11/10/14

Dearest friends and Family,

I'm sure you all know why I've gathered you here together today...... well I hope so. Because I certainly don't. I dunno where I was going with that....... ummmm so we're currently waiting on transfer calls, and to be honest I'm a wee bit nervous. We're expecting Elder Hooper to move, so I'll probably be taking over the area and getting a new companion!! It's really exciting, but it'll be the first time that transfers actually affect me. Keep your fingers crossed that I get someone good!

We had zone training this week, which was waaaaaay fun! Because it's the month of November, we ate a thanksgiving lunch (I know it's a Little early) and played some turkey bowl football! It was tons of fun, even though we were all freezing Cold. There should be some Pictures on the mission blog. We found two new families this week, both from Ghana!! We have already taught one of them and it went really well, and we plan on teaching the other one here soon. We've been fasting lots as a mission lately to get new investigators, and the Lord is hearing our prayers. As a mission this week we got exactly 100 new investigators, which might not sound like a lot, but for Denmark, it's a new record!!! Never before has that happened in the history of the Danish Mission!!  How blessed are we??

We also had Stake Conference this week, which was just incredible. I loved seeing so many of the saints gathered in one place. None of our chapels could fit everyone, so they rented out a highschool auditorium and over 700 saints filled the room. It was so amazing. I remember walking in and the Whole place, even though it was packed, was dead quiet, because there was a girl up on the stage singing this song about Christ (in English, which was weird) that just pierced you to the soul. I honestly thought this woman was an angel. And then we were Lucky enough to have a celebrity guest speaker! I'm sure you've all seen Finding Faith in Christ and The Testaments... well the man that plays Jesus in those movies is a famous Danish actor, and he spoke! It was really something special. He told us all about his experiences on set.

Haha okay as I was writing this, the assistants called!!! And, just as we thought, Elder Hooper is leaving me! And my new companion is Elder Nielsen..... We're pretty sure it's actually a kid that went to Lone Peak with me!! Oh man... I'm not sure how I feel about this one..... Pray for us :)

Love you all,

Ældste Bradshaw

11/3/14

Dearly Beloved,

What an incredible week it has been for us here in Hillerød. The Lord has just been opening the Windows of heaven and pouring out the Blessings. I'm literally soaked in Blessings right now. We've just been able to teach and find so many incredible people this week. We're super busy, and I love it. Josefines Birthday was on Tuesday, and she had invited us to her party that night. Obviously we couldn't attend seeing as there would be alchohol and loud music, and she wasn't too happy about that so we tried to make it up to her by planning the Worlds best lesson. Seeing as it was her birthday, we thought we would teach her about the biggest gift we could give her; the Gift of the Holy Ghost. The lesson went..... well I don't quite know how to explain it. The Spirit in that room was like nothing I had felt before. At the close of the discussion, Elder Enniss and I (we were on splits) sang her a hymn to wrap it up. Holy cow... It was just so incredible. I looked atJosefine and just felt like I loved her SO much. But not like any kind of love I've felt before. I'm assuming it was the pure love of Christ working through me, but I'm not sure. That was probably my favorite lesson on my mission thus far.

Other than teaching tons of rad lessons this week, we did tons of fun Things too! Halloween was just awesome! We decided that we just had to knock doors that night to see if we could get any candy. We did. Some in the form of sollidified and caramelized sugar, and others in the form of new beautiful children of God to teach. Haha it was way fun. Hardly anyone here celebrates it, which is a Little sad. Halloween is my favorite, only to be topped by Christmas. On Friday we did two great service Projects. First off we helped a new Family move into our area. They aren't members, but they know members that asked us to come and it was super fun! They're a great Little Family with two kids. The daughter is 18 and all of her friends were there. Naturally they took an interest in the fact that there were four boys from America there, so while they tried to flirt and look pretty, we did our best to teach them about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ :) It actually went quite well and I think we'll be coming back to teach them Again. Later that evening we worked for hours and hours on Building this huge barn out in the middle of the countryside for a member Family. It was way fun.

But the highlight of this week was on Sunday. We were blessed with 4 investigators in church!! I know that doesn't sound like much, but for Denmark, it's almost unbeleiveable. The first two hours went great, and then came the last hour, which is sacrament for us. It was fast and testimony meeting. I was sitting with 'V' and 'G' (17 and 10 year old investigators. They're siblings) and told them that if I went up and embarresed myself by bearing my testimony in my awful Danish that they would have to go after me. They agreed, and I did my part. Then, one at a time, they both went up to the pulpit and bore INCREDIBLE testimony. 'G' was literally in tears!! Ah it was just so amazing to see. I love this church. The Work is gooooood.

I love you all

-Ældste Bradshaw

10/27/14

Happy Halloween week y'all,

So daylight savings was this week in Denmark, which means that it gets darker even EARLIER than before, which I honestly did not think was possible. The sun usually goes down around 4 PM and it is pitch Black by about 6 PM. I sure could use some vitamin D. Pray for sun in Denmark!

Other than that, things are really looking up for us! It's too cold to rain anymore, so we sometimes get extremely light snow, which is nice. I hated being wet all the time. And besides the weather, the Lord has blessed us with tons of new investigators!! Lots of our old investigators have slowly been falling out of contact with us, so we desperately needed some new ones, and sure enough, they came. Last night alone we got 3 new investigators. One of them is actually a really funny story. We knocked on their door and told them about the church, and they were NOT interested, but then I noticed something. On their doorway they had a sticker of Mickey mouse, so I asked them about it. Boom! We were in. They were absolutely OBSESSED with everything Disney, and luckily, I've been to Disneyland many a time, so I was able to have an instant connection with them. But you would not beleive how obsessed this couple was with Disney. I'm not kidding when I say that they had a room in the house that was completely covered with Disney, so much that you could not see the walls or floor. It was incredible. And then after we had talked about all their favorite Disney things, we were able to turn the conversation back to the Gospel and even set up a return appointment! Haha, thanks Disney.

So yeah, the work is really hastening. Margret should be getting baptized either this Saturday or the next, so that's exciting! She's such an incredible lady. Super funny too. Elder Hooper and I have started teaching the guest class every Sunday again, so that's lots of fun. We usually never plan a lesson because there is usually at least one investigator there that has some crazy question that we end up talking about the Whole time. It's amazing to see how many people come to that class now compared to when I first got here. We're being truly blessed with tons of new people. The hard part is just turning them into baptisms.

I've also spent a considerable amount of time down at the States office trying to become legal. They've never had anyone in my situation before that comes from England but lives in America, so they have no idea how to handle it. They're demanding to see a bank statement from the Church to prove that they can support me here in Denmark, but obviously that's very confidential and the church can't give that out. But if they did see how much money was sitting in the Church's bank account, I'm sure they would all be baptized immediately.

Sorry I don't have any crazy stories this week. We've just been busy with the work. We taught tons of lessons this week, which is my favorite part of missionary work, so I'm happy. I've got my dad Upstairs looking out for me. Love that guy.

Have a great Halloween week everyone!!

Love you all!!

-Ældste Bradshaw

(Oh I just remembered, we started guitar contacting this week, so that's super fun. K bye)

10/20/14

Dearly beloved,

    This week it rained. And it rained. And then it rained Again. And then it stopped for 5 minutes, and then it rained for the rest of the week. Oh my goodness.... I have NEVER been so wet in my life!! You should have seen us the other day as we went out for the final Work hours of the day. We had a few appointments from 5-9, but they all fell through right before, so we decided to cycle out to a far away city to knock. It was already raining when we left the Apartment, but as we went along, it started to just POUR down and within 5 minutes I may as well of jumped in a swimming pool I was so wet. Then for the NeXT 4 hours, not a single person had pity on us enough to let us in their nice warm homes. Everything was wet. My wool hat was stuck to my wet hair and there was a miniature swimming pool at the bottom of each of my shoes.  I just wanted the night to be over so bad, but it dragged on and on and on. We could have gone home whenever we wanted and claimed that the weather was too extreme to Work in, but we decided we would stick it out and Work in faith that Heavenly Father would lead us to someone. He did. At the second to last house we were going to knock that night, a man answered the door. I used what Little Danish I knew to tell him about who we were and what we had to offer him. He wasn't all that interested, but we were able to give him our phone number and he claimed that he would call us if there was anything we could do to help him. Then we left. We didn't expect to hear from him ever again.

   We then continued to the last house on the street, planning to retire for the night after that. My companion knocked the door and not 2 seconds later, our phone started ringing. I answered, and tried intensely to listen to what the man was saying over the loud rain. All I could make out were two words: ''kom tilbage'', meaning ''come back''. I assumed it to be the man we had just knocked into seeing as I didn't recognize the phone number. We hurried back to the last house, not even waiting to see if anyone would answer the door we had just knocked. Sure enough, the man was waiting for us at the door. He quickly let us in from the rain and brought us into his living room. We sat down as he fetched us some drinks. When he entered the room, you could tell something was the matter. He already had tears in his eyes. Before anything was said, he started telling us that he had been reading in the Bible earlier that day. He said he read the following story:

   There was a man that lived in Jerusalem that desperately wanted to see Jesus in the flesh while he was on the earth, so he prayed to God and begged that Christ would be sent to him. Later that day, a man knocked on his door and asked if he could come in and rest from his travels, and that in return he would teach him the Word of Christ. The man rejected the weary traveler and continued waiting for Jesus, but he never came. That night in his sleep, he had a vision in which Christ came to him and said ''Why did you reject me today?'' The man replied ''What are you talking about?? I have never seen you before!'' To which Christ replied that the man that had knocked on his door was sent directly from him to deliver an important message.

   Francisk (the man whose house we were in) told us that when he sent us away into the rain, this story immediately came to his head, and he felt like he should invite us to come back. We couldn't believe it!! He basically told us that he recognized that we were sent from Christ himself! It was just amazing. The spirit was so strong, so we started teaching. We taught about the restoration and the Book of Mormon for a while, then challenged him to be baptized. He said that he will, but would not commit to a date. He did invite us to come back again though. It was such an incredible experience. And the best part.... He has an Audi in his driveway and offered to drive us to church sometime!! Haha I really hope that actually happens. I've grown a Little tired of cycling for two hours to church.

   So yeah, that was the highlight of my week. Other than that I finally went inside that sweet Castle by our Apartment. We saw all of the Charl Bloch paintings. I'll send some Pictures. We taught tons of lessons this week. Met some incredible people. You know, all the typical missionary stuff.

It's been a good week. Wet and Cold, but good.

Also, sorry for the weird grammar and random capitalizations. Danish keyboards are super weird.

- Ældste Bradshaw

10/13/14

Goddag! Hvordan har I haft det? Ældste Hooper og Jeg har haft det rigtigt godt her I Hillerød. Det er meget bedre end Utah, synes jeg. Nej, jeg driller bare. Jeg vil altid elsker Utah!

Haha... I can just imagine you all trying to read this out loud right now and absolutely slaughtering it! I promise you it sounds NOTHING like what it looks like, so don't even try and pronounce it. Danish is actually a beautiful spoken language, even if it doesn't look good on paper (or screen).

This week has been packed full of crazy adventures full of action, romance, deceit, joy, and sorrow. Okay maybe not all those things, but it has been amazing. I recently found the world’s best pastry shop. We go there once a week now and it's the best way to start off the day. You walk in and you're instantly welcomed by cute baker girls (Elder Hooper's Words, not mine) and the smell of freshly baked bread (my Words). You feel very European walking out of there with a freshly baked baguette or Danish pastry.

So in church every week I've been going to choir because the missionaries have to go, and this week something terrible happened. We were singing in practice and the crazy conductor lady picked me out to sing a solo!! Ahhh! So that day in sacrament meeting, the choir was called up to sing the interlude song, and I sung the entire first verse by myself! In Danish! Haha it was hilarious. I had to try really hard not to look at the other Elders because they were all trying to make me laugh.

During the week we had over 15 lessons planned to teach, but almost everyone cancelled on us. It was pretty discouraging, but we went forward with faith and just went finding instead. This consisted of knocking doors like mad men and cycling hundreds of miles to get from city to city through rich green rolling hills. One trail even led to a dead end in the middle of a field, so we carried our bikes for a few miles through thick wet grass up to my knees in an attempt to find another road. We ended up in the middle of a bunch of sheep. I quite liked it.

I think I have found my niche market when it comes to contacting in the city or on trains. I've found that if I talk to girls aged from about 16-21, they tend to be A LOT more interested. I think I got over 10 girls phone numbers this week. (yeah I still got game). They just tend to show more interest, and even if it isn't always for the ''right reasons'', they could potentially turn into great investigators. The church in Denmark is in need of some Young new blood, and if I can get all the Young girls to join, the Guys will come flocking, right?

On Friday we carved pumpkins with Josefine! It was so much fun. It felt just like carving a pumpkin back home with the Family. Have any of you started carving yet? I'd love to see em.

Oh and Happy Birthday to Amelia!!!! I can't believe you're already 10! I love you!!!!!!!

We would appreciate if you could pray for a man called Yens Andersen. He used to be the mission president here in Denmark, and is now our Ward mission leader. He's an incredible man and will probably be a General Authority any day now, but his daughter just passed away two days ago. They found out this Monday about a brain tumor and she passed away on Saturday. The worst part was that he was in Utah all this week on official church business and wasn’t able to be with her in her last few days. So yeah... Keep him in your prayers.

I love you all so much.

Keep writing.

-Ældste Bradshaw

10/6/14

Happy conference weekend everyone!!!

Wasn't conference just amazing?! I'll tell you what, I've never enjoyed  it more than I did this weekend. That probably has something to do with the fact that I'm a missionary, but seriously it was the best weekend for me. We watched the first session (saturday morning for you, saturday night for me) with the 'R' Family. They were just barely baptized. It was so great to Watch conference with them. We brought 5 Phillipino investigators with us because 'J' (the wife) is from the Philippines. They all made food from the motherland for us and we ate as we watched the first session. It was so great. I was worried I wouldn't have any families to Watch it with, which would be super depressing, but they made us feel like we were at home. Then the Next morning (Sunday) we watched three sessions at the chapel in Copenhagen. The first two weren't live because they aired in the middle of the night for us, but the sunday morning session for you we watched live that night. It was such a great day. Just sitting in the chapel, chatting with tons of missionaries (including my good old MTC buddies!!), and listening to the Words of God. I remember around 7 that night just looking around at everyone and having this incredible feeling of Peace wash over me. Even though I was thousands of miles away from my 'house', I felt at home. So many latter day saints gathered together in one place for the same cause. There was a great Spirit in that chapel.

Here are a few Things I took away from conference:

-Who do we face? Man, or God? Fear not what man can do, for the pure love of God casteth out all fear.

-The Sacrament should be an incredible spiritual experience EVERY SINGLE WEEK. We need to focus our thoughts on the atonement of christ and nothing else.

-Ask ourselves, ''Lord, is it I?''. Don't worry about how other people live their lives. That is between them and God. Worry about your own life and relationship with the Savior.

-You can't help others with their testimonies if your own faith wavers. Gain your own testimony first, then help others. Those airplane vidoes about the oxygen masks FINALLY make sense.

-It is not okay to do something bad just because it was not something worse.

-Self contentment vs. self improvement. Never bring Down your standards to make yourself feel more comfortable with where you are, rather, bring yourself up to meet the standards where they lay, because the standards of the Lord will never change.

-Acknowldege and face weaknesses, but don't let them immobilize you.

-The creator and Savior of this World was homeless, yet he gave all he had and served the poor.

-Give the shoes off of your own feet and 'shuffle through the airport' like President Monson.

-It is not a question of whether or not we will live after this life; it is a question of WHO we will live with.

-Walk not where He walked, but as He walked.

-And my very favorite thing I have Thus far learned (we havent seen the last session yet) is that the Atonement of Jesus Christ never runs out. Apply it generously to ALL wounds.

So there you have it. I'd love to hear what everyone else learned aswell, so please please email or write with what conference said to you.

I love you all so much. Have a great week!!!

Ældste Bradshaw