From Sister Stokholm

Yummy Danish Food

Nougat bits, splits, and mini mission

​So this week has been really fun and we've done a whole lot of great things. I feel much better about my Danish and things are picking up in Holbæk.

Last P-Day we decided to go to Slagelse to be with some other missionaries. We did the Nougat bit challenge. Which is where you eat a whole box of nougat bits (a type of cereal) with a liter of milk as fast as you can. It's kind of gross and stupid, but hey I did it in 15 minutes and 39 seconds.

We taught one of our investigators twice this week and she is doing really well. She is having a hard time trying new things because of her anxieties but she really wants to learn and grow closer to the Savior. Our other investigator finally came to church yesterday and I think it went well. It was a very big step for him.

On Thursday and Friday we had splits with the missionaries from Nykøbing. It was super fun and we taught a lot of lessons and found 6 new potential investigators. The downside was we did the most walking we've done in a long time and it was 90 degrees outside. 90 degrees plus high humidity does not go well together.

Friday night and Saturday morning we were able to participate in mini mission. We had a young man from our ward come out with us Friday night and Saturday morning to have a mission experience. I wish I would have been able to do something like that before my mission. Our missionary's name was Markus and he was great. On Saturday we were able to go to a mini zone conference in Copenhagen and it was a great experience and I learned a lot because it was all in Danish. Haha 

I was reading a talk this week by Jeffrey R. Holland about serving a mission and he said that the Prophets and apostles give their lives to the church up until the day that they die. We as missionaries have agreed to give our lives to the church as the apostles for 1 and a half to 2 years. The apostles can't build up the kingdom themselves so therefore they have missionaries to help them. I'm here to tell you that the missionaries can't do it without help either. We need your help to build up the kingdom. Of course we all have busy lives and can't serve full time with the missionaries but remember to do your part. Look out for missionary opportuinities and ask the missionaries how you can help them. I love hearing about missionary experiences from the members here. I would love to hear them from you as well. Try to do a little something to be a missionary just for a day or even an hour or just share something with a friend. I love missionary work and it is the best way to show our love for the Savior and for God. 

I love you all more than you know and I'm so thankful for you. You are all great friends to me and I look up to you. Have a great week! Keep me updated.

Love Ældste Smith

I have a lot of pictures this week :) 

p.s. If anyone wants to write me a letter my address is written below. Elder Weese and I open up the empty mailbox every morning to look for letters haha.

Tyler E. Smith

Rolighedsvej 1 1.tv

Holbæk 4300

Denmark

Hi mommy

I haven't cut my hair yet but maybe today. Haha. They don't really have bedhead, just messy hair. All different lengths.

I have had ryebrød. It's pretty good. Not my favorite. no horseradish yet. They do have kinder buenos. They are tasty. I had them once when I was first here.

That new stake presidency sounds great! I love our old stake presidency though. But that sounds like it will be really good.

Teach about your super cool missionary son. And how amazing he is. Or something good like the Spirit.

We don't do service a ton but we've worked on this one ladies farm cleaning trash up for her and planting some flowers, we've trimmed some hedges and we've done some stuff with cobblestone at the church and at a members house.

My food budget is better it's just today is the third week I've had to use personal funds so its bad. Next month is going to be good. We are not eating out. The members feed us on average about 2 to 3 times a week. It's usually good food but they try to make me fat. Every other meal we make ourselves. I can keep bread in the fridge or freezer but both of those are very small. Like really really small. But I do that if I have room for it.

It sounds like Aubrey is doing good. I miss her lots. She hasn't said a lot about jobs and school quite yet besides she is scared about it.

I wish I got more real letters but they are expensive to send and take forever to get here.

I love you lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots. Have a perfect week!

Love Elder Smith

Hey Dad! That new stake presidency sounds great. I really like all of those guys. I'm not sure if I know who the Searle guy is. Work hard with them. I'm glad things are going well with work. Sounds like you've been super super busy out there. Is Vernal still dead or is it picking up again? Have a lot of people moved? I hope everything works out well. How much do you weigh? I'm guessing you probably weigh less than me now. That's weird. I'm gonna start eating better. Do you ever eat ice cream? I love ice cream. I don't usually have ice cream because I know how bad it was but this week I decided to get some because it sounded good. When we got home I pulled it out and it turned out to be like sugar free and healthy and stuff. It tasted disgusting. So that was super super sad. Stay healthy. I'll make sure I lose weight so I'm in better shape than you. I will write about my investigators in my group email. I sometimes read the book of mormon in Danish. Sometimes I read the kids articles in the Liahona. I understand more reading than hearing for sure. This transfer ends in 3 weeks. Elder Weese will most likely be transfered and I will get a new companion. The weather has been nice. We had a couple really hot days but it has been good for the most part. I'm not sure when it will get cold. Hopefully never. Right now I'm reading about Alma talking to all of his sons and it's really good. I really want to get through the book of mormon but I honestly am the slowest reader on earth. It's so frustrating. Where are you in D&C? Thanks for everything dad. I love you lots!

Love Elder Smith

 

Greenland!

No I didn't actually go to Greenland but read my email :) We've had a fun week in Holbæk. Work was hard this week and we had a lot of our lessons cancelled but we've learned a lot. We had a zone conference on Wednesday and we had some training on Member work. I'll give you a bit of how what I learned affects you. Help your missionaries! If you don't know who your missionaries are the first step is to find out. Second offer to help them. Third, tell them what times and what days you are willing and able to help them. The final step is to make sure they use you. It may be hard and I'm sure you are busy but the best lessons a missionary can teach are those with a member present. Do your best to help them.

On Sunday Elder Weese and I had a very busy day. I had to give a talk in church on temples and family history. It was only five minutes, but we're not going to talk a lot about that. It was rough. I'm glad we have very kind and supportive members in our ward. Another thing we got to do on Sunday was skype the members in Greenland. It was so cool. Sadly our President wouldn't let us fly to Greenland to teach them but he let us teach them over Skype. They have started doing that every month with different missionaries each time. It was a great experience. The members there are very strong and great people. It's cool to see that the gospel is the same in Denmark, back home in Utah, and even all the way in Greenland with its two members.

I wanted to share a thought I've had this week. Faith is hard. Faith is not something that is given to us and we will always have it no matter what. Faith will always be tried and questioned, and we have to continue to work to protect it. Even when you have faith you may also have doubts and worries. I can only give you advice and it is up to you to act on it. Rely on your testimony, always lean back on what you know is true. Look back on all of your blessings and remember where they came from. Share your faith with others. With pressure on the last one I want to invite all of you to try and share a piece of your faith with someone, member or nonmember, and tell me how it goes. Some of you may have a great spiritual experience or feel comforted, but I can promise you that if you act in faith by sharing it with another, your testimony will be strengthened.

Thank you all for everything that you do. I love hearing from you and I'm thankful for your examples. Thank you for your support and your love. Have an amazing week and a great beginning of the school year.

Love Ældste Smith 

P.S. The pictures of this week is 

1. A wheat field white and ready to harvest

2. Me looking good

3. Me throwing away our pizza box collection from all our pizzas last month. (We've quit that habit.)

4. Elder Weese thought it would be funny to put a bunch of glasses full to the brim with water on my desk. I will be getting him back.

​


Hey dad. I'm doing pretty good. I hope to hear about grandma and grandpas soon. Thank you for keeping me updated on people. You've kept me more updated on some of my friends than they have. The language is still hard but it's getting much better. Now I'm just  not sure what to say. I do write down words when I can. It helps a lot. We did skype to greenland. It was awesome. Elder Weese talked about charity and I talked about the spirit. It was good. I'm sorry you have been real busy but I'm glad you have a job. Keep working hard. I have been trying to work on following promptings of the spirit and studying it a lot so it's been good. I read a really good talk by David something McConkie. I think that was his name.Thanks for everything. I'm sorry my emails suck. Try to get other things from the other emails. Maybe you all need to send me one email with questions. haha. Thanks for the advice, I love you.

Love Elder Smith

Mom, We have some pretty awesome members don't we! They really are super helpful with everything.

I'm not really a huge fan of my hair. I have to make sure it looks okay in the morning. I think I should cut it off. I've realized that the Danes don't really care how their hair looks at all, but sadly I have to make sure mine looks good because I am a missionary.

Haha I'm glad you got my letter. I actually like the licorice ones. Sometimes I think these are kind of gross. But then I like them. I try to think of other little things I can send you. Like maybe one of those kinder buenos or whatever they are called. I got the letter from all of you this week! It was awesome and made me so happy. And thanks for the food things. They will help a lot I hope.

We don't get to work with refugees a lot. We aren't aloud to go in the camps and we can only teach them under special conditions. It's to protect us and to protect them. A lot of them love us but also a lot of them dislike us. So we have to be careful. It's sad but I understand it. The ones I've met and talked to are really great people though.

I will try my best to take food with me where I go. I keep getting upset because we get in crap situations and food is expensive and all my bread keeps expiring two days after I buy it. :( We eat out at kabab shops sometimes. It's like Arabic fast food. And sometimes McDonalds. They have McDonalds and burger king here but they are a little different and really expensive. Soda is expensive. Like 3 dollars for  a regular drink. But luckily I am good at controling myself with soda. Elder Weese is a cokeaholic. 

Our investigators are doing good but we have a lot of finding to do. We need more new investigators. We only have 3 right now and two are struggling but slowly getting better. 

We didn't have to where suits to the game luckily haha. It was fun.

I forgot I talked about faith last week until now but I talked about it again in this email. Oh well. It was a little different.

That's cool that Kelsey came over. I have a lot of friends that email me and it's actually been really hard because it takes a lot of time to email and we only have two hours to do it. I feel like I should email the people that email me so it's hard. I write the least to my missionary friends because I know they understand but we email really good things to eachother. They have ipads though so they can email all pday.

I love you ten times more than you will ever love me!

Jeg elsker dig. Have en goddag og uge.

Love Ældste Smith 

From Sister Toft

From Sister Perkins

Hello everyone,

I'm a member in Roskilde ward where your wonderful children are serving right now. I just wanted to send you their smiling faces and tell you what a great job they are doing. They are so wonderful, positive, polite and hard working. We enjoyed their wonderful company for dinner tonight and it was great fun, and they left a wonderful spirit with us! 
Thank you for lending them to us. They are doing a great and wonderful job here in little Denmark :-) 

A special little hello to Elder Smiths parents, since he is still a little new here - He is doing such a great job learning danish and we have been very impressed with how relaxed and comfortable he seems even when he doesn't completely understand (we speak very fast my husband and I). He simply asks "sorry, I didn't quite get that, could you repeat". It may seem small but so many new missionaries will simply keep listening, hoping that they will get the gist of what we are saying. I think he will master danish so well so much more quickly because of this. Wonderful young man! He will do so much good here. His trainer is fantastic as well so there is no question that he will be an outstanding missionary! 

Again, thank you for helping them get here. Have a wonderful week.

Lisa Perkins

Sjaelland Zone Conference

Photos from the Cop-Den Mission Blog.

Football!!!

Well it's been a great week! I hope everyone is doing great and already for summer to end. This week we have had lots of progress and good experiences.

Our investigators are doing great. We have one who is brand new and she is golden. She is progressing and diligently learning about the gospel. Another who has been challenging and gets very distracted during lessons was able to focus and begin to understand what we teach. The work is speedily progressing in Holbæk and it's great!

I've seen a good progression with my Danish this week. Learning a new language has been a huge challeng for me but it is getting much better and I was able to have another good week in church. I still couldn't understand most things, but much more than usual. I was able to talk to some of the members and I actually understood them! It was great.

On Saturday we were able to go to a football game in Copenhagen with one of the  members. It was so cool! I've never been able to do something like that so it was a new experience and it was really exciting. The members here are really great and extra friendly. I love them all.

On a not so bright side I caught the sickness Elder Weese had last week and I am finally starting to feel better. That was not a happy few days but it's okay now. Elder Weese is a good companion and took care of me.

I don't have any super amazing spiritual experiences but I would like to share something about faith. This week Elder Weese and I watched the John Tanner story. It's really good and if you haven't watched it here is a link: https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2010-07-139-treasure-in-heaven-the-john-tanner-story?lang=eng it's just 20 minutes and it's super good. I want to bear my testimony that faith can bring forth miracles. Faith can literally do anything. I know that each and every one of us has our own trials and tribulations. We all have hard times. It may not happen in a spectacular miracle, but I know that if we have faith and trust in the Lord, that we can overcome anything. We can do anything. Stay faithful and pray for help. I know I can do it and you can to.

I hope you all have a fantastic week and that you finish summer off with something great. Thank you for the emails, letters, love, and support. You are great examples to me and you are all in my prayers. I love you all! I don't have any pictures right now but I will try to send a few from the soccer game later.

Love Ældste Smith

Here's a picture of me being sick wrapped up in my Duna

To Dad:

Hey Dad! I've had a good week. I'm loving it here. That's awesome you got to go to the temple with Aubrey. Mornings are hard. That's so cool that you were there for Aubreys report. I hope you are there for mine. Speaking of the stake presidency, who is the new presidency? I love that scripture. And it's so true. The weather has been really good. It rains sometimes but usually it's not too hot or too cold. Our companionship is great. Elder Weese and I are good friends. The language is hard but going much better. My testimony is growing every day. Thank you for everything you do for me.

I love you.

Love Elder Smith

I read in preach my gospel that you should always try to improve your language skills throughout your life. You never know when the Lord will need you to use it later in your life. Just imagine talking to the guy at that shop in salt lake about the gospel haha. What if you were the next mission president in Vietnam? 

To Mom:

Ha yes! Iam finally your favorite because Aubrey was before she got home haha. Remember that time you liked the facebook post saying that your first child was your favorite? I haven't picked a name for my bike yet. I will have to give it a Danish name. I'm going to be very sad when I have to leave it in Denmark.

The Stokholms are really great. I'm glad you have talked to her a bit. Her husband Martin is so cool and they are so spiritually strong. They are great members.

I think my pants will be okay. I could get new ones but even the ones that would fit me are probably skinny. To be honest I don't know how some of the fat people fit into their pants.

I haven't got your first letter yet, but I can't wait to get it! Have you got my letter with candy in it yet?

That's the hardest thing about Danish. Everything is pronounced so weird. It's hard to understand. And really hard to pronounce some words like rød grød med flode.

Cooper could almost fit into those pants. Elder Weese's fit. 

Last Sunday was great and this Sunday was better! I even understood a little bit. I regret not paying attention in church at home because I miss it a lot now.

Denmark is beautiful. Start saving up now so that when I get home we can take a trip here and to the Phillipines. It would be great.

That's great with that family. and so exciting! I love the temple so much. I miss going so much.

We sadly haven't gotten to go back to the little family, but I'm praying that we can. People are usually friendly when they talk to you, but they are really good at saying Nej take! (no thanks) It is hard because I know they are all good people but culturally they like to push away anything that has to do with religion. The grocery stores are weird. They aren't super organized. Like some stuff is but a lot of it looks like it just got thrown in there randomly. I've had a hard time with food. I run out of food money quickly. I don't know what to buy that's cheaper and the food expires quickly but the biggest problem is we probably eat out to much and that is super expensive. It's hard though because sometimes we are in a town half hour away from home and it's easier that way, but I need to figure something out. If you see money withdrawn from my account it's set aside so when I find a coat I can afford it. Also some is spent on food.

We don't usually ride the train. Just if we have a meeting or something far away. We have a car so that is our main form of transportation when we leave holbæk.

I love you tons and tons and tons.

Jeg elsker dig mere. (I love you more).

Jeg håb at du har haft en sjov tid med Aubrey. (I hope you had a fun time with Aubrey.)

Tak for alt. (Thanks for everything.)

Love Elder Smith

Sorry I had no pictures. :(