Denmark's Tallest Mountain ACCOMPLISHED

HELLO HELLO HELLO!!! Denmark is STILL beautiful and STILL smells like cigarette smoke. 

My typical day is wake up at 6:30, ''exercise'' because my companion doesn't like to run so I've started to do situps and pushups every morning, eat a breakfast that is either that toast/cheese/jam combo or milk and granola, get ready and then STUDY! Since I'm a newbie I get an extra hour and a half of study time everyday.  We usually have planning, personal study, and then companionship study.  We're (hopefully) out the door by 10am and either contacting on the gå gade or knocking on doors.  We come back around noon for a lunch of usually some sort of pitiful chicken rice burrito, and do our language study. Then we either have an appointment or continue contacting until 7 when we eat dinner (maybe burritos again) and at 8 do our ''training'' study.  That's generally a typical day.  We also do a lot of ''stop bys'' to potential investigators because we have soooo much time for contacting.  I like to listen to music as I write in my journal at night and when I get ready in the morning.  I've also started this new habit of reading books, right now it's Our Heritage, while I eat my meals to add some diversity to my life.  Also funny side note: Our car can only play CD's and we have exactly 1 CD of terrible EFY music.  We've listened to it so much that I kind of like it now.  HAHAH JUST KIDDING but it's okay! 

My trainer and I talk about kinda random stuff while we're out and about.  Sometimes it's about Justin Bieber and sometimes it's about the Millennium.  It really depends on the day.  

Danish people LOVE to talk but they do NOT love to talk about religion.  They are very sweet and super helpful when you need directions, but have no interest in giving you the time of day the minute they see your name tag.  I've found some success by talking about families.  Family is very important to the Danish people, and I think that we can get some more success if we really emphasize family history.  I'll give that a shot and let you know how it goes.  Danes spend a lot of their time biking, eating, smoking and drinking.  Fodbold (soccer) is HUGE here and everyone talks about it.  

The language is coming, slowly, but it's coming!! I can understand WAY more than I could when I got here, and I feel like I talk smoother and with less of a harsh american accent.  Whether that is actually true or not, I have no idea.  But let's hope for my faint heart's sake.  

I am in a branch of about 30 elderly people.  There is 1 family with VERY little kids, 2 mid-20's females that I'm quite close with and 1 recent convert mid-20's male that we also work with a lot.  1 of the girls is from Hungary, and she and the recent convert just got back from FestiNord which looked like a BLAST.  DEFINITELY going when I get back.  We usually have at least 1 investigator in church, but last week was a little rough.  More on that in a second.  

I have not had the chance to play my flute yet.  I really really want to and I think I could in my sacrament meetings but the problem is that I don't know of anyone who could accompany me... I'll ask around and see what I can do because I am DYING to tickle those metal ivories.  DYING.  

So this week was actually kind of crazy.  On Tuesday we took a 3 hour train up to Aalborg to go on splits with the Sister Training Leaders (STLs) and it was SO FUN.  I absolutely LOVE Aalborg.  It's a much bigger city than Herning and it has a cute little port.  All of the buildings are cute and scandinavian and I just loved loved loved it.  We ended Wednesday night in the hospital because Søster Acosta had a crazy painful muscle spasm because we ate too much sugar.  Let me explain.  Right before we got an our train headed home to Hammerum Søster Acosta and I decided that it would be a FABULOUS idea to buy a pan of these flakely almondy deliciousnesses and eat the entire thing in 5 min, thus resulting in a bit sluggish of a day.  We took our time eating lunch and spent a super fun time with our investigators making Kanel Snegle (cinnamon snails) (Listen, as a missionary basically all you do is eat okay?). A little bit into our endeavor Søster Acosta got a HUGE pain in her left chest.  She tried to shake it off but we ended up going to the emergency room (which is free but it's NOT a blessing.  I'll get to that in a sec).  We had a super tough time actually finding the emergency room because there was no one at the 24hr reception desk (first warning flag).  We eventually found it by our own ingenuity and went through further inconveniences to finally see the ''doctor.'' While my poor companion is seething and writhing with pain, a little man clad in a neon green tee and cargo shorts strides in and VERY unsuccessfully attempts to pop her back.  After a while of agonizing screams the ''doctor'' realizes that MAYBE something else is wrong.  He obviously can't figure it out so he sends us on our merry way with some pain killers.  How's that for modern medicine huh?  After talking with the our mission president's wife (who is a WONDERFUL AMERICAN nurse) we came to the conclusion that nothing with her heart was wrong and she was mostly likely having some crazy muscle spasm.  We spent the next day resting.  I've been her little nurse through all of it and not going to lie, kinda loved it. 

In other fun, as of today I can now say that I hiked to the tippy top of the tallest mountain in Denmark.  It took a total of exactly 12 minutes from the time we left our car.  2 minutes was actually walking and the other 10 min were from playing on the playground at the ''bottom'' of the mountain.  It was so fun.  We swung on the swing set, went down the slide, and went up and down on the see saw.  The top of the ''mountain'' was cool too, but honestly the playground was more interesting.  We rewarded our laborious efforts by eating at Burger Shack which had a pretty decent burger, considering it isn't American.

My spiritual suggestion of the week is to think, ''what would Jesus do?'' as you go about your daily activities. Honestly.  Read about how He treated other people, read about how He loved others, read about the way He taught.  Our purpose in life is to ''Come follow Him,'' so learning how He lived will bless our lives and set us on the straight and narrow path.  And because I love you, I'm going to give you another spiritual thought: if you haven't prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is true for yourself I invite you to do that now.  You don't have to read the entire book to ask the Lord, you just need to ask with a pure heart and real intent.  Lightly read Moroni 10 and take him up on his challenge.  Life is so much better and frankly easier if you are sure of your testimony.  Trust me.  

Love you all so much!! Have a great week!!

Soster Esplin

raya.esplin@myldsmail.net