I Think to Myself What a Wonderful World

We have been looking forward to this day for a couple of weeks.  We attended a baptism in Odense....the next island to the west.  A lovely young woman who has been in the center a few times was baptized a member today.

We left a little after 8 and pulled into Odense a little after 10.  Along the way we passed rolling fields of green, quaint little farmhouses and beautiful rambling homes in patchwork fields.  We crossed a very large, tall and long bridge from our island of Sjealland to the island of Fyn.

This lighthouse and few small buildings are all that are on this little island.

Easily high enough for a ship to pass under (in fact, we saw a large cruise ship many decks high move under it),  and you can't hardly distinguish the cars on it because they are so tiny.

We had some time before the baptism so we wandered around the area where Hans Christian Andersen grew up.  It is a marvelous area to meander through.  We stopped and bought a beautiful illustrated book of one of his fairy tales.

We decided to just walk around the center of town for a little while, and on our way we came upon an old church building.  On getting closer we noticed posters about a concert being given at noon in the great interior.  It was 11:40 and we thought we might just take a peek around.  (We both love these old churches.)

There were a few people inside, some sitting down in the pews.  It was a large spacious chapel with the small replicas of sailing vessels hanging from the ceiling in honor of the men who went to sea.  (The Danes have long been a sea-faring people.)

We were dumbfounded to see that the altarpiece was the first magnificent painting by Carl Bloch that I came to love.  We stood for awhile in awe, then sat down to drink in the beauty of his work.

Soon a slip of a girl with long blond hair came in and bowed.  People clapped.  She was accompanied by a young woman about the same age who sat down at the grand piano.  I honestly don't know which one was more gifted, but the concert was a voice concert.  She sang in superb soprano for the next 45 minutes....most classical music with ah couple of Berstein pieces.  The accompaniest was amazing too.

It was a dream to sit there in that beautiful old building looking at Christ in Gethsemane and listening to that lovely young voice echoing through the long cavernous hall.

Feeling like we were on a cloud, we made our way to the church where we listened to some wonderful talks, heard some lovely music, visited with some of great YSAs, watched the baptism.  We enjoyed it l so much that we actually forgot to take pictures!!!!

I would love to have shown you some pictures of her and her many guests on this special day,  but  the cover of her program will have to do.

We retraced our steps over the bridge and now we are home again.  We are tired....pleasantly so.

It just doesn't get much better than today.