Week 4 - Flight Plan's Tomorrow!

     So tomorrow is basically Christmas. Which would make it the third Christmas we've had this month. This one totally trumps those other Christmases though because WE'RE GETTING FLIGHT PLANS TOMORROW! Hopefully everything went okay with everyone's visas, because I believe tomorrow is also the day we find out if anyone will have to be temporarily reassigned to wait for a visa. I am so excited.

     

      Things I am most excited about going to Sweden for (in no particular order):

     

      1. Meeting my mission president.

      2. Going to the airport and riding the plane with REAL PEOPLE FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD!

      3. Meeting my trainer. 

      4. Seeing Sweden and meeting its people. 

     If you ate as many Swedish meatballs as I am excited, you would probably be so sick of eating Swedish meatballs that would never eat them again. And If you've ever had Swedish meatballs, you know that's a lot... because they're delicious. 

     I just auditioned with five other Elders to perform at any of the upcoming devotionals. We sang "I Believe in Christ" in an  a cappella sextet. I think they liked it, but we'll see if we get to sing! That would be fun! There's a lot of really good musicians here though so it could go either way :) 

     

     Something I learned this week is if you want to receive personal revelation, you essentially need four things: An open mind, patience, diligent study, and a conviction to do whatever it is that Heavenly Father reveals to you. The thing about Heavenly Father is, he's like any good missionary. He's never going to teach a lesson without inviting us to act. A willingness to follow his word is called faith and it's the most important part of receiving answers from God.  It's just like the foolish man vs the wise man who built their houses on sandy  or rocky foundations. The Savior explained that the wise man who's house withstands the floods hears the word AND follows it. The house could be compared to our testimonies. If we continue to follow the call of our Savior when His Spirit directs, He promises us that our testimonies will be sure and withstand any opposition we experience. What an amazing promise. I have experienced for myself how the Lord matches His willingness to share knowledge with our willingness to follow what He gives us. 

Thank you again for everyone who has sent me letters, emails, and pictures. I love it all. I hope you all have great week!

Love,

Elder Denton

"Look! From the outside world! ... Oooooooooooo..."

 Kyssa means to kiss, kissa means to pee. One of the instances where a subtle difference could be the difference between teaching a really nice lesson, or having a really funny story for later.

 Mount Timp. making me miss skiing right now. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas :)

Week 3 - Beef, Chicken and Oreos

Hej everybody!

     Just so everybody knows, hej is pronounced just like "hey" in English and it means exactly the same thing too :) 

     This week has been crazy awesome. This last Friday or Thursday night, we had a district bonding "dirt session". Basically, we went around in a circle and told why we decided to go on a mission and what we had to overcome to be here. It brought us so close together to do that. Our branch president served in the Pacific Islands and he is always telling us that they are very passionate about wanting to know your story. I can see why. You can't truly love someone if you don't understand their story, but it's hard not to if you take the time to listen. To share things as personal as we did created a sacred moment for our district. 

      Something that has made me laugh all week is our new district leader, Elder Ahonen. He's from Finland and you wouldn't believe the questions he gets. Somebody in our district legit asked him if they ate chicken in Finland... So this elder has started having fun with it. There are still missionaries in our district that believe they don't have beef or chicken in Finland. They looked pretty scared when he told them that all the hamburgers are made of horse instead. It was soo funny. So then my companion gets a package the other day stuffed with food, and tells us we can eat anything in it except the Oreos. So Elder Ahonen winks at me and says, "What are Oreos?" Then my companion is like "You've never had Oreos?? You've gotta try some! Here I'll just let you have some!" So. Funny. I died. He gets any food he wants with that trick. 

     Also, we've reached halfway! October 9 is coming quick! Then I'm off to the promised land :)

     Some cool things I've learned this week:

     One of the members of our branch presidency as this thing he always says to us. "Keep smiling. It makes people wonder what you're up to." Sometimes it's easy to complicate how to have a good time or be happy. Just choose to smile. It really makes you happier. It makes others happy. It's just a good thing for everyone.

      For the devotional this Tuesday, Elder Quinton L. Cook came and WOW. He gave such an amazing witness of Jesus Christ. One of the nice things about being in choir is you for sure get a spot in the main room instead of an overflow room watching on a screen. As Elder Cook closed his statements, he testified, saying that he didn't share this often, that he knew the Saviors voice, and that he had seen His face. The Spirit in the room was undeniable. You could have scooped it with a spoon it was so thick. I testify that Apostles truly are special witnesses of Jesus Christ, and what a privilege it is to hear their guidance. The Savior truly directs this work. He is very aware of us, and closer than I think we realize. 

      Thank you to everyone who sent letters or pictures. I love it all and it always makes my day. 

      I love you all. Keep smiling. 

      Elder Denton

Elder Beckman blowing bubbles in class. 

The Nord missionaries next door and their sweet decorations.

One of our zone leaders made a supersized ice cream sandwich with chocolate cookies and a about a pint of ice cream.

Some of our branch eating lunch together. 

The Nord missionaries did that outside our room... they're always pulling pranks on us and stuff... but we hid an alarm clock in their vent yesterday that went off at 2:30 AM. And they still haven't found it. So it's going off again tomorrow I guess haha. 

Our choir director Bro. Egget is always telling stories. He's incredible. He always gets our choir (which he says is four times as big as MoTab) sounding great. 

Picture 7: Elder Ahonen enjoying the sweet spirit in choir a little too much...

I drew Stockholm on the board. Then Elder Bernett (the one with the ice cream sandwich) drew a volcanoe in Iceland that I cannot spell or pronounce. 

Provo temple on a rainy day. 

Christmas time in our room :)

We had a sleep over with the Icies for "Christmas eve".  

Week 2 - True Ice

Hej everybody!                                                                                                          September 14, 2017

     Since almost everyone on our floor is going to Nordic Countries, we have developed some interesting traditions. For instance, the Swedes have decided that the 25th of this month will be Christmas, and the Nords have designated every single Thursday Christmas Day. Last I heard, they were buying things like chastity pamphlets and baking soda from the book store and gifting them to each other, meanwhile any packages with food that arrive on Thursdays are "Christmas Miracles". 

     Another one of these traditions is called "True Ice". There are pictures on the floor of the building with our classrooms of missionaries lining the walls. A few of them present different baptisms that were performed in the winter where there was apparently no font available. So instead, members had sawed through the four foot ice (sort of like in ice fishing) to make a font  in the water which was probably only a degree away from being ice. So in case this happens to us, we want to be prepared. That means every morning that we shower, we use the coldest setting. I'll admit, I don't do that every morning, but I have been doing it and it is COLD. 10 out of 10 would not recommend. 

     We got new "investigators" this week. Just to explain real quick, all the investigators we are teaching are role playing, but they are using real stories of investigators they actually taught. So my companion and I are teaching "Brandon" who is a 21 year old native Swede and heard about the church through watching South Park. So that should be fun! Another companionship is teaching "Hanif". I'll put a picture with what his name looks like in Farsi, but he is from Iran. We are also teaching someone named Misha from Bangladesh. What I'm getting from this activity is that we are going to be teaching a lot of different kinds of people from many different backgrounds... and I am SO EXCITED. 

      Yesterday we were able to be hosts for arriving missionaries. Essentially what that means is you carry their luggage and be the guy to take a picture of their family before the Elder or Sister is ripped from their parent's arms. Haha, no it's not like that I promise. I tried to be really nice. We show them to their room and then take them to their class all while trying to help them feel welcomed. It was really fun! Except one Elder I hosted had three suitcases, and one of them was definitely over fifty pounds. I could tell because it had a tag from his airline which said "overweight". Also because my little arms were STRUGGLING. There's no elevators in most of the buildings here so I'm glad I made it :)

      We also got to do this thing called TRC. It's where we teach Swedish speaking volunteers who are not role playing. Most of the time, they are members of the church, so it's like two on one Sunday School or something. It was wonderful. We taught a nice lady named Hannah who served in Sweden, and then we went to the other room and taught her husband. They will be visiting Stockholm in October which is when we get there so they said if we are in Stockholm that they would take us to dinner :) We taught about be worthy of The Holy Ghost and following His promptings to do good. 

      On Tuesday Elder Patrick Kearon came to our devotional. He is in the presidency of the seventy and he's British. I LOVED his talk. He talked about not worrying, just working. He also shared that our service is never taken for granted, even if it sometimes feels that way. That every tear and every drop of sweat given in service to God is counted. That goes for everyone. Not just missionaries. As Isaiah put it, He has graven us in the palms of his hands. The scars He has are a reminder to us of the love He has for each of us. He doesn't forget us, even if everyone else does. That's the beautiful message of The Good Shepherd. He knows His sheep and is aware of them through joy or pain.  

      I appreciate every letter I get from everyone! Thank you. Often hearing about something you might think is boring makes my week. Please send pictures. I would love to hear from anyone that wants to send me an email. Please know I read and love every email, even if I don't always have time to respond. 

I love you all! 

Elder Denton

                                                     Our first district temple trip.

There are more pictures to come but they would not upload correctly. Will fix later on.

How to spell "Hanif" in Farsi.

One of our teachers: Brother Beck.

Missionary cockpit. 

Missionaries I don't know studying. (Creeper pic.)

We got reassigned. Just kidding, it's a mural in the new buildings. 

This Elder Slaughter. He and I are working on an arrangement of "How Great Thou Art".

Shout-out to the Bringhursts for my favorite pair of socks.

My district leader Elder Beckman praying.

Push-up contest on the residence halls. 

Elder Ahonen doing his weekly vlog in Finnish.

Elder Hansen is always eating fruit. ​

Week 1 - Fight On

Hej everybody!

     This week feels like it's been a lifetime, but at the same time, I can't believe it's already been a week! Life is different here and you have do without a lot of things, but every day you start to miss those things less and less. 

     I love my district. There are 19 elders and sisters going to Sweden, 10 are in my district. We have four sisters and six elders. One of our elders is from Finland. He's twenty-one. He came all the way here for the next couple weeks just to go back to Sweden. He's pretty good with the language so far, but Finish is completely different than like every other language ever so it's not helping him much. The poor Finnish missionaries have to stay here nine weeks to figure out that language. On the floor of our residence hall we have missionaries heading to Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Belgium/Netherlands, Holland, and we had one missionary going to Mongolia, but he left on Monday. We're all in the same branch and there's about 60-70 of us. Everyone is really cool. Our zone leaders are the elders going to Iceland (or the Icies). There are only six elders in Iceland right now and they are the only ones here. Their language is ridiculous and they will also be here nine weeks. Swedes, Nords, Dutchies, and Danes are only here six, so I will be leaving mid October for Sweden.

      For those of you who know Carter Williams, AJ Barrot, or Isaac Sanders, I have seen them all here and they look like they're doing great! I know Cameron Dey came in yesterday, but I haven't seen him yet. I'm sure I will though! 

      My companions name is Elder Dumas (pronounced Doo-miss). He's nineteen turning twenty this month. I'm senior companion for now but we switch in two weeks hahaha. He's sooo chill. He is really humble and is a hard worker. He is a certified welder and used to have hair something like Shawn White before he came (I hope spelled that right). I love him and we are getting along great.

      We have been teaching almost every day since our third day here in Swedish. yesterday we committed our "investigator" to baptism. Honestly we were just so excited we knew enough Swedish to get her to the point that she understood what we wanted from us. The word for "to be baptized" and "to do drugs" is only subtly different. We had to practice a lot so that we weren't asking her "Will you commit to do drugs next month?" Hahaha, you never know, maybe she is still confused about that! Hopefully not XD. Swedish is coming along great though. I'm amazed at what I can do in a week. The Savior is truly helping us to learn. 

      On Tuesday this week Elder Oaks came and gave a devotional. I was impressed by the simplicity of his message and his apparent love and understanding for and of us. It was super neat. I was singing in the choir for that devotional so we got to be in the same room as him. I testify that he is an Apostle to Jesus Christ. 

     Some thoughts I have had this week: when Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, I don't he was talking about an actual needle. The Eye of the Needle is the name of the smallest passage through the walls of Jerusalem. It was often used by single travelers. In order for the camel and his rider to get through, the camel would have to be stripped of any packs and bags to fit. Then, preceded by its master, the camel would have to kneel and crawl through without being able to see anything but its master's feet. Only then would they be able to enter the holy city of Jerusalem. This applies to many things, but it specifically applied to me this week. In order to serve a mission, I have had to strip myself of the baggage that would make it impossible to properly serve. That includes my own life at home, my pride, my doubts, and many more of my actual physical possessions. Only then can I have the power of God with me in preaching His word. I have felt that power already. I testify that it is greater than my own. 

      Anyways, I love you all! I sent some pictures of my companion and I, my district, a panting of the sons of Mosiah in the new facilities, and my tag with the Swedish flag in the background :) Let me know if there's anything you want to here about and I'll try to stick it in next week! 

Love,

Elder Denton 

(No, that's not how you say it in Swedish, but I can't make those characters with this keyboard...)

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