WEEK 19: God Jul! and "I know that book is true. I am happy to read it every day because it makes me feel close to God. Can I get baptized next weekend?"

Danish Phrase of the Week: God Jul! (Goal Yool) Merry Christmas!

We got transfer calls this morning! Drumroll....I'M STAYING IN FREDERIKSBERG! Søster Reed, my baby!, is transferring to Slagelse, and I'm staying here in Frederiksberg :) 6 months in one area! My new companion is also named Søster Reed, and she was in my Søster Reed's MTC group. So they're the same age in the mission. She's the one that we were combined with that week we were a three-som! It's going to be a blast. I am honestly so excited to be staying. I LOVE this area. I love the ward, I love the city, I love the wonderful people we're working with-this is going to be a great transfer. And the ward members won't even have to learn a new name :) Still Søster Van Orden and Søster Reed. Love it.

We had another miraculous week. Christmas is such an incredible time of year! Yesterday, we got a referral from some missionaries in another area to go visit the friend of a less-active they're working with. We were told not to say who sent us, we were just told that this woman 'needed God in her life.' So, with not a whole lot to go on except for an address, we stopped by her apartment. One tricky thing about Copenhagen is that everyone lives in big apartment buildings, and all of the buildings have buzz boxes that let you in to the building itself. So before you can even get up to their front door, you have to ring their buzz box and ask if they will let you in to the building-and THEN you have to go knock on their door. It's just one more 'obstacle' we have to get past. A lot of times people say no at the buzz box before we even get the chance to knock on their door and see their face! So we knew that we only had one chance with this lady. Something told us that she wouldn't even buzz us up if we announced ourselves as missionaries. We felt prompted to ask instead if we could sing a Christmas song to her. After a couple seconds of silence she said, 'det må i gerne.' (Yes.) And she buzzed us up. Then, we knocked on her door and as soon as she saw our nametags she got a little suspicious. But she let us in anyways and we sang Glædelig Jul, Dejlige Jul (the Danish version of Silent Night). She listened quietly to the first two verses, and then started singing with us on the 3rd and 4th. When the song was over her whole attitude towards us was completely changed! She told us that she had been sitting in her apartment just feeling sad, sad about Christmas, sad because she hurt her leg so she can't walk very well right now-and then as soon as we started singing she forgot how sad she was. She was so thankful that we came and sang to her! It was such an amazing testimony to me of the Lord's timing. We were able to find her and help her feel hope and love at a time in her day when she was feeling the most alone. It was one of the most special experiences on my mission so far.

Aviaaja is still being a rockstar in Greenland. She contacted our mission president and ordered 20 copies of the Book of Mormon to give to her friends! She also told us that she wants to serve a mission! That girl is such a light. I am so grateful every day that I know her. She's hoping to be able to come to Copenhagen sometime in January-ANOTHER REASON WHY I'M SO GLAD I'M STAYING IN FREDERIKSBERG!! I'll be able to see her!

More Christmas miracles-Hanne, a less-active woman with an INCREDIBLE testimony was finally able to come to church yesterday. She asked us to come pick her up and take the bus with her because she knew that if we were there to get her, she wouldn't back out at the last minute. :) We picked her up and it seemed like she just had the best time! I am so grateful for her faithful home and visiting teachers who have been such good friends to her and visited her every single month. It means so much, it makes SUCH a difference. I just about cried in Relief Society when I saw Hanne sitting there-following along with the lesson on her iPad-surrounded by friends reaching out to her and expressing how happy they were to see her. It was such a sweet experience.

Søster Reed and I have been praying to find other less-active members in our ward who want to come back to the church. A woman named Beatriz-who is originally from where Sara Marie is serving her mission!-came to church yesterday and brought her son, and told us that she wanted to start being an example to her family and bring her children to church. She has a lot of opposition from her husband, but she is determined! She invited us over to eat lunch with her on Saturday and we are so excited to get to know her and help her in any way we can!

AND, a less-active member we've been trying to get in touch with for a couple of months invited us over for an appointment tomorrow! Our prayers were answered in so many unexpected ways this week.

Other awesome thing-we invited a man named Carl to be baptized and he accepted! Here is how we met Carl. That week that we were a tri-panionship, we were in the library emailing on P-Day. That was a week where my email home was way short...sorry...it's because I was talking to Carl. :) We were sitting there emailing and an African man leaned over to me and just started chatting- asking me questions about what I was doing in Denmark, where I was from...when I told him I was a missionary he was like, 'I like going to other churches and hearing the preachers!' I invited him to come to our church and he said, I can't this Sunday but next Sunday, yes. Call me to remind me.” Well, he couldn't come to church, but we offered to give him a church tour instead. That he could do. We taught him about the Restoration and he was so intrigued. He was like, 'I've never heard anything like this before, but it makes sense that God could call a prophet again.' We gave him a Book of Mormon and told him that the way he would know if what we were saying was true was if he read this book and asked for an answer from God. So-fast forward to this appointment-he said, 'I know that book is true. I am happy to read it every day because it makes me feel close to God. Can I get baptized next weekend?' We were like (screaming and shouting for joy on the inside but keeping it chill on the outside) We still have some more lessons to teach you, but we can absolutely set a baptismal date! YAY CARL! So, right now the goal is for the 31st of January. THIS IS AMAZING!!!!

Also, last thing. We were contacted by a young Danish man named Andreas out of the blue-he's not a member of the church but his aunt and uncle served a mission here a few years ago, he's met with missionaries before, and he called us and asked if we wanted to meet. We brought a member with us and really didn't know what to expect from this meeting...but we were excited! We were so amazed to find out that he has incredible faith in God (very rare in Denmark). He has complete faith in the fact that God can lead us down better paths than we can ever find on our own. He talked a lot about how there is a good way to live your life, but there is also a better way, and a best way. He wants to find the best way. He came to church yesterday-and he also knows a bunch of people in the ward! Goodness. Miracles abound.

I AM SO EXCITED TO SKYPE WITH ALL OF YOU ON CHRISTMAS! I CAN'T EVEN GET OVER IT! Merry Christmas, see you soon!!!!!