9/9/2013

Hej Alle! I hope everything is well with everyone! I'd like to start out today by thanking everyone for their support and their enthusiasm about missionary Work. It gives me great joy to hear and see all of the great missionary miracles happening everywhere because of the faith and excitement of the members. Keep up the good Work!

This week was pretty crazy with splits, zone training, lessons and the baptism of an 8 year old girl in the Ward. Literally every second was planned out for us. But, as it is in the life of a missionary, lessons fell through this week and not everything went quite as we had planned for it to go, but great Things come of those inconveniences.

One of these inconvenient moments happened when we were on the bus going to a members house for dinner. A lesson had fallen apart just before that, so we were a bit early coming to the area. We were sitting together on the bus in a Little area with four seats. A man got on the bus and took the fourth seat by us. He asked us why we were so happy. A missionary's favorite question! We explained to him who we were and why we were here. He really liked our answer and proceeded to tell us about how he was trying to find God in his life Again. As we talked (this was an extremely long bus ride) he told us about some of the trials he has been through in the past two years. He's had it pretty rough! This man broke Down crying in this conversation. We could tell that he was embarrassed by this, but we just comforted him and let him tell us what was going on. We talked to him about the plan of salvation and how God has a plan for every one of us, and that God loves him as an individual. He told us that it felt amazingly good when we told him that, so he invited us to come over and teach him more. We called him the NeXT day to set up the appointment and he was just so thrilled that we were serious about it! I love those tender moments like that. It makes me so excited to be a missionary and to bring people this glad message of the restored gospel.

One other story from this week. Saturday night my companion randomly fell ill. One minute she was fine, then the NeXT she had a really high fever. We decided to go in early so she could rest up. As she was getting ready for bed she had a sudden case of the chills. She was shaking so bad she couldn't even talk and could barely move. She almost passed out a couple of times, so Sis Ripplinger and I got her into bed. We took her temperature and it was 39.5 C. Thanks to the conversion Tool on our phone, we discovered that her temperature was 103 F. Not good! We got her chills to calm Down, then we called the mission nurse for help. She gave us a few Things to do to help, then made sure we were going to get a priesthood Blessing. We called the bishop WHO sent two close priesthood holders over. They gave her a Blessing and almost instantly she said she was feeling better. Her fever was still 103, but she was able to get to sleep after that. Søs Ripplinger and i didn't get much sleep that night because we were watching søs Orgill so closely. We had the night doctor's number out and ready just in case. But, Sunday morning, Søs Orgill woke up and felt 100%! No fever, nothing. her only complaint was that she was a little tired, but she was up and her happy, morning person self. That, to me, is a huge testimony of the power of the priesthood. There is no way that she could have gone from so sick with such a high fever, to feeling completely normal the NeXT morning. I am so grateful that we have access to the priesthood, literally God's power, here on the earth today. I feel so blessed that i can have access to that after just a phone call. It really is amazing that any worthy male WHO has made the baptismal covenants can administer that power. I am so grateful for that power in my life. It hit me this week just how amazing it is.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week this week!

Kærlighed,

Søster Erin Handley

 At the midevil festival with a fun German couple

My companions and i while we were waiting for a bus! Yay! Someone told us that we are like Napoleon ice cream. We've got Vanilla (me) Strawberry (Søs. Ripplinger) and chocolate (Søs Orgill) Fun! Haha

 Me next to a canon on the ramparts in Fredericia above the moat. SO cool!

The last is me with the meat Loaf i made all by myself with no recipe. I was pretty proud of myself haha

I hope you enjoy!

9/2/2013

This week was fantastic! We had so many miracles this week, and even squeezed in a fun day! It was fantastic!

First for the fun stuff. We got to go to a midevil festival this week. It was absolutely amazing! It took up almost a Whole block (When i say block, i mean bigger than temple Square sized block). They brought in dirt to cover up all the cement to make it as midevil as possible. Everyone there was dressed up, tourists and workers alike! My inner nerd came out. They were selling midevil wares everywhere. I almost bought a dress, but then decided that it's not missionary appropriate... too bad... My favorite part of the Whole thing was the jousting! I felt like i was in a knight's tale! It was fantastic! The knights did all of the jousting games and they held it like they would a real jousting tournament back in the 16th Century. The coolest part of the Whole thing was that a lot of the Buildings they were using were originally built in that era... awesome!

So that was fun. We got lots of fun Pictures and had a blast with the Whole thing.

This week we had one miracle story that i would like to share. IT starts off with quite the disapointment, which is why i think i like it so much. It's always darkest before the dawn, right? Well, anyway, we were a bit early to an appointment, so we decided to go visit a lady in the area who had previously rejected us. On our way, we saw one of our other investigators. We decided to go up and say hi. We were not expecting what came our way. He went from being so excited about our NeXT appointment when we last saw him, so telling us that he no longer wanted to meet with us! NO! We were devastated! We were so excited for his appointment, and we had such high hopes for him.

After getting dropped, we continued on to this lady's Apartment. we expected her to just reject us like last time, but when we knocked on the door, she was so excited to see us, and she let us in! We came in and began talking to her. after about 30 seconds she broke Down crying. We didn't quite understand what was going on, but then she explained to us that she had just gotten in from the doctors where they told her that the cancer she has has spread to most of her vital organs. They don't know how she's still alive, but they told her not to expect to live any longer. But, she said that as soon as the doctors told her the news, she said she knew that there was a reason that she was still alive and there was something that was supposed to happen before she died. When we knocked on her door, she knew we would be the ones to help her. Well, we wanted to make another appointment with her, but the NeXT week was completely filled up. Literally every minute of every day has some sort of appointment or training or something. But, we remembered that we had just been dropped by our other investigator, which opened up an hour of the week. We offered to come back that day and time, and she said that was the only day she was home from the hospital. She is so excited and anxious to learn about the gospel and to see how we can help her. I am amazed at how the Whole situation worked out. Heavenly Father really does know his children and He knows exactly what they need at exactly what time. I am so  humbled by the Whole experience.

Well, i hope that everyone has a great week! Look for the tender mercies from our father in heaven and remember them. Love you all!

Kærlighed,

Søster Handley 

8/26/2013

This week has been a bit up and Down, but we'll focus on the positive this week :)

So, the great news. We have a baptismal date! :D I am crazy excited! It's with a lady that Sister Orgill and Hadley had met with once or twice before transfers happened. We've been calling her and texting her to keep in contact and answer questions. We invited her to the baptism of an 8 year old boy in the Ward and she loved it! We invited her to be baptized and she got so excited! We set a date for the 21st of September. She went around and told everyone that she was going to be baptized and that she was so excited! The only problem now is that the Dane's go all out with their baptisms, and i don't know if we missionaries can go all out like that for her. They had crazy amounts of food and a laminated program. It was crazy! But, i think she's just so excited to get baptized and recieve the holy ghost that i don't think it will matter.

So, the second counselor in the bishopric is crazy good with music. He can play just about any instrument he picks up! We had dinner with his Family last night, and they showed us all of their musical talent. It was amazing! As we were talking to them he mentioned that a band here in Denmark called him and they want him to be their pianist. Crazy! They're the Fenders, or the Fenors or something like that. It was pretty exciting. OUr second counselor might be famous!

THis week we had a tender mercy. Two, actually, in the same day. First, we were trying to find the houses of two less actives which were supposed to be on the same street. Their houses didn't exist, so we stopped to ask a lady WHO was outside if she could help us. She was so sweet! She and her daughter dropped everything they were doing to help us. They even ran inside to Google map it for us so we could see where they lived. It ended up being on the other side of town. It was so sweet! They were very helpful to us. Then, as we were leaving their house, we went to catch the bus. The bus stop we were trying to get to was a ways Down the street, but the bus was already coming! So we ran to catch the bus. We were definitely not going to make it, so the bus driver stopped and let us in. We got on, thanked him, of course, then we realized that the stop we were trying to get to didn't even exist! The bus driver was just kind and picked us up out of the kindness of his Heart. I was so touched by the generousity of both the bus driver and the Family that helped us out. I love all of the tender mercies our Heavely Father gives us :)

I hope everyone has a great week this week! Thanks for all of the letters and love and support i've gotten from everyone!

Kærlighed,

Søster Handley

8/19/2013

Hej Alle!

I hope you all had a wonderful week this week! Mine was pretty crazy with transfers and all that comes with that. Too many train rides with too much stuff!

This week i got transfered to Vejle. I am in another tri with Søster Ripplinger from Brigham city (she served in Odense before and was in my MTC Group) and Søster Orgill from Texas (she served in Vejle and was in the MTC Group right before mine, but came to Denmark one week before). I can tell that we are going to have a wonderful companionship and get a lot of Work done.

Vejle is wonderful! It is absolutely beautiful and a bit more modern that Aalborg. Some parts of it actually remind me of a really green salt lake. The members here are just perfect! They are all so excited for missionary Work! On sunday they all sought us out, introduced themselves and made sure we knew that we were welcome in the Ward. Most of them offered their services in one way or another. It was fantastic! I was just blown away by their support and excitement.

Yesterday i had the oppurtunity of speaking in sacrament meeting along with Søster Ripplinger and an elder that was just transfered here too. They told us 5 min before sacrament meeting started. Agh! And guess WHO was first. THis sister! So, i got up there, not really knowing what to say. But, when i started introducing myself, the Footsteps poem came to my mind. I happen to have a copy of it in Danish from Søster Christensen, so i pulled it out and read it (i just hope everyone could understand). The poem is about this man WHO has a dream that he could look back on his entire life and see that there were two sets of footsteps in the sand through most of his life. Those footsteps were the Savior's footsteps. But, the man noticed that during the hårdest parts of his life, there were only one set of footsteps. The man asks the Savior why this is since the Savior promises to be with us always. The Savior answers and says that during the times when there were only one set of footsteps, the Savior was carrying the man. I've read the poem a million times, in English, because i just love it. But, when i read it just then, in Danish, it hit me harder than ever before. All of a sudden i could look back on my life and realize all those times that were so hard for me and when i felt so alone, I wasn't. The Savior was right there, carrying me through my trials and helping me overcome. There was no way i could have gotten through some of those Things all by myself. The savior was the one helping me, carrying me through when i couldn't on my own. It was a great testimony builder for me to read and understand that.

Vejle has also come with a few interesting experiences. Like all the cute Little frogs we find! We've taken lots of Pictures with frogs :)

One day we got to the door of one of our investigators. We were there for a lesson and we were all ready and confident for this lesson. We knocked on his door and he yelled for us to come in. So, we opened the door and started in, but then we looked up and saw him in his bathroom door. He had just gotten out of the shower and decided to greet us. AGH! So we hurried and shut the door(didn't see anything, just so you know). A few seconds later he opened the door back up, this time in a towel and ushered us in. We just walked in with our eyes to the floor and waited for him to get changed. haha Welcome to Denmark! It was quite the experience! The good thing is, we had a great lesson with him and felt the spirit. He's excited for our lesson NeXT time, and he promises to be fully clothed before our appointment NeXT time-

Sorry about all the random Capitals. THis computer has a Little auto-correct thing that capitalizes and changes the spelling every time it thinks it needs to be changed. Kind of annoying, but nothing i can do about it since everything is in Danish haha

I hope everyone has a great week! Work hard and enjoy your summer!

Kærlighed,

Søster Erin Handley

To start with the questions:

Selina wants to know just how home sick you are?

Honestly, not very much. It's not that i don't miss you all and don't think about you, it's just that i'm here and i need to be here. IT just wouldn't feel right being home right now. Not to mention we are WAY too busy to even think! haha

Have you celebrated any holidays yet?

 We have celebrated Holidays like the 4th of July, but none of the Danish Holidays yet. There have been Danish Holidays while we've been here, but they're all celebrated late at night and may not be entirely missionary appropriate. But, once October-November comes that will change.

Have you been able to see the ocean much?

 We have driven by the ocean quite a bit, but haven't really seen it too much. We're much closer to the ocean here, so if we find a way there, we will definitely visit.

Have you seen many farms?

 There are farms everywhere! Right as you get outside the main city, it turns into farmland. Our Ward covers a lot of farms right now too. It's called the Fredericia Ward. We see lots of lambs and cows everywhere :) I like to tell people that we live on a farm and they love that, but when i say farm they think of a dairy farm or a potato farm, so i tell them it's a for fun farm :)

Do we send letters to a new address?

 I have only sent you the address to the mission office. They take all of the letters you send to there and forward them on to me wherever i am. I figured that is easiest for everyone and it only delays Things by a day.

How do you like your new companions?

 My new companions are great! one is from Brigham City and the other is from Texas. We get along really well and we all cam to the land at the same time, so that is fun. So far we're working together really well and i can tell that we'll get a lot of Work done. Oh, and they both love peanut butter :) This will be a great companionship! :)

Vejle is great. THe Ward is fantastic and they are all pumped up for missionary Work!  We live on the biggest hill in Vejle, and the hill is actually pretty big. Crazy! It's so steep that it is illegal to ride your bike on it haha. A member of the Ward wants to go to legoland with us one p-day. After we buy our bikes i think we're going to do it. She is the only member in her Family so it would be perfect to go with them.

I love you! Have a great week!

Kærlighed,

Erin

8/12/2013

Hej Alle!

I hope that this email finds you all well and happy. :)

We got transfer calls this week. We all know where we will be for the next 6 or so weeks of our lives :) That's happy! Søster Bishop is staying in Aalborg and Søster Hadley from our MTC group will be moving up from Vejle to be her companion. I will be moving down to Vejle to be companions with Søster Orgill and Søster Ripplinger. So, Søster Hadley and I will be switching places! haha The ward members are going to have so much fun with that! I will be in another tri because president says i'm good with working with people. This will be 8 companions in just over 4 months. Crazy! I don't know if i'll ever be in a normal companionship! haha I go down to Vejle Tuesday night.

This week was crazy busy! We had apointments every day this week, multiple a day. We haven't been busy like this for my whole mission! It's great! We haven't had any time to even think! IT has been fantastic. I hope it will be like this in Vejle! We met with Dorte again this week. She is such a strong person with such a great faith in Christ. The problem is that she doesn't think that she could be important as an individual to someone so important and so powerful. She's scared that it's too good to be true. But, i know in our lesson with her she felt God's love for her. Now it's up to her to recognize and accept. We also had lessons with Viktoria and a new investigator named Søren. Our lesson with Viktoria went really well. Søren is a new investigator we got off of a potential sheet. He is perfect! He was so open and so willing to read and to try out Moroni's promise in the last chapter of the Book of Mormon. Sadly, i will no longer be a part of teaching any of these wonderful people. But, there will be more wonderful people waiting for me in Vejle.

On thursday we had our zone training. Amazing, like always. It was all about listening and letting the Holy Ghost be the teacher. It reminded me of a quote given in a talk in the MTC (i can't remember who the original author of the quote was). "The problem with most teachers is that they think they are the teachers". So true! We can talk and talk all we want, but it doesn't do anyone any good unless the spirit is there and we let the spirit have silence so he can talk. It was an amazing conference. 

After conference we went bowling. It was a blast! Although, i did think it was kind of funny that we are all the way in Denmark with so many cool things to see all over the place, and we went bowling. haha But it was good fun. It was kind of strange, though, since we wore jeans to go bowling and we looked and felt like normal people... so strange... haha It was a blast! 

And thus was my week. I hope everyone has a great week this week! Work hard and be happy! Love you all!

Kærlighed,

8/5/2013

Oh boy, what a week! Lots of cool things happened this week and now everyone is coming home from summer vacation so now our schedule is going from empty to full! Yay! Every missionary's dream!

First little miracle of the week: We found gifflars for 2 kroner this week. 2 KRONER! That's unheard of! Usually one bag of gifflars, on sale, is 10 Kroner! I was so excited! Gifflars are a Swedish snack. They are like mini cinamon rolls, except a million times better. They have them in cinamon, chocolate, blueberry and, my favorite, vanilla. I was ecstatic that i could buy 5 bags of gifflars for the price of one. :D

This week we had an appointment with a girl named maria.She is so ready! Last sunday she paid fast offerings because she is not a member yet and wanted to pay tithing in some way. Crazy! She went to Festinord this year(an efy for young adults in the scandanavian countries). She was telling us at this eating appointment that she didn't want to leave because she wanted to feel like that all the time. We told her "you can when you have the gift of the holy ghost!" She really liked the sound of that! And, it gets better. She asked us to bring a Norwegian Book of Mormon. We found out that she wants to give it to a non-member cousin! She's not even a member and she's doing missionary work! The only problem now is that her mother doesn't want us to push her too hard so we can't invite her to baptism yet. Her mother is a member. Gah! But, her mom is a great member missionary. SHe's given us many refferals, so i can't complain. I can see that she just wants her daughter to be ready to accept because she wants her to have it in her life so bad. 

Another cool story is that we found a new investigator totally by accident! We were trying to find a less active's house, but i accidentally read the address wrong. We went to number 10 instead of 27. Kind of a dumb mistake, but totally inspired! They want us to come back and teach them about how we can be with our families forever! It's amazing how guidance comes and we don't even realize it.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! Thanks for all the letters and emails of support from everyone! 

Kærlighed,

Søster Erin Handley 

7/29/2013

Hej alle!

This week was a pretty crazy week! Sister Christensen was on splits with all the sisters on Jylland and Fyn this week on splits because she is sister training leader.(Jylland is the big part of Denmark that attaches to Germany and Fyn is the island between Jylland and Sjealland, where Copenhagen is) So, that meant that Sister Bishop and i were all alone for a whole week. Agh! On top of that, we had all of two pappointments planned for the whole week. Two! Sister Bishop and i had to start with literally nothing and build up from that. Oh boy was it hard work, but we did it! We had lots of neat experiences too, like when we contacted people in the park and were able to communicate with them. We got turned down every time, but we never gave up :)

One neat experience we had was with a new investigator. The Elders found her and got her as a new investigator, but she is in our area and she is a single woman so it's easier and more practical for us to teach her. I am so glad that we have the oppurtunity to teach her! She is an inspiration to me! This lady has slowly been losing use of her legs over the past year or so because of a surgery gone bad. Now she is in a wheelchair and can't walk more than a couple of steps. You'd think that someone who went from 100% mobility to almost none in such a short amount of time would have a really hard time with it and would be bitter about it, but she is the happiest person i have ever met! Her attitude is that she can't control what's going on, so why worry? And God trusts her to have this trial in her life, so she feels honored that He can use her in her position. All she wants is to be able to help the people around her and she doesn't expect anything back. Amazing! As we sat and talked to her, she basically taught us a lesson instead of the other way around. Her knowledge of the scriptures was amazing and her understanding blew my mind! She was the sweetest lady with the biggest heart. I am so excited because we get to meet with her again tonight. I want to be like her one day and have the amazing attitude that she has.

This week we helped with a wedding. A couple in the ward was divorced a couple of years ago and got re-married on Saturday. We helped get everything ready for the wedding and reception. They had it outside the church under a few pretty white tents. It wasn't a big wedding, but it was absolutely gorgeous! And the ceremony was amazing. It was so cool to see two people who have had such a hard marriage re-commit to each other and to start fresh. They have three beautiful young daughters and now they are all one family together. I don't think i've ever seen a more beautiful sight than seeing them all standing together after the wedding. They got some really cute pictures of all of them after when it had started to rain. They were all under one big umbrella laughing at the rain. It was super smbolic because in Denmark, it is lucky for it to rain on your wedding day because weddings are joyful and if you can laugh and have joy in the rain, you can get through the hard times together. IT was perfect! I wish them the best of luck.

Well, that was my week. I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Kærlighed,

Søster Erin Handley

 To answer your quetsions...

What kinds of food are you eating?

I am eating lots of Danish foods, like pork patties wish gravy, kartofler (potatoes, but they have mini potatoes here. Love them!), amazing hamburgers (they make their buns and pickles fresh, and all of the greens are fresh out of the garden), hotdogs (not like american hot dogs), and yesterday we ate some vietnamese food. So good! The only problem is my skirts that used to be big on me are becoming smaller and smaller... haha Hopefully we can bike in my next area so i can fit into my clothes!

Have you eaten anything you don’t like, like Mexican or sea food?

I've liked most of the stuff we've eaten, actually. Haven't really had any sea food, and the mexican food here is not mexican at all, so i don't think i can really count it haha

Do you have any good stories?

This week while i was helping get the yard for the reception ready, they gave me a flame thrower-like-thing to burn all the weeds inbetween the cracks of the sidewalk. So much fun! They don't worry about fires here because it's so wet, so i went burn crazy! It was great! I can't really think of any other stories right now. We've kind of had to take it a little easy this week because of sister Bishop's back. I'll let you know if i have any crazy stories for you :)

I'm glad the house didn't flood and i hope you don't have any more problems with it! I kind of liked our basement... Good thing we've got great neighbors!

It's been pretty warm here these past couple of weeks. It wouldn't be too bad, but they don't have air conditioners for their houses... so it's miserable. It's in the 80's i would say (it's hard to tell because we don't have a thermometer, and nobody measures in farenheit here). Plus, the humidity is KILLING me! So it's a good thing i bought some summer shirts in missouri!

Thanks for keeping me updated on all that Tooele news! Sounds like everyone's all ready for stock show. Fun! And the Boekwegs really do have a full farm going on! haha I bet Courtney is loving it!

Thanks for all of your support! I hope you all have a wonderful week! Let me know how everything goes with stock show and all of that fun!