Church and Church

Many thanks to Steve and Sue for encouraging me to give my talk in Danish. They are great cheerleaders, and they both have done very well with the language here.  I survived, and the very kind people of Amager Branch survived as well.

My talk was about 11 minutes long....reading it word for word.  I honestly don't know if anyone understood my message, but I know the ones with head phones got it, because I supplied Anne (our intrepid translator) with the English translation!....I don't think she used it.

I know I sounded like a 7-year  old who is learning to read.  I read that slowly, stumbling occasionally over the words.  I was very happy with the talk in English....in fact I loved it and would have loved to express it in my native tongue.  But it was pretty dry in my rudimentary Danish.  But I am happy to have done it!!!!!!!

Those wonderful dear members of the branch were so loving and kind in their praise, I almost believed that it was a great talk.  :-)

After I spoke, a high counselor from the stake spoke about the prodigal son...and taught beautiful lessons from that time-honored story that I had not heard.  I enjoyed it tremendously.

The rest of the meetings were excellent - as always.

In the afternoon, we drove to Torslunde so that Carolyn and Rori could see the beautiful old church  where Peter Madsen was most likely christened and the sleepy little community where he must have lived for the first 33 years of his life.  There is a gentle spirit that seems to brood over this land.  Everyone who has visited us feels something special....."magical" is how Derek described it.

This is the style of many of the old country churches here...I call it a Lego church.  Carolyn is standing in front of some headstones.....which were so close together that we wondered if perhaps the owners were cremated.  

I think both Carolyn and Rori are suffering just a little from jet lag.  It takes awhile to get over, but they are still eager and willing to fill every minute with sights of their ancestors' homeland.  I don't have jet lag, but that bed is calling.

Tomorrow starts a new week, and we are putting weeks behind us so fast I can hardly keep up with the forward march of time.  We are getting down to just over 6 weeks.....they will fly by.