This girl is on fire!.....and so is the Apartment... (Letters from Katherine - 09/23/2013)

Note:  We got a call from Katherine's Mission President on Sunday.  Seems like there was a bit of an issue with the apartment.

Letter 1
This girl is on fire!.....and so is the Apartment...

Hej!

Letter 2
We Didn't Start The Fire!!
(Response to my note - "Who left the curling iron plugged in?")

Hello!!!!

Yes, it's true. There was a fire in our Apartment due to some electrical issues. no one left anything plugged in. It is actually quite amazing that none of us our hurt. Sister Hall and I were fasting that day so we didn't go back for lunch. We considered going back to take a nap during our lunch hour, but i didn't feel good about that so we stayed out.

Pretty much everything is ruined. Fortunately I was able to get my passport and migraine medicine. Thank goodness. We did some shopping today. clothes are so expensive it makes me sick. Im sorry. I am officially the most expensive child.

We are doing well though. Elder and Sister Køster are serving a couples mission in Bornholm so we are staying in their home. It is definitely an upgrade from our Apartment.

Im still kind of having a hard time believing that it happened. The Wards here in Odense have been amazing. Words cannot Express how grateful I am for all the help, clothes, and food they have given us. We are so fortunate.

read D&C 84:77-99

Letter 3

Fire Sale!!!

passport is safe, migraine medicine is safe, area book is safe, and so are the scriptures that I have had since I was 8. I don't remember putting them in the case when we left that day, but when we went back to the Apartment they were in the case and protected from the fire. I had my camera with me so Pictures are fine. My journal is nasty, but it survived. What wasn't burned by the fire is completely damaged by smoke. so yeah. crazy huh?


Letter 4

Okay, take two.

I will try and explain Things better this time. But before I begin I would just like to say that I was able to go to the Copenhagen temple it was wonderful. Really, I had no idea how much I have missed the temple. We had to go to Copenhagen for my language test, (all missionaries have to take it) and after we got their we discovered that I wasn't scheduled to take the test, so that caused some stress but the people were very kind and worked with the office to let me take the test. Oh yeah and on the way I started having a migraine. So it was all just kind of hectic and then we had to be at the temple at a certain time so we literally ran there. It was so crazy getting there, but as soon as I stepped into the temple I was just overcome with so much Peace. It was such a good feeling. Im so grateful for the opportunity i had to go.

So back to the fire. Sister Hall and I had decided the night before to fast together. We left the Apartment at 10:30 and started contacting. There was a marathon taking place in Odense so we basically invited everyone watching the marathon to come to church. Lunch time came around, but we were fasting. The night before we considered taking a nap during our lunch hour but I just did not have a good feeling about that. I think i know why now. So we stayed out. Our church starts at 2, and towards the end of sacrament meeting the Sister Briscoe and Sister Bartholomew motioned for sister Hall and I to come out. Right then i knew something was wrong, but I had no idea what it was. We went Down in the basement and they told us that our Apartment had caught on fire and that everything was destroyed. Then we dropped to our knees and prayed together.

As soon as president found out he was on his way, so we waited for him to get to the church. when he got there we went and looked at the Apartment. I have some Pictures, but it doesn't do it Justice. EVERYTHING is Black and covered in soot. It was horrible.

The members have been amazing though. We are all doing well. We went shopping today so that was good. But everything is so expensive. 

I'm Soooo Tired!! (Letter From Katherine - 09/16/2013)

Hej min familie!

 

Like the subject line says, I am so tired. but doing great! I had the hardest time keeping my eyes open in sacrament meeting yesterday. Missionary life is exhausting haha It's worth it though:) Nothing too exciting has happened this week, but i'll give you a little run down of the weeks events.

 

So last week after p-day we had a dinner appointment with a young couple who was just recently married. They are so much fun! I don't know what for, but Sister Hall asked them what their favorite smells were haha....yeah. So they both said they love the smell of books. They then pulled out a bunch of their texts books so we could smell them. It was super funny. They are both returned missionaries as well. Julie served in the Oakland Sacramento mission and Christian served in Ogden Utah (woot woot!). They both loved their missions. It was a lot of fun talking to them about the experiences they had.

 

Tuesday we went to visit an investigator, but guess what? we accidentaly got on the wrong bus haha. I'm not sure how we managed that. So we weren't able to visit Helle (investigator) until later that evening. So before that, we went to another appointment and then to CUV (young single adult activity). CUV is every tuesday and it is always a lot of fun. We were hoping that one of our investigators would come, but he wasn't able to make it. The Ivie's are the ones that run the center. We don't always go to CUV, but it's a lot of fun when we do. Okay so after CUV we went to try and visit Helle again. So she answers the door and we're about to make an appointment with her when her neighbor comes around the corner and told Helle that she could not make an appointment with us. The neighbor was pretty upset and told us to leave. We started walking away when the neighbor came up to us and explained that Helle has a brain injury and can't handle visits from us. The whole situation was kind of sad. We were able to find a lot of potentials in her area though, so that was good.

 

So we went to visit this less active family, but it turned out that they live quite a ways away. on our way there we asked a man for directions and we ended up talking to him for quite a while. When we started back on our trek to find the pedersons we realized that we needed to run back to the bus stop to catch our bus. We really had to run. It was super funny. We would point to something in the distance and say okay, we'll run to that tree and then we can walk for a second. So we did that a few times when we saw our bus pass in the distance. So yeah we missed our bus. haha I don't know why i'm telling you all these details. haha sorry if this e-mail is long and boring! 

 

Later that night we had a dinner appointment with Familie Fredereksen. He is the stake president, and I met their daughter at the MTC. We had frikadæller! not sure if that's how you spell that... They were delicious. And guess what? That was the first time that I really felt like I understood danish. It was awesome! There's hope for me learning danish after all! Don't get me wrong though, it's still super hard.

 

Sister Hall and I have been working a lot with Nina. Unfortunately her daughter Lucia doesn't want to meet with us. Sad huh? we're going to try and get the primary kids involved. It's hard though because they live in svendborg which is kind of far away. Nina is doing awesome though and is getting ready for the ward temple trip so she can do baptisms. She wants to take her mom's name so we have been doing family history with her.

 

There is also a new member named Hellen. She was actually baptized in England the same time that Nina was baptized. Hellen is 18 and she is wonderful. She is Danish but lived in England with her family for a while and is now back in Denmark for school. She fed the missionaries on Saturday and it was a lot of fun. She has a cute little kitten too! So yeah, Sister Hall and I have been working with them and teaching them the new member lessons.

 

Yesterday Biskop told us that he wants us visiting atleast one member every day. Active eller inactive. I think it's a great idea. There will be two more missionaries in our ward that will be coming pretty soon depending on visas. Some missionaries from last transfer still haven't gotten their visas. My group was very lucky to have gotten them so quickly. Transfers are coming up. Not this wednesday but next wednesday im not sure what is going to happen but I would be sad to leave Odense. I love it here. But at the same time I think it would be exciting to serve somewhere else. I have decided that If I do leave Odense I would love to serve here again at the end of my mission. So yeah!

 

We're still trying to find people to teach. We have been meeting with members quite a bit and so far we haven't gotten too many referrals. The mission is switching gears and the new missionaries are kind of the start of that. At zone trainings we have talked about effective ways of finding people and guess what? bonking doors and contacting isn't one of them. It's all through the members. Things will pick up though, because the members are starting to catch on.

 

Well Family, I love you all so much. I hope you have a wonderful week!

 

Love Katherine   

Hej min familie! (Letter From Katherine - 09/09/2013)

Hej min familie!

 

As of right now sister Hall and I don't have very many investigators...but all is well! We have spent a lot of time meeting with our Ward members and doing service. It has been a lot of fun getting to know the Ward members better. I love my Ward here in Odense! Yesterday the missionaries from both first and second Ward sang in sacrament meeting. I lucked out and got to play the piano, which I was glad for. A couple of the elders are completely tone deaf so earlier in the week when we were practicing I got the giggles way bad, so its a good thing I wasn't singing with them because I probably would have lost it. I dont know why, but for some reason I think it's the most funny thing ever when tone deaf people sing. I think it sounded okay though. If not it's the thought that Counts right? I also got to play the piano in primary Again. I love being in primary! The children are super funny. One of the Little boys WHO - I don't know why it capitilizes random Words or letters. Anyways, the Little boy that gave a talk in primary showed the mormon message of the the boy WHO ran races with the handicap boy, and then he talked about serving others. The Little kids loved the video and they were so into it. They are usually quite rowdy, but while they were watching it was dead silent It was really sweet. So yeah I love being in primary, it's a lot of fun.

 

Sister Hall and I had a really neat experience this week. After CUV (the Young single adults activity) we went to visit a woman that sister Nuttall and I had met like sometime in July I think. The first time we met her she talked to us on her doorstep for a while and then told us to come back. When we went back she told us that she would be on vacation for quite a while and that we should try in like a month. So we went back and she wasn't home. Well Sister Hall and I decided to try Again. We went and knocked on her door and guess what. She wasn't home. Sister Hall suggested that we go and visit a member who lived close by, and I thought that was a good idea but I told her that I felt like there was something else we needed to be doing. So she asked, "Okay, what is it?" and I said, "I don't know. I just know that there is something else we should be doing." So I tried going through the Ward list to see if there was someone else that we should visit. Nothing really felt right so we decided to go visit the member that Sister Hall suggested. We got on our bikes and began to head out when we decided that we needed to pray about our decision. So right there in the middle of the road we said a prayer. And guess who came riding by on their bike? The potential who wasn't home. She asked us what we were doing and we told her we were praying. We talked to her for a few minutes and she gaves us her number and told us to call her and come back. It was really cool. It was just another reminder that although at times we may feel a Little lost as to what we should do, the lord will always guide us. It is his Work after all:)

 

Sister Hall and I also did some good ol' service this week. We went over to Lan Le's house and moved this gigantic pile of Wood that was on the side of her house into the middle of the yard and then burned it. We found toads, spiders, and giant snails during the Whole process. We also got stung by stinging neddle. We totes got the job done though! After that we went to Bishop's house and helped get ready for the Ward party. It was a lot of fun! I really have enjoyed getting to know the Ward better.

 

Last Tuesday we had an appointment with an investigator and we took JJ, a member, with us. We got to the appointment and the lady told us that she wasn't feeling too well and she wanted us to come back the next day. We were a Little disappointed when JJ said, "well what's next? there is obviously someone in this area who needs to see us." I loved that he said that, because if he hadn't I think we would have left the area to visit other people. We decided to knock doors and it was actually pretty succesful. We talked to a lady for quite a while and she said She's not so sure if this will change her life or anything, but she is willing to give it a try. haha Little does she know:) A lot of the people in the area gave us their numbers, which usually never happens. JJ called it a gold mine. A Little bit about JJ, he is from Greenland! Cool huh! he served a mission in Ogden Utah. He's awesome and a huge help with missionary Work. As of now missionaries aren't serving in Greenland, but I think that will change soon. JJ is one of 3 members from Greenland. He has a really good spirit about him, it's kind of hard to explaing, but you can just tell that the greenlandic people are special people. I can't wait for the day when missionaries can serve there.

 

So last night we had an eating appointment. It was delicious like always, but after it was dark and rainy and we had to ride our bikes home. The elders still don't have bikes so the members offered to give them a ride. Are elders are so chivilrous that they offered to ride our bikes home so we could ride in the car. NOT!!! So there we are riding in the rain when all the sudden my chain falls off. Okay, so I fixed it. It falls off Again. After the third time I was just like whatever I'm walking. haha typical missionary experience. It was funny.

 

You know, it's tough not having people to teach, but I'm happy. I really am so grateful to be here serving the Lord. I know that he knows what he is doing, and it is so important for me to rely on him completely.

 

I love you all so much! I'm so grateful for all your love and support. You're always in my prayers.

 

MKH

Katherine

Helloooo!!!! (Letter From Katherine - 09/02/2013)

Hello my dear family,

So since Sister Hall and I don't have too many investigators we started off the week just trying to visit a lot of members. It was great and I really enjoyed getting to know some of them better. Wednesday we had a huge service project. An elderly lady is moving to a nursing home and she needed help cleaning out her apartment. She is also an artist and a hoarder, so it was a huge project, and for the most part it was only the missionaries that were there to help. So that took up a lot of our time this week, and then a couple of the sisters including sister Hall got sick. So it has been kind of another weird week, but don't worry.  All is well. I'm happy.

It seems like the people we do meet with are really nice and happy to meet with us, and the first lesson goes really well, but when we try and schedule another time with them, they never respond, so that's kind of a bummer, but I KNOW that there are people here ready to hear the gospel. I just hope i'm doing all that I can to find them.

It is definitely fall. The last few days of August I could feel the weather changing and yesterday and today it feels totally and completely like fall. I love fall but it is quite chilly here in Denmark!

I have loved having a 4 sister apartment. We have been having a lot of fun together. It's going to be weird when I live in an apartment with just me and my companion.

I'm sorry I don't have a lot to say again this week. I'm not discouraged though I promise. It just hasn't been the most exciting week.

I hope you are all doing well and that you know I love you so much! Thank you for all your love and support.

Love Katherine

hej familie! (Letter From Katherine - 8/29/2013)

Hello Family,

Im glad you got the letter I sent you. It didn't take as long as I thought it would, so that's good. It has been kind of a weird week. Im having a hard time remembering what even happened. Right now we don't really have any progressing investigators so it has been a little rough. I think I will just start with what happened yesterday and work my way backwords. Yesterday, one of the members brought some of her friends to church, so that was neat but non of them live in Odense. A young woman from Ghana moved into the ward and it was perfect becasue we had an appointment with noble our investigator who is also from Africa and we needed somone to teach with us. she was more than willing to come with us and she is awesome! Unfortunately we "dropped" Noble. It seems like we have been dropping a lot of people lately. Anyways, her name is Ruby and she will be in Denmark 2 years for school. She came on her own and has only been here for four days.

Saturday Sister Hall and I found someones phone in the middle of the street so we called the contacts in it to try and return it to the owner. We got a hold of someone and while we were waiting to meet up with them these drunk guys came up to us. It was actually kind of scarry. There's a lot of drunk people here in Denmark.

I don't know i'm trying to think of what has happened. Sister Hall and I went on exchanges in Horrsens, and that was fun. I slept on the floor and sister hall was on the couch and in the middle of the night she jumped off the couch onto the matt I was sleeping on and said, there's rats! I was like what?? and she said that there were giant rats. I said are you serious, and she said oh wait no, i was just dreaming and then she got back up on the couch and went back to sleep. It was really funny, but afterwards I was a little nervous that there were rats in the apartment.

I'm sorry that this e-mail is so short, but there isn't much to say. It was just kind of a weird week.

I love you all!

Love Katherine

Hej Min Familie!‏ (Letter from Katherine - 8/19/2013)

Hello!

 

Another week has gone by already. I can't believe it, the weeks go by so fast! Some days can be pretty slow, but the weeks always seem to fly. Yesterday I saw Dane and his wife at church! that was a lot of fun. He said he will be back next Summer. He also asked me if I eat danishes everyday. I was like, "what is that supposed to mean?!" haha he said that that's not what he meant, but what'er.

 

So Sister Hall and I had an interesting week. We haven't been able to schedule very many appointments with our investigators so we spent a lot of time contacting. A lot a lot a lot of time contacting. One of the days we were out walking a long the street and I was thinking we shouldn't be on this side, I was about to say something to Sister hall when she said the exact same thing to me. We went on the other side of the street and almost immediately we met a young man from Norway. He was very kind and interested, but he doesn't have a phone that works in Denmark yet. He got our information and we are praying that he will call.

 

Remember Inus? I'm pretty sure I told you about him last week. Well Sister Hall and I also met him contacting and he came to CUV( young single adults). Before he came he texted us and asked if it was okay if he brought his partner. Sister Hall and I were like well maybe partner just means friend. Well we were wrong. Inus is Gay. His partner was not able to come to CUV but I think Inus had a really good time. It was actually quite a neat experience. There was a really good turn out to CUV and while we were eating he asked everyone to introduce themselves. After that he openly told everyone that he was gay and then he asked what the church's stance was on homosexual relationships. It was like the young single adults just surrounded him and helped answer the questions, and they continued to answer the other questions he had about the church. Sister Hall and I just kind of sat back and watched how well they explained things to him. It was awesome! He wants to meet with us again. 

 

Crazy story. Before I tell you I need to explain who some of these people are.

 

Noble- he is an investigator, African American, extremely hard to schedule appointments with because he says he's a free man.

Ike- Another investigator who is also African American. He had a month long job that was crazy so we haven't been able to meet with him for a while.

Jolly- He is a member of the church and is in the first ward. He is also African American and we have been wanting him to come teach Noble and Ike with us but we haven't been able to schedule appointments with them. Neither of us have met him before.

 

Okay so here's the story. We invitied Noble to come play soccer last Saturday and he came and had a great time. This past Saturday he asked if Sister Hall and I would like to come to a picnic that his church was putting on for the young people. We thought it sounded like fun, and it would also be a good place to meet people. So he gave us a list of busses that we should take. We went to the trainstation to catch the bus we needed and it turned out that it was the wrong one. So stayed on the bust until it took us back to the trainstation. Then we got on the right bus and it took us to the park right by our apartment. hahaha The park that the picnic was at was the park right by us! We got a kick out of that. As soon as we got off the bus we laughed and laughed. So we head over to where the picnic is, and Noble comes and greets us. The preacher guy from the church was talking a little bit and I was just kind of looking around and guess who else was at the picnic. Ike!!! So we talked to him a little bit and then soon after this other man came up to me and said, "Hey, do you remember me? we met in Svendborg" sure enough, Sister Nuttall and I had contacted him in Svendborg. Haha so Noble, Ike, and this other guy were all at the picnic! It came time to play soccer and guess who comes up to us. Jolly! Turns out he's friends with all of them!!!!!!! CRAZY! So they all said they want to meet with us, and Jolly said he would be more than happy to come teach with us. It was crazy.

 

Hopefully that story made sense. Things have been going well here. We had a dinner appointment with a Woman named Kristine and her two children. She hasn't been to church in over 15 years but when Sister Nuttall and I went and visited her she said we could come back for dinner on the 14th of August. So Sister Hall and I went and had a wonderful time. She said she wants us to come back and teach her children about Joseph Smith. We weren't expecting that! Her daughter is 12 and her son is 13. We were able to teach them how to pray and it was a very neat experience. I am really looking forward to going back.

 

It's just crazy how up and down the week was. Although we were contacting a ton, we were able to see so many miracles. I love it. 

 

Thank you for everything! I love hearing from you! I love you all so much! 

 

Love Katherine 

Hej (Letter From Katherine - 8/12/2013)

Hello Family!

Well to start things off, my new bike is kind of a peice of work. haha Either that or Sister Nuttall just wanted me to die when she was putting it together. haha Sister Hall actually has the same bike as me and she has been having the same problems, so I think it's just the bike. I guess that's what you get for only paying 999 KR. We are going to try and have Elder Ivie (senior missionary) take a look at them.

Funny story about Elder Ivie- So our bathroom has had a leak for quite a while and we have been trying to get a hold of the landlord, but we could never get a hold of him. Well when Sister Hall got here the sink wouldn't drain and then the toilet broke. So we called elder Ivie and he came to take a look at it and it was pretty funny. He was having the hardest time with the toilet. We could hear him mumbling under his breath and then he yelled.....JUNK!!! haha then we got the giggles way bad, and it was one of those situations where you shouldn't be laughing, but you just cannot stop. Sister hall and I went outside to take the garbage out and we could still hear him yelling haha. I'm laughing way hard right now as I am writing this. IT was so funny, but you might just have to know Elder Ivie to think it was funny. We asked him if there was anything we could do to help and he said, "yeah, get me a dynamite so I can blow this toilet up!" haha

So after Elder Ivie kind of destroyed the toilet a member from the ward came to take a look at it. He was like what the heck did Elder Ivie do to this toilet. He was able to put it back together, but he couldn't get it to flush. So we have a pot in the bothroom that we fill with water and pour down the toilet bowl when we need to flush. Life is so hard. haha just kidding, maintenance was supposed to come today, but so far they havent showed. surprise surpise. Anyways, while the members was trying to fix the toilet he unclogged the sink. You should have seen all the hair that came out of it. It was like 20 years build up of sister missionary hair. It was DISGUSTING! no joke.

 

Our apartment has been pretty cluttered lately so saturday Sister Hall and I weren't able to go to soccer because we had to clean. How the other sisters got out of cleaning i'm not sure. I'm pretty sure the apartment has never had a good deep clean. Missionaries just don't have time for that. Sister Hall and I were only able to really clean the bathroom. Believe it or not I'm learning the importance of taking care of things/doing dishes/ cleaning etc.

So Sister Hall is here. So far I am really enjoying her. She is really great at talking to everyone which is what I wanted to be better at. So that has been a blessing. Our first day contacting together this young man came up to us because he works for unicef and the first thing sister hall said is you can talk to us if you'll listen to what we have to say. haha So long story short, we're meeting with him on tuesday. His name is Inus. I really hope things go well with him! Sunday we were out inviting people to church and we talked to this man for like 20 minutes. At the end of our conversation we asked if he lived in Odense and he said yes, in fact I live here with my husband. It took us off gaurd, but he was extremely nice and the conversation probably helped his view on mormons. At least I hope so.

So I'm pretty sure that in my first week with Sister Hall I have contacted more people than I did in my 6 weeks. It is a really neat thing talking to random people on the street and bearing testimony to them that they have a Father in Heaven who loves them and has a plan for them. I love it! 

Things are going well here. Danish is still really hard. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to be a missionary at this time and help the Lord in hastening his work. Oh how I love the gospel.

Thank you for all of your love and support!

Love Katherine