risked their lives and came very close to death on multiple occasions.  They had nothing to their name when they got to Denmark, but the government here is giving them the necessities to survive. They are incredible men. Very humble and have a strong love for the Savior. At the end of our lesson they made us some food. Eggs and ham which we ate with our hands around the table from one plate, just like they did back in their country. I guess they don't understand the idea of cutlery. Fine by me :) It was tons of fun!

Anyway, both *T* and *J* came to church yesterday!!!!  They loved it. We gave them both a Book of Mormon and they are excited to start reading and have already made it clear that they would love to be baptized.

The Lord had a plan for us to meet them. He had all the pieces lined up perfectly. It was almost spooky how perfectly everything worked out.

Well... that's all the time I have for now. I love you all and hope you have a brilliant week!

-Jed Bradshaw (the Elder)

P.S. Happy Father’s day to the best dad in the World!!! I can only hope to become half the man you are Paps. And Happy Birthday to Madeline!! I love you!!

6-15-15

Hey,

So transfer calls came this Wednesday instead of Monday!! Elder Taylor is now on his way home and I'll be taking over as the district leader here and getting a new companion, Elder Gudmundson!!! It feels really weird to be losing Elder Taylor. We had some good times together, but I look forward to what the future holds with this new guy! He just finished being trained, so he will be the first companion I have had that is younger than me in the mission. 

But for our last week together Elder Taylor and I did some pretty exciting stuff!! The highlight of which has to be our new investigator, Father Greggers!! He is a Catholic Priest that lives in the massive catholic church just a few doors down from us. We contacted him and he ended up inviting us over for dinner! We had a great evening with him, even though his place was a little creepy. You see, Catholics LOVE candles. So much in fact that he uses nothing BUT candles to light his entire building, giving it a very eerie feeling. We had some very deep intellectual discussion around the dinner table (he loves theology) and then he gave us a personal tour of his church, which was actually quite beautiful. After the tour we went back upstairs for a surprise of TWO more courses to the meal! Then after that we went downstairs and sat in his yard around a beautiful metal table and drank soda water with ice as we watched the magnificent sunset. It was so peaceful at that moment. The birds were singing, the weather was perfectly warm, the Danish was flowing. He's a great man even though his faith doesn't line up exactly with mine. AND he has plans to come to church, so that's good!! 

A little bit of a disappointment with *M* this week. We met with him almost every day to make sure he would come to church and even called him the night before to confirm, then when we showed up at his place the next morning with a member, he said he couldn't come. So keep on praying for him! He'll come around eventually. I'm sure of it.

 I love you all!! Have a great week!

-Jed Bradshaw (the Elder)

Elder Bradshaw with his companion Elder Taylor, and the Zone Leaders Elder Call and Elder Hawkes.

6-8-15

Goddag min elskede familie!!

So I'm in a city called Slagelse right now. We're on splits with our Zone Leaders because we had to come up here for the satellite transmission of Elder Holland's talk in Scotland. And it was BRILLIANT! I was really hoping to be able to hear it in English, but unfortunately we could only get the Danish translation channel, but it was still absolutely amazing. He bore some powerful testimony about the Book of Mormon and the Sabbath day. He got really fired up just like he always does.  What a stud.

We also had our last Zone Conference with President Sederholm this week... that was kinda sad. Sister Sederholm played a very long slideshow set to some going home music with Pictures of everything that has happened in the mission in the last 3 years. Then Elder Hawkes and I did a little musical number. We sang 'Where can I turn for peace' and played guitar. It was a little nerve racking, but tons of fun to play in front of people again :) Somehow 100 missionaries was scarier than hundreds of family and friends in Utah...

Haha okay have any of you ever waxed your legs?? Because my lovely zone leaders thought it would be entertaining to wax my legs and chest last night.... oh my goodness!!!! THAT, was painful. Especially the chest. But it did make for a very funny video. I'll see if I can get ahold of it and send it over. I didn't bring my camera with me on splits, so I apologize for the lack of pictures this week :(

Elder Taylor goes home next Monday. That's a little weird. We find out on Wednesday what happens to me here in Nykøbing. The guess is training... I hope not. I'd feel quite bad for the little fella having to be trained in such a tough place. But if I do train, I'll make it as much fun as I can for the little guy!

Our investigators are doing great! No miracle stories this week... but stay tuned for tons next week!!!

I love you all!! Have a great week!!

-Ældste Jed D. Bradshaw

6-1-15

Hello Family and Friends!

Happy June!

Wow, what a crazy couple of weeks it's been back home! BIG congratulations to my weeetle Brother Effana for graduating High school and getting his MISSION CALL!!! Armenia!!! Wow... to be honest I haven't the slightest idea where that is, but I know that I've met some Armenians on my mission! We meet tons of people from the middle East and stuff! You're going to LOVE it Ethan! That is such an adventure!

Things have been just a little bit frustrating with the branch this week... we're really trying everything to get them involved in the work, but it doesn't seem to be working. *M* came to church last week and we thought that would show the branch how hard WE are working. I wish you guys could all meet this branch :) But we've got a few more tricks up our sleeves yet. Elder Taylor and I have organized a fireside for next week where our investigators can come and meet the members without the pressure of it being ''actual church''. Hopefully that works.

But despite our lack of support, Elder Taylor and I have been teaching some wonderful people! I can really see the spirit working in *M*. He's such a sweet and genuine man when he isn't drunk. I love it!

*M* bore his first testimony on Sunday!! That was neat because he's always been far too nervous to do anything like that, but something has changed in him. It must have something to do with the fact that he is now engaged!! I guess being madly in love makes you do things you wouldn't usually do :)

Well I love you all!! Have a great week!

-Ældste Bradshaw