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Hey everyone!

It has been a pretty good Christmas week for us.

Elder Hunt and I were able to do a lot for the members here over the past week. We have had a hard time finding and keeping investigators, but there has been a lot of good less active work to do here. We had breakfast yesterday with one of them and it was great! 

We had splits with the Frederiksberg Elders earlier this week and that was good. I was able to go with Elder Merril and we had a good lesson with MaryAnn. He is a great district leader and he is great at making you feel comfortable and happy. 

We also had splits with the APs, and that was good. I was with Elder Ericksen and we got a lot done. We visited a less active part member family that he knew from when he was here and we set up an appointment with them for the next day, which went really well.

We had Christmas zone conference which was a great time and I enjoyed the trainings a lot as well. We got to see Moana and had some great food.

On Saturday we got transfer calls and I found out I will be leaving Taastup to go to Kolding and Elder Saviano will be my new companion. I am grateful for the time I have had here in Taastrup and this transfer with Elder Hunt. He is a great missionary and friend. I hope I was able to help him half as much as he helped me. I am looking forward to Kolding with Elder Saviano. He is an amazing missionary and I have learned a lot from him serving around him before. It should be a great transfer.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I hope you will have a great new year. 

Council with the Lord as you set your new years resolutions and he will help you set goals and motivate you to be a better person.

I love you all! Have a good week.

Elder Smith

Hey Mom!!!

I love you! I'm glad you got my package in time. Sorry I forgot to slip in the letters.

I got your package and I loved it. Thank you so much!

I didn't end up making Cinammon swirl bread, because we had breakfast with a less active on Christmas and he wanted risengrød. I learned to make that though and it turned out pretty good.

That is so cool that you did so cool with light the world. Thanks for being such a good example and an awesome missionary.

I love you lots and lots. Thanks for skype yesterday. Have a great week!

Love Elder Smith

Dear dad! 

It has been a great Christmas and it was so good to see you all. 

That is cool that you got to go Christmas shopping for those little boys. I'm sure they were super happy and grateful. Happy Anerversary! Your marriage is getting old! Haha Good job serving the waitress :)

I like musical sacrament meetings. Music is one of my favorite ways to bring the spirit. I am proud of Cooper that is super good he could get ordained.
I am excited for this next transfer in Kolding with Elder Saviano. It sounds like a cool area and I really like Elder Saviano. I don't like the feeling that I don't have much time left on the mission. I don't think about it so much, but the members and other missionaries bring it up all the time. It is really annoying. I will keep working hard though and loving it all. 

I love you lots. Thanks for being my dad and for being such a great example. Have a good week!

Love, Elder Smith

Great Week!

It has been a good week for us. The zone had so many people in church yesterday it was crazy! In our ward we had somewhere around 10 to 12 in church investigators and less actives combined. It was awesome. 

On Monday we were able to go see Handels Messiah with Nicklas in vor frue kirke. It was way cool! I have never seen the whole thing. When Nicklas invited us he thought it was a shortened version that would go from around 7 to 8:30, but when we got there we found out it was the whole thing and that it would go until around 10:30, so we had to call our mission president in the middle and he said we could stay so we got home super late. It was different haha.

We had splits with Ballerup on Tuesday and I was with Elder Stephens. It was great. He is a great missionary and he rarely thinks of himself. I learned a lot from him when we were companions in Seden and I keep learning from him now. I will miss him a lot when he goes home. 

On Wednesday we had splits with Slagelse and I was with Elder Angerhoffer. He is doing well. I can tell he is a little nervous when it comes to talking to people, but he is also diligent in learning and has a lot of faith. He knows he can overcome his fears and he does!

We met with a couple of our less actives this week and that went well. We had 2 of them come to church yesterday. 

MaryAnn is unfortunately not progressing. We have tried a lot of different ways to teach her and it doesn't seem to get through. She is stuck on four things. Have faith, have hope, trust in God, and "all we can do is pray". Good things, but I don't think she understands faith in the way that she doesn't understand the repentance part of it all. She is so close to baptism, yet also far away because she is not moving forward at all. 

Well that is all for the week I think. I hope you all are doing well. I am super excited for Christmas. It is an amazing time of year and I love it as a missionary. I hope you all remember what Christmas is about this year. I hope you are lighting the world with service and the message of Christ. Have a great week and a merry Christmas!

Love, Elder Smith

Hey Mom!

Haha that is pretty funny. I'm glad we didn't have too many problems with you calling us Aubrey while she was gone  :)

I love Light the world as well. It is going well here and we have been challenging a lot of members to Light the World!

The shoes are black. The brown ones are still holding on for now haha. I really liked the nativity. I will send you a picture of it next week. I think I'm doing pretty good with clothes. I may need another pair of pants before the end of my mission. I think otherwise I'm doing pretty good. These shoes should last the rest of my mission. 

Messiah was so cool! We are going to Tivoli again today! I have really enjoyed just seeing a lot of Copenhagen. There is so much to see here! 

I'm glad Coop is doing good right now. I worry about him a lot. I was so sad when I got the email about him losing his job and getting kicked off swim team. Poor guy. I will pray for him.

I'm proud of dad for finishing his pathway program. That is exciting! I don't know what to do about college. As of now I'm not sure about going to SUU. I'm leaning a little more towards USU. BYU would be cool, but I don't think I could get in. BYU-I is also an option. I don't know if I want to go to school at home. Although it would be a lot cheaper. I guess I will ask my mission president if I can use some extra time on pdays to look at that kind of stuff.

Those Christmas parties sound like fun haha. Your family is crazy. I got a kick out of those two incidents. 

I hope the package will hurry. It is kind of Christmas stuff so it won't be quite as cool. There is a plate in there that is mine because it was a gift, but the other stuff is for everyone. No one specific. We are going to the mission presidents home for the 25th and I'm not sure exactly when we will call from. I will find out and email you later this week to let you know when.

Haha I love Elder Hunsaker. He seemed to be having a hard time in the beginning but has improved so much. It is hard with all these new missionaries around. That I would love to be companions with, but probably never will. He is a good missionary.

I'll see you soon! Love you mommy! Have a good week!

Love, Son

Hey Dad!

I am doing well. It was a good week and we had a lot going on. We hopefully will be able to keep it up. I'm tired of being fat. Christmas is hard. I will have from January to may to get skinny before coming home. I just need a companion that will be strict with me haha.

Good job getting As! At least you have a litte break before January. Just work hard and keep getting As.

I bet you loved those family parties haha. Good you could handle two in one week :) 

I am excited for Christmas. I am not sure about skyping yet, I will find out and send you an email later this week of when.

I'm not sure about college yet. I will probably want to go in the fall. I just don't know where. I will probably work all summer. I will ask President if I can look into it a little more.

Thanks for everything you do dad. I love you lots and lots and lots. Have a good week. See you on Christmas!

Love, Elder Smith

average week

Well hey everyone! Things are getting cold and Christmas is on the way. I am super excited.

Nothing too crazy happened this week. We had splits like usual. I was able to go on splits with Elder Preece. We lived in the same apartment back in Aalborg so that was a lot of fun. I was also with Elder Hunsaker who is one of my favorite new missionaries.

We went and visited all the districts this week and gave a training on positivity and diligence. It went really well and I think it was one of the things that the zone really needed. It definitely helped me.

That is actually about all I can think of for this week. This next week should be good. We have a lot of work time and Christmas is getting closer. 

Well I love you all. Stay warm and happy and have a good week.

Love, Elder Smith

Hello Motherest dearsest!

I'm glad you are enjoying light the world. We are having a good time with it as well.

That is crazy you have two old kids. It is only going to get crazier from now on haha. Just be happy for the times you feel like you are in your 20s :) 

The new shoes are good. They are comfortable. Not super fancy, but they look nice. I got my birthday letters the other day in the office. I also found the little nativity seen and took that haha. I had to convince them I was supposed to get those before Christmas.

I saw a package for me there too so that probably came. I have a good story to tell you since I feel like the most expensive missionary ever. We went on splits earlier this week out of our area. The pants I had had a little hole in the crotch and the morning of splits I put them on and sat on the couch and bent one of my legs up and the little hole became a big whole. So I had to get some new pants that day so we could do missionary work without people looking in my hole. I spent about 350 crowns or 50 dollars on them. Could you put some money on my card for them? I feel super bad about money because I keep needing stuff. Am I costing too much?

We are seeing the performance of the Messiah tonight so I am super excited. We have had awesome Pdays recently. We are going to Tivoli again next Monday with a couple of Elders in our district so that will be nice and cold!

The Book of Mormon gifts were awesome! We want to do it again, but we aren't sure if we can organize it before Christmas.

I'm sad Coop has had a hard time, but that is good he is working hard to be ordained. He didn't tell me anything about it. 

I would love to be in the ward choir with you, but our choir here is also really small so be happy they have me :) The white Christmas performance was fun.

I'm sorry you couldn't get Aubrey or Cooper to give blood with you. They are boring I guess.

I will remember to pray for Felicia, that is sad that she's had to go through that. 

I'm glad you are done with Christmas shopping. I am excited to see what is in the package. Thanks for being a great mom :)

You are the best mom in the whole world. Have a good week and smile a lot! I love you!

Love, Elder Smith

Hey Dad!

It was a pretty good week. We went and sang at a plejehjem. An old person place. That was pretty fun. Mom has done a lot with it. She is pretty cool. Just help her with the ones she does if you are too busy for your own haha. I'm glad you had a good service FHE. When we sang to the old people there was this one guy who kept yelling DEJLIGT ER DEN HIMMEL BLÅ! It is one of the Danish Christmas songs. It was funny.

It actually snowed here last night! None of it stuck, but it was snowing pretty good. It has gotten pretty cold here.

My companion and I started running. Well, we have only done it twice. But I am pretty determined this time. I am sick of getting fatter and fatter.

I'm glad your classes are almost done. Work hard on your classes the first time and see if you can take some more next time. 

I hope things start going better for him. That is a bummer about the driving, but at least he didn't call the school pretending to be you to try and get out of it. I'm glad he is going to get ordained soon. 

I hope Aubrey doesn't forget you completely for the holidays haha. I hope she is happy with Caden though. 

I am really excited for Christmas. It is a good time as a missionary. The sad part about you seeing me is that my face really is chubby haha. I am excited to see you all though.

That is crazy that Ruth Hyde is home already. The time is going way to fast. I still feel like I have time, but it is running away from me...

Sometimes I feel like we don't do enough less active work. It is hard here. They don't have much support from the members. It is also a big problem with new converts. We have 8 that were baptized in this ward this year and they are all less active.

I love you lots. Have a good week and see you in a couple weeks!

Love, Elder Smith

Christmas is on the way!

Hey everyone! It has been a way good week! And busy too!

I had an awesome birthday on Monday. Our Friend Nicklas took us around Copenhagen. We went up a tower to the top of the courthouse, then we went to a fancy cake place called La Glace. After that we went to a little cafe where you play board games. It was sweet. 

On Tuesday we had splits in my last area Nykøbing. I got to see my past investigator Dorthe and eat with the Johansens, one of my favorite families in Denmark. It was a good splits.

On Wednesday we had splits with Slagelse here. That was fun as well. 

On Thursday we got a bunch of missionaries together and wrapped up like 130+ Books of Mormon. Then the next day we went to Strøget and set up tables and gave them out. It was so cool. It was two tables just covered in  presents and everyone wanted one. Also we have already had a few people call and want to hear more.

On Saturday we had our ward Christmas party and that was fun. Lots of good food.

On Sunday we had a music and the spoken word thing and a bunch of us Elders sang White Christmas and it went well. 

I think that is about it for the week. I love you all and hope you are excited for Christmas. It's getting closer! #LighttheWorld. Anyways, have a great week!

Love, Elder Smith 

To Mom:

Hey! I'm doing pretty good. I had an awesome birthday. We hung out with our friend Nicklas for my birthday, it was a blast! I got shoes this week as well! I haven't checked for the birthday letters. I will see as soon as we check the mailbox. We went to a really fancy cake place with Nicklas so yes! I got cake. The only people that said happy birthday were family and then Will, Rell, and Lindsey. 

I'm glad your concert went well. Speaking of Messiah, Nicklas is going to take us to see a performance of Messiah in vor frue kirke. The church with the Kristus statue.I'm super excited.

We are probably going to sing the first noel.

Light the world has been good. We started it with the big book of mormon thing on Strøget. It was so awesome. 

That is sad that you did swim team pictures and Coop couldn't be there. Do you know why he got fired from his job? I feel bad for him. It sounds like he is having a bit of a hard time, but he writes like 2 sentence emails so I don't know how to help him.

I'm excited for Christmas too! It will be my last skype call. It is going to be a good Christmas. 

Well I love you lots and lots. Have a super good week :)

Love, Elder Smith

Hey dad! It has been a good week. I will send some pics in my big email of our Light the World thing we did this week. Our Christmas Zone conference is on the 21st so I'm pretty excited about that. We don't have anything we need to do for it.

That is awesome that you are all signed up for school. Haha you always have to buy new things for your new hobbies. If you count school as a hobby... Do you have any religion classes this time?

I'm glad work is going well and that the concert is going well. That is not to good that Captain bit grandpa. That makes me sad too. I hope that doesn't happen again. I bet grandma wasn't too happy.

It is weird that I only have 5 months left. It is still a lot of time, but it is going way to fast. I love you lots. Have a good week.

Love, Elder Smith