Our Friend Sven- Søster Severson's Adventures in Horsens Denmark, May 3, 2021 Week 54

 Hello Family and Friends coming at you from Horsens Denmark!

I've sent a voice recording this week, but my Mom is transcribing it for all those who wish to read. 

This week has been good. I moved up from Sønderborg to Horsens. I'm with Søster Skousen now. We are doing good. Our area is not huge-it's an all bike area. 

We're teaching some super cool friends, and we had a really cool experience this week. Two of our friends were able to come to church. One of them, who's name is Simon, has been meeting with the Sisters for a couple of weeks. He attended church last week online, and this week he came to in-person church for Fast and Testimony meeting. We think he really enjoyed it! Our other friend Sven has been taught for a long time, and he's had a lot of different encounters with the missionaries over the years. His parents knew members, and he's only ever met with the Sisters over the phone. They had reached out to him as a former investigator, but never met him.

So this week in our Fast & Testimony Sacrament meeting, lots of different people went up to the pulpit to share a brief thought of why they are thankful for the church. An older gentleman got up to speak, although it was obvious he was a less active member. You can always tell when someone hasn't been attending for a while. They may not be wearing the same kind of clothes the other member wear. You can tell they feel a little less comfortable in church or whatever. This man got up to the pulpit and said "hej, my name is Sven," and our jaws dropped!!!! We were like wait, our friend Sven? We had invited him to church of course, but he responded with "oh yah, maybe...." and we thought okay, Sven's not coming. So low and behold our friend Sven got up and bore a seven minute testimony. He talked about God and how grateful he was for the Sister missionaries. It was precious, but quite the surprise!

My companion Sister Skouzen is a lot of fun. She has the same dream/plan/idea of becoming a foreign service officer in the State Department. We've had many conversations about that, and we've decided any hard thing we have to do is preparing us for our service. Contacting, talking to people we don't want to, doing more logistical things for the Instagram, we tell ourselves this will be good State Dept prep. I moved in last Monday, but we found out this week we'll be moving our apartments next week. This apartment smells like smoke. I was kind of discouraged because I'll be moving twice. But wait! This is good State Dept training. Good prep, good life training in general. 

We have a fun time together. We've had a lot of discussions about families, our friends and our investigators and stuff. We are doing good here.

Spiritual thought: This week I had the strange idea to go back and read some older Conference talks from 1973, which I was ready to be offended by some of the language used at the time. Not the best idea going into it with.....but I found some really good talks. One talked about understanding who we are brings self respect. I really like the idea when we know who we are and where we come from, then we are better able to understand our role and our place in our families, in our societies, and in our communities. There was a quote from Johannes Von Scheller "every man stamps his value on himself. The price we challenge for ourselves is given us by others. Man is made great or little by his own will." I really like the quote because I think it is true and applicable to our lives now.

Talking to my parents today about who we want to be after Covid. After everything settles down, we'll have this decision point, this choice. I haven't seen a lot of people in awhile, and I've done a lot of changing and self reflection. I've done a lot of reflecting on my mission, and I'm sure a lot of you have done the same thing this last year. We all do have the choice of who we will become. How much do we want to use our potential or how much do we want to progress? So I like this quote. A good reminder we choose our value. We really are all children of a loving Heavenly Father, and the implications of that are of an eternal magnitude. The potential we have that we can't even understand. When we truly recognize who we are and our relationship, connection, and what it means for us, then we can't help having a light......Not one of my favorite scriptures, but one people talk about so much is "having a light and not hiding it under a bushel." When we know who we are, then that light and divinity shines through us. Other people recognize we value ourselves, and we know who we are.

Danish thought? Tilværelse existence. If any of you were worried about it, we're learning something out here.

I love you all! God loves you, and I will write you next week.

Søster Severson