Apple Juice and a Baptism

Mine familier og venner!

Random fact: Tomorrow, I will have officially been out on my mission for 6 months.

Hmm... if I narrowed it down to two things I would want to share from this week, it would be these two:

I was sitting on the train across from a guy who had headphones on. I felt like sometime before I left, I should talk to him, but I waited a little bit. I was rereading the Plan of Salvation pamphlet as I overheard him order a beer. Then, a minute later, he slides an apple juice across the table to me and tells me I can have it. Then, he opens up a can of Pringles and offers to share them with me. It was way nice of him. I started talking, but he asked if I could speak English. I did, but then he asked if I could speak more slowly because it was hard for him to understand. He told me he was Muslim and on his way to work in Copenhagen (from Aalborg). We were just heading back from a district meeting where our zone leaders had stressed the importance of keeping the gospel simple in explanation. I tried to explain the restoration in the simplest I could and gave him a pamphlet in Danish. He said his native language is Arabic and I told him we could get him a Book of Mormon in that language and give it to him. He told me he really would like that and wants to meet with the missionaries! I got his information and gave it to the missionaries in Aalborg. I'm so happy that Heavenly Father let me help run His errand to find the man.

This week, an 8 year old boy in the ward had a baptism. We invited Anne Lise to it. We had one of the members in the ward bring her and it went great! The member talked to Anne Lise the whole time and answered all of her questions. I was sitting on the other side of Anne Lise during the baptism. After it was over, I asked her what she thought of it and how she felt. She told me that is was a beautiful day and that she was so happy to be there. But then, she said she was still confused why she would have to be baptized again if she already has been once in another church. We had previously taught her about how after the apostles died, God's authority to perform ordinances was no longer on the earth and about the restoration of the priesthood, so I just rehashed what we had already discussed. I can't even remember exactly what I said, but I remember looking at her and it seemed a light bulb had turned on and she told me it made sense. Then, I told her that we would be having a baptism on September 21st and asked if she would like to be baptized them and she said YES!!! I was so so so so excited. Anne Lise told a few people at the baptism that she had just made the decision and everyone was so exciting and supportive.

I love the ward here in Fredericia. We hope to one day have a ward here in Vejle.

Oh and Autumn is coming soon! My favorite season! Can't wait to officially pull out the sweaters!

Life is beautiful.

Med kærligste hilsener,

Søster Orgill

Me with the new companions

Our walk with Bolette

Just call me Texas!

Mine familier og venner!

Well, I officially am in a trio again. The week was crazy busy! Our schedule was booked to the max and we literally had to run to get to several appointments. Yep, crazy. Ha ha.

Sister Ripplinger and Sister Handley are my new companions. They both love to dance and enjoy cooking/baking, so we might be making a lot of delicious food...They are both from Utah, so are the two elders in our ward, so everyone jokes that I am the odd one from Texas. Actually, we have one member in our ward who just calls me "Texas" and looks at me whenever there could be any slight reference to my state.

Highlight of the week: We visited a lady who was a former investigator. She told us that she had prayed someone would come and then we came.

My companions and I are still running on only 2 months of language experience, so we are still trying to learn, but luckily a couple members told us they will give us some language lessons :)

The ward here is AMAZING! We are really hoping we can do all we can to help it grow. I am glad I get to stay here for at least 6 more weeks :)

Med kærligste hilsener,

Søster Orgill 

Transfer Calls

Mine familier og venner!

Let me first tell you about transfer calls. So last week, we were awaiting a call all week to figure out what was going to happen with transfers. In our mission, many missionaries play "transfer madness," like March Madness, but you just try to figure out where everyone is going in the mission. Sister Hadley and I just did it for the sisters, but it is kind of hard to gage because we have received 18 new sisters in Denmark over the last two months. As of this week there will be a total of 21 sisters in the mission.

Anyway, we awaited our call and were excited to see if any of our guesses were right. Friday afternoon, President called us! It almost felt like we were on a reality show. We picked up the phone, put it on speaker, and then he said, "You ready to hear what's happening with transfers? One of you will be staying. One of you will be leaving... Sister Hadley... that will be you. You will be packing your bags and heading to Aalborg... Sister Orgill, you will be receiving two sisters, Sister Handley and Sister Ripplinger."

So, I am staying in Vejle! I am excited to stay here because it is already set up to go and we already have several  appointments set up for the week! It will be great to work more closely with the members and really dive into working in the area.

We have a rule that there must always be 3 of the same gender whenever we are teaching, so this means that we usually can't get a man from church to come with us to teach another man because we would still need another woman or man, but now since there will be three sisters in Vejle, we can do that because we will always have three! It's really an exciting time. We will be the only trio in the mission.

Last thing to share. At zone training last week, we did an object lesson where our mission president had the football and had to make a touch down. The sisters were on offense, the elders on defense and we were not allowed to touch. One of the sisters got this great idea to have us all hold hands and make a circle around our mission president to protect him so he could get to the other side of the field. We did it and it worked perfectly, because the elders could not touch us or even block us since they were not expecting it. Afterwards, our mission president talked about how secure he felt in the circle and that is exactly how investigators feel when the members extend their a hand and create friendships with them. We all have the same goal, returning to our Father in Heaven, it's not a competition, we can help each other and protect each other if we work together to get there.

Love you all so much!

de kærligste hilsener,

Søster Orgill

P.S. My address is still:

Søster Kelly Orgill

Kiddesvej 11 1 SAL

7100 Vejle

Danmark

It will be my address until September 23rd, then in might change, but until then, that's it ;)

Post Danmark Rundt- kind of like the Tour De France in Denmark

on the street we live on, so that pic was taken from our window!

Exploring Vejle

Mine familier og venner!

So this week, we decided to take a trip to Give. It is a city about a 30 minute train ride from here. There are not a Whole lot of members there, but we wanted to visit those who were less active or were previous investigators. It is 5 zones away, we have a 5 zone bus pass that gets us to church which is also 5 zones away, so we thought, oh that is perfect! I asked my companion if we should just quickly go double check at the desk if we can use it, but she said she didn't think we needed to, so we hopped on the train. Less than two minutes after being on the train, someone came around to check our passes. And, yep, our passes were only good for the 5 zones between Fredericia and Vejle (according to the numbers along the side which did look like random numbers, ha ha). Super sad! So it ended up costing us each about 20 US dollars for the round trip fare. Could have been worse. Moral of the story, always check just in case! We got there and the city seemed pretty sparse. There were not many people to talk to. The first lady we visited was really close and she said she didn't have time right then, but wanted us to come back next week, so that is good. The next person we went to was an hour and a half walk away. We thought we could talk to people on the way, but there was no one that we passed on the way. Crazy, right? Ha ha. Luckily, we did get to meet this guy who we had planned to see. He had previously taken lessons from the missionaries, but was not interested. He was nice though and we left him with our number in case he changed his mind. Crazy, long day, but it was good.

Oh and we had splits this week. Basically, where two of the Sister Training Leaders come and are our companions for the day. It was really great, I felt like I had lots of insight. We talked to a lot of people that day and set up one appointment to come back. A few hours later, we received a phone call that one of the people we had given a pamplet to, his friend wanted us to come back and teach him more about our beliefs. Pretty neat.

We had one member who came with us to the lesson we taught Kasper this week. That evening, we prayed that we might find more ways to get the members involved in missionary work. At 9:30am the next morning, the member who had come to the lesson called us and said (in Danish) "we forgot to tell Kasper about Jesper's baptism on Saturday!" I told her that she is right, we forgot and that we can call him. Then she said, "I would like to bring him there if he can come." I was way excited when I heard those words. I gave her his number and jumped up and down smiling and screaming. I knew the Lord had answered our prayers. Kasper did not end up getting to go to the baptism, but I knew that we had a ward that was ready to be enlisted in helping with this great and marvelous work.

That evening we had about two hours left before we had to be back at our apartment. We ended up going to a less active's apartment to get his number so we could arrange a time we could come teach him with another sister in our ward. He was home, so that was great. Then, we realized that we had 4 previous investigators in that same area that we had planned to go see the next week, but felt we should that night instead. We did and ALL of them were home which was a miracle. We set up three appointments to come back and the 4th previous investigator didn't want us to meet with her, but she talked about some medical problems she had been having. We had no idea what kind they were, but we told her we would keep her in our prayers and she graciously thanked us. Then, on the way home, we taught someone else on the street. We walked by our apartment and it was 8:56pm. I remembered what you had said about not going in even a minute early, so I relayed that to Sister Hadley. We looked around, we didn't see anyone on the street, we started walking up another street and some people leaning out a window by us started asking us questions about Mormons. We set up an appointment to come back and teach them the next day!

On Sunday, we got to teach the gospel essentials class, it was on work and personal responsibility. It ended up going really well. After that, a lady in our Ward asked me to lead the music in Sacrament meeting. The first song was really rough for me because I had never heard it before and it was fast so it was really hard for me to comprehend the pronunciation quickly :) But, luckily the next three hymns were a little slower and had more familiar melodies. The elders and us were also asked to sing a musical number that day, so we sang "My Heavenly Father Loves Me." Oh and Ældste Swenson played the organ during sacrament meeting, so it seemed like we were starting to take over the ward with all the things we'd been asked to do, ha ha, but it was fun. I'm really excited to teach Young Womens next week :)

Life is good. I hope all is well with all of you!

de kærligste hilsener,

Søster Orgill