Baptisms on the Horizon...

Denmark II - making a free slideshow

Excerpts from last three letters:

Hey family,
It's crazy how fast time is going by, doesn't seem like I've been here a month already. Det har været bare en anden travl uge af arbejde igen. Men, vi har lavet en Dåbesdate med en af vores undersøger. Det vil være på April 7th hvis det al går godt ind til dengang. Thought I'd throw a little Danish in there, probably still written wrong but you guys can probably Google it and figure it out. This week has been a lot of fun though with tons of work. Our area has been very busy since I started with Stoffey when I got here. We've had pretty good success just this and last week especially. We've been able to teach quite a few lessons on the spot, and have given out tons of books. Not sure if I told you guys, but our area was "Area of the Week" last week. We're pretty well rolling right now. Actually I should say Stoffey is rolling right now, because basically all I'm doing is following him everywhere like a dog. But, the Danish is still improving. I'm not to the point where I could converse easily yet, but I can pick up most things that are in my vocabulary. Today's been an awesome P-day so far, and sorry this is such a short letter but we're in a hurry to get to our next destination on our "castle tour." We started at Frederiksborg Castle, then headed up here to Helsingør which has Kronborg castle. I would say Kronborg is probably the coolest thing I've seen since coming here. You can see Sweden pretty easily from the waterfront, I would guess it's about a mile away. I've been looking on family search for some potential gravesites to go check out. Still looking for some closer to my area, but we have a ton in Vordingborg that are buried down there. All the food here is good... REALLY good. I don't really eat meals anymore, I just eat all day. Everyone that watches me eat wonders how I'm not 400 pounds.

"So next P-day we're going to head into Roskilde to look at the dome church. On top of that I found a huge line of ancestors that are buried in Svogerslev just outside of Roskilde in the Svogerslev kirkegård so we're going to check that out next P-day. The line is from Charlotte Petersen on Dad's side. Her mom, Flora was born in Roskilde and her Dad's line which are the Johansens are all from Svogerselv for a few generations. So I wrote down all the names and years and we'll go look for their headstones on Monday. It's way nice, we have Alle Zone bus and train passes so we can basically go anywhere around greater Copenhagen on P-days.

Hej Familie!
It was good to hear from all of you this week, sounds like there's tons going on at home. It's only been 3 months and you're remodeling a bathroom, buying a basketball hoop and a car. I'm not going to recognize our house when I get home. It's been another busy week here with tons going on, I'll make sure I get it all in this letter for you guys. The Danish is slowly improving everyday, it definitely gets frustrating sometimes with how slow learning a language can be and how long it takes but I can see some serious progress at the same time when I look back to my first day here. We've met a ton of people this week contacting, and have a few new investigators. One is from Africa, I think Zimbabwe and is very positive. This last Friday was her first sit-down lesson with us and it went amazing. The spirit was pretty well filling the room and she started crying when we talked to her about the Plan of Salvation. I would say it was definitely the most spiritual lesson I've had on the mission. By the end of the lesson we brought up baptism and set a tentative date for June 9th. She said that she would like to be baptized but is going to Africa for 3 weeks starting this Saturday so we're hoping to get her reading out of the Book of Mormon while she's gone. Her name is Anita, but that may be spelled wrong, that's just how it sounds. She doesn't speak any English, just Portuguese and Danish. It kind of stinks with the timing of her trip and everything but hopefully she maintains interest, that's why we're going to ask her to read while she's gone. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

The other investigator with the date is Mr. F. He's been working with missionaries for a long time, and this isn't his first baptismal date. It's been tough with his health to get him to church, but he tells us every lesson that he knows it's true. The date is still set in April, but will probably have to be pushed back again, he ended up in the hospital this week unfortunately. He has a lung condition that I don't know the name of, but it makes it tough for him to breath at times and very tough to come to things like church where he's sitting up-right for a long time. We had a fast yesterday for him though, and we're just hoping that we can work something out with him to get him baptized. He's very interested in doing temple work for his wife, who passed away a year ago. That seems to have been his motivation to keep trying to be baptized, so hopefully we can get it done.

I haven't played the piano yet, but will in Zone conference this week. The ward choir director asked me to play on Easter Sunday, where there's going to be tons of non-member guests that the members will be inviting, so I'll make sure it's good. I'm surprised at how few people play the piano here. I thought if anything, more people here would play than in the states but it's actually fewer. I just noticed that my English is rapidly declining because of all the Danish cramming I've been doing for 3 months. Sorry if there's a trillion commas in this letter. Glad you guys enjoyed the Danish candy, that stuff is amazing. I haven't eaten anything I didn't like here, it's been awesome. The only problem is that I'm eating about 4 times what my companion eats. And according to him, I've been forcing him to eat more because I'm always eating.

That's crazy that Sterling's leaving already, tell him good luck for me. I'm stoked for him, that's going to be an awesome mission. Yesterday we had an interesting sacrament meeting, the area 70 from Sweden was there, and President Andersen was there with all of the Stake Presidency. The area president spoke Swedish and had to have the temple president translate for him which was cool to hear. I was surprised at how different the language is from Danish. I basically could pick out maybe one word from each sentence. I wouldn't have thought Swedish would be that much different. The weird thing is that Norwegian and Danish are almost the exact same language, and I've heard that it's possible for a Dane and a Norwegian to converse with each other staying in their own language. I thought that was pretty cool, the area President was Olsson. Well, that pretty well covers the week, I read all of your emails while writing this, so hopefully I got everything you all wanted to hear. Thanks for all the letters you send me, I'll work on that Book of Mormon insert for you Mom. I'll let you know when I give it out, that will be cool. Don't worry about the English, pretty well everyone here speaks it very well. Talk to you next week, love you.
Ældste Swenson

Having a Great Time!

What's up family,
Just another P-Day here, it's been an awesome week so hopefully I can get everything into this email. First, we had splits with Allerød on Tuesday so I went up there with Elder Greenhalgh. It was a fun time, had a typical full day of work in their area, went to a couple appointments with their investigators and did some contacting for a few hours after. I'm pretty jealous of their area too, they have Frederiksborg castle and a couple others that I forgot the names of already, but they get to drive by Frederiskborg about 10 times each day on the way to their appointments and everything. So far I would say that's been my favorite thing to see here is the castles, I think we might be heading to one today if I can find a way to get the others off their computers to come with.

This last Saturday we went on splits again, but this time it was with a member in our Ward. His name is Nickolai, he's almost 18 and is pretty set on going on a mission. Basically I went with him and Elder Stoffey went solo as we contacted down Frederikssundvej for a mile or two. That was the first time I was forced to take the lead in the contacting and everything which actually turned out to be really fun. It was a good practice in Danish, as I had to repeat my words about a trillion times while we were contacting but it ended up going very well. We gave out 3 Mormon's Bøger, which were my first three given out while I was actually doing all the talking. The language can still be a blur most of the time, but I'm learning to work with what I know. It's fun to just sit back sometimes on the trains and busses here and listen to other people talking, trying to pick everything out of what they say. I can see how tons of missionaries can be stressing out of their minds when they get to the field, especially when it's foreign and they're not familiar with the language, but I'm just trying to enjoy it all I can.

Elder Stoffey and I gave a lesson in church yesterday which went well. After church we pounded about 5 bottles of Cocio which tasted amazing. I would say that's my favorite drink so far up here. It's chocolate milk in a bottle, and usually the cheapest drink in the stores here so we'll buy about 10 bottles a week and go Mike Tyson on them. It's been fun living in our apartment, I think I told you guys, but we have 4 missionaries in there. I think there's only one other in the mission like that, usually it's just you and your companion. The other two are the zone leaders Elder Veach and Bailey. I'm pretty sure Bailey sent Mom an email the first week here which I thought was funny. If he sounded special at all, that's just how he jokes around. He's actually fairly normal for the most part. I'm just glad they're all cool guys, we've been getting along very well for the most part. My trainer is doing good, we had a pretty confrontational weekly planning session last Friday at Mr Chicken. There was actually someone there taking pictures of our fight, so I went ahead and posted them on my Picasa page. That's been our favorite place to eat out, usually we'll do our planning their each Saturday while we eat Cheeseburgers. It's a great time, and already has become a tradition.

Tomorrow we're going to be doing a few call backs from some positive contacts we ran into last week which could lead to some new investigators. It's going well with our current investigators, we have a couple very positive ones that we both feel good about. The big thing has been getting them to church, which is tough here when the building is about a 30 minute drive from most people. I'll let you all know when anything huge happens with any of them, I'm excited for most of our investigators though, I think they all have tons of potential, it's just been a matter of helping them progress further. I would say the majority of them have already said they know the Book of Mormon is true which has been very encouraging, and I've been surprised with how many people we've been finding on the streets who have an interest in the church. There's definitely people here that have been prepared for the word, it's just our job to find and help them. It's exciting to get out every day, I would say one of my favorite jobs here already is just straight-up contacting. We get to talk to almost 100 new people each day here, out of which we'll usually have a conversation or even a lesson with a quarter of them. And there's no shortage of people to work with. There's about 5 million people in the country and only 40 missionaries here at one time. That means there's loads of people who haven't even heard of the gospel yet, which gives us some responsibility every day. I'm stoked for this next week, hopefully it's another good one, I'll let you all know how it goes. Thanks for everything, love you guys.
Ældste Swenson

Week Two in Denmark

Hey Dad,
That's awesome to hear the good news from home. It's crazy to hear about friends heading out to the field, makes me feel really old. And the baptism sounds like it was awesome. It's going really well in my area. We have 9 investigators currently, which is one over the mission's standards of excellence. One we picked up my second day here. He's a Danish man who works as a moving truck driver all around Europe. We stopped in and talked for about 15 minutes and he was very accepting of everything we talked about. He had been way busy after that, so we were worried he lost interest, but last Friday he called and said he wanted to hear more and invited us over tonight for dinner at his apartment. So hopefully it keeps going well with him.

The other investigators are progressing pretty well for the most part. We're working with one in particular, he had a baptism date set, but wasn't able to make it to church because of a health condition. He is in his late 70's. He has accepted everything very well, it's just been hard to get him to church. There's a really interested couple we're teaching from Poland. They speak perfect English so we have English lessons with them. The husband is one of the smartest people I've ever met, but still believes in the Godhead which is pretty amazing. The big challenge with them is getting them to identify what promptings come from God and what our minds make up. He actually was taught by my MTC teacher, Brother Pullan for a while then stopped seeing missionaries until my companion Elder Stoffey visited them. He has nothing against being baptized, but wants to learn more beforehand. Those are probably the more positive investigators we have, a couple others are taking the messages very well but are still newer so I'll let you know on them as it goes. It's exciting to watch the ones that have a desire to learn more and to be more faithful. It's pretty rare in Europe for people to have that desire, but we've been able to find some.

The everyday contacting hasn't been too bad either. We usually knock doors in upgangs (apartments) or just regular neighborhoods. Most people don't want anything to do with the church, or God for that matter. But, we've been able to give a few books out and have picked up three investigators since I've been here. The area has around 300,000 people, so our strategy is just to get out as much as possible and give as many people we can an opportunity. The Danish isn't perfect yet, but I'm able to understand the people more everyday and I can communicate decently enough to do my job. It's going to be fun if I can get fluent enough to sound like one of them. I've heard of a few missionaries being asked where in Denmark they were from. For now though, people just ask where in America I come from. Hopefully I get there, that would be fun. It's going good up here, let Mom know I'm still looking for a present for her birthday. It turns out I won't need the $600 for a bike here. All the areas are either car or public transit. And the areas where you could use a bike, the old missionaries have left bikes. On top of that none of the missionaries use them, so that will be good to not have to pay that. If I can find enough of it, I'm going to send you all some chocolate from up here. The chocolate is pretty well amazing, along with all the other food. There's bakeries on about every corner that pump out fresh pastries all day. On my Picasa Web album I took a picture of a huge one that we bought. It will be a miracle if I don't come home a fatty. I'm just hoping Gar doesn't beat me up when I see him next. He needs to lay off the steroids, that's kind of scary he's already 6 feet tall. Glad everything's going well, let me know if you guys want to hear anything else about the investigators or anything about the country. Love you all,
Ældste Swenson

Denmark is Awesome!

Week one Denmark - slideshow dvd

Dear Family,
Well it's been about two weeks since I've been able to email you guys, but we finally made it here. The jet-lag was pretty bad, we basically lost a night of sleep on the way over. We left SLC at 8:30 AM and flew over the atlantic during the night, and I ended up getting maybe an hour of sleep on the way. We got to Copenhagen about 9:30 AM and we were all dead tired. We met the President and his wife with the AP's, then took a car-tour of Copenhagen where we stopped at a chapel with the original Kristus sculpture like the one in the visitor's center in SLC. After that we contacted for an hour in one of the outdoor mall things in Copenhagen, I forgot what they call them here already. That was actually really fun even though I couldn't understand much of what anyone said back to us. Later we went to Frederiksborg Castle just north of the city and the President took us on a tour through the inside. There's a pretty famous chapel in there, and a room call the "prayer" room where the king would say his prayers. The walls were covered in Carl Bloch's paintings, probably 20 or so.

It was pretty well freezing that day, the airport said -3 or something, but it was windy and snowy which made it even colder. It's definitely colder here than in Utah so far, the humidity makes your entire face freeze which is very pleasant, or dejlig as we say here (delightful). My trainer is Elder Stoffey, who I met the second day after we had dinner and breakfast at the mission home. He's a cool guy, from Colorado Springs and has only been here for 8 months which is pretty new for a trainer. We got on the train to Ballerup after our training, which is my first area. It's a little suburb area northwest or Copenhagen. It's been fun so far, we started with 8 investigators and actually picked up a new one my second day here. We were knocking doors in apartments and he was interested and let us in for about 20 minutes. He has lived here his whole life. We pretty well taught him the first lesson and left a Book of Mormon for him to read for next time, hopefully we'll meet with him again this week. It's about what I expected overall, there's tons of things that are new to me here, but really it doesn't feel too much different from home. The members here are awesome, we have had dinner appointments with them every night so far and they all cook amazing stuff. I'll send you a picture of my first wienerbrød, the thing was the size of about 4 plates and covered in chocolate. It was tasty, and I pretty well ate the entire thing right there.

Our apartment is pretty nice, there's actually 4 of us in it, it's me and Elder Stoffey with the Zone leaders for the area, Elders Veach and Bailey. They're pretty cool guys, and there hasn't been a dull moment so far, pretty entertaining. Yesterday, my wonderful companion offered to have me speak in sacrament meeting. I figured I would go ahead and do it, and to just make sure I mentioned that I'm a noob here in Denmark up front. It actually went very well, I just talked on Missionary work for about 5 minutes and a few people told me after that it was easy to understand which was a good sign. Our meeting house (menighed) is in Søborg, which is about a 15 minute drive from the apartment, so it's an adjustment to having a stake center in our back yard at home. Today we played basketball in the Stake Center in Søborg, I pretty well destroyed them and dunked it a few times. Hopefully one of the Elders on Sjælland is good and will come humble me a little. We're going to check out Nyhavn in a few minutes, which is going to be awesome. It's that picture on the front of that Danish book I got from the library a while ago with the red and yellow buildings over the canal. With our train passes, we can pretty well go anywhere in Sjæalland on P-days which is going to be awesome. My companion is awesome and actually wants to do cool things so we'll probably go to some castles and check out the viking ship musuem in Roskilde if we make it there. Well, it's been awesome so far, the work is going good. Let me know if you want to know anymore about whatever here. That's about all I can think of to write about right now, but there's probably a ton I missed. Well, Elder Bailey just told me he's going to send you an email, so hopefully it's good what he says. He's an interesting guy, as is my companion and Elder Veach. Like I said, I haven't been bored yet. You'll probably figure out why when you read his email to you. Well, let me know how you're all doing, I'll send you all some billeder from my first week.
-Ældste Swenson

Safe and sound in Denmark!

This morning we received the following email along with these photos from the mission office:

Greetings from the Denmark Copenhagen Mission!

We are sending you an email to let you know that your missionary arrived in Denmark, safe and sound.

We are very excited to have him here. He looks excited to work and serve the Lord in Denmark. Thank you so much for preparing your missionary for this time.

Missionaries in the Denmark Copenhagen Mission usually have their preparation days on Monday. They will email on their next Monday. Just know that they are here and safe.

When you send packages: A) send them to the office at the address below. B) Do not send a package worth more than 50 dollars, or they may have to pay an additional tax to receive it. Missionaries love to get mail. All mail comes to the mission office and we forward it to them. The Danish Mail will no longer let us forward packages from here. If you need to get something to your missionary in a hurry, have him give you the address where he is currently serving. A problem with this is that he may have a transfer before he receives the package. Make sure that you visit with your missionary about future transfer dates and when you are sending a package. Otherwise, send it to the mission office and we will get it to them at our monthly Zone Conference, Specialized Training, or when someone is traveling to that part of the mission.

His permanent address is:

Elder Kenneth Swenson
Danish Copenhagen Mission Office
Borups Allé 128, 1 tv
2000 Frederiksberg
Denmark

Elder Swenson will be serving in Ballerup with Elder Stoffey
His current address is
Slettebjergvej 2, st. th
2750 Ballerup
Denmark

The trainers are the best of the best! Your missionary will have an amazing trainer that will help start off his mission in the right way! We hope all is well with you. Have a wonderful day!

Denmark Copenhagen Mission

One Week from Today...Elder Swenson will be in Denmark

[This is Elder Swenson with Elder Maughan from Montana, who was called to Iowa. "Funny kid," says Elder Swenson!]
Hej familie!
Jeg er så spent for Danmark lige nu, jeg kunne godt lide at flue derover idag! It's crazy that I've been here for 8 weeks now, it only feels like I've been here for half of that.....Tell President Morrison that Gordon Pont is my roommate here at the MTC! He is going to Vancouver, Washington.That was awesome to hear about Sterling's call, I'm way excited for him.

Something that's going to be amazing in Denmark is the castles up there. It sounds like Denmark was the headquarters of Scandinavia, and was usually where the king and queen lived. You know that statue of Christ in the visitor's center downtown? I didn't know this, but the original is in a cathedral in Copenhagen which we'll get to see our first day up there. ... I did some more family search stuff, and it's pretty cool, there's a line of ancestors on Dad's side who come from Scandinavian royalty and lived on Bornholm for about 200-300 years. Family search had the address of where they were buried, so I looked it up on Google Earth here. Outside of that, there's another huge line of "Pedersen's" who lived in Jylland and Sjælland. And another was from Odense, so we've had family live all over the country.

...The language is going surprisingly well right now. We took the LSA's again. I think I told you I got a 4.5 on the first one. This last one I jumped up to 5.5 which felt pretty good. Our teachers tell us that the average missionary is around a "4" when they head out so I guess I'm doing alright. Either way, I already know the first week is going to be insane, basically no more English for 2 years. That probably won't settle in until I get up there, but it'll be fun more than anything. Well, that's pretty much it for now. Not too exciting this week, we're just all ready to go. I'll just plan on talking to you all on Monday, hopefully I can get a phone for long enough.
Jeg elsker jer!
-Æelste Swenson

Vi fik vores rejseplaner idog!

Shrimp plans??? Elder Swenson is writing to us in Danish, and I have no idea what he is saying. When I first plugged the above sentence into Google translate, it came back as "We got our shrimp plans!" But it is actually, "We got our travel plans!" For some reason the second time I entered it, it worked.

Some goofy pics of the mishes...I got a letter and pics in the mail today :) :)

From left to right: Elder Petersen (Idaho Falls), Elder Swenson (what a McStud), his companion (or minkammerat) Elder Holyoak (Pocatello, ID), and Elder Christensen (Sandy, UT but went to Brighton HS).

Love that boy!