Dear Family,
Wow, what a crazy week! I have just been travelling around and missing buses and trains left and right and one blessing I am counting is: members who are just amazing and see two sisters walking home in the dark cold rainy night with huge bags of dunas and stuff and just helping us out and giving us a lift in their car. That may or may not have happened twice this week because if a train is late, we miss the bus. If we miss the bus, we walk the 2 miles home. But thank goodness for good-hearted people who want to help us out :)
So we traveled to Vejle monday and spent the day there Tuesday on exchanges with Sister Ripplinger and Sister Henderson. It was really nice. Sister Ripplinger and I were together and we did some service and trying to teach people but we kept getting burned or people would forget our appointments. It reminded us of the good old days we spent in Odense in the beginning of our missions here in Denmark.
Wednesday was a normal day of missionary work for me and sister tew and then it was back to not normal and travelling around everywhere. Thursday was thanksgiving and sister tew and I made thanksgiving dinner for our district: Fried chicken, potatoes, and old salad and danish pancakes for dessert. the best missionary thanksgiving dinner anyone could hope for. Then Sister Tew and I traveled down to Copenhagen for the leadership council. We got to the mission home at about 8pm and arrived right as the Sederholms and their guests were finishing up a real thanksgiving meal. Guess who was there? Anne-maire and Mats and their family! It was great to see them and talk to them again and actually feel confident in speaking danish to them. i was able to enjoy some thanksgiving left overs that night and some pie as well. Well, all the leaders of the mission spent the night at the mission home and then I convinced sister tew to go running with me. So friday morning I went running in the forest right by our house and we found the rope swing and played on that for a while. Oh man, that brought back many awesome memories :) Remember family? Playing on that swing. Then we came back and I took a picture on our steps leading to our house (that too was a blessing this week, remembering you all and the great adventures we had in Denmark together)
After leadership council, Sister Sederholm prepared another thanksgiving feast (another wonderful blessing to eat homemade food!) and that was delicious. She is a wonderful woman and a fantastic cook. Then sister tew and I tried to get home. I say try because due to series of unfortunate events, like trains being hours late or getting on the wrong train, it took us 7 hours to get home! So we did most of our weekly planning on the train ride back.
And on Sunday during relief society, one of the sisters got up and got the elders and I thought "Okay, they must be doing some sort of presentation about missionary work and we sisters are not important enough", which was a bad attitude to have. The sisters then pulled out four giant wrapped christmas boxes and gave them to each of us. In denmark, they have Christmas count downs for every day of the month until the 24. So 24 gifts and in our boxes from the relief society, we have 25 gifts! (huge blessing) One for each day leading up to christmas and then one for christmas day because they remembered that americans celebrate it on the 25th of december. We were all so surprised and super happy.
The members here are great! I love them. We also had a Christmas concert sunday night and a lot of members brought their friend and Sister Tew and I had a chance to talk to all of the visitors. and now we are also going to be bringing several non members who were at the concert copies of the book of mormon and joy to the world dvds as well. It was a very spiritual and great concert, with a really sweet script along with it. It was fun to be a part of it and to help support the ward that way. I realized now that I'm not here in Horsens to try to force the members into helping me with my missionary work, but that I really am here to support the Horsens members in the missionary work they are already doing. I am a laborer in their vineyard.
And our investigators here are great as well. We just recently got a new investigator. Her name is Ruth and she is this lady from Ghana that I met on the bus my second day in Horsens. I have talked to her a few times on the bus and talked about God and what I do as a missionary and she told me about her life and then one time she really opened up and told me about stresses from work, family life and moving to a new apartment. So I told her "call us for service and we'll come help you move". And so two weeks later, she called! (another blessing here) And we went and served her and gave her a Book of Mormon wrapped in Christmas wrapping and now she is investigating the church. But she is super sweet and we are invited to her birthday party, which I am way excited for because she is a professional cake maker :) She is way sweet and nice. She's like my African mother I feel like. and she actually sad she could be my mom too.
And another investigator Solveig made me and Sister Tew and the Elders Christmas decorations because she told us "you don't have any family here and so I want to be your family". Sadly, she'll be in India the whole month of December but the decorations she made were way beautiful (and another blessing). She also gave me and sister tew huge things of chocolate...which I don't need by any means but as a wise brother advised me "when it comes to being healthy, it's mind over matter".
And Michael is home! That is so wonderful, keep him busy, tell him you love him and give him a hug... :) give him a compliment: Michael has brown hair.
Well, I love you all so much and you are all blessings in my life :)
Knus, Søster Briscoe
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