WEEK 62; September 28, 2015: Family History, Thomas Monson & C.S. Lewis are both worth quoting, and It's not the checklist that saves us.

Danish Word of the Week: LEGO (the toy) Legos are Danish! LEGO is an abbreviation for 'LEG GODT' (lie got) which roughly translated means, 'play good.'

Ok, before I get into this week, I have an assignment for the family. President O'Bryant is starting a huge push for missionary work through family history in Denmark. He actually called two sister missionaries to be full-time family history missionaries, and he's planning on calling more in the future. He really thinks (and I believe he's right), that if we do more to offer family history as a service, that we'll be able to connect with more people. Danes LOVE their family history, and the church has so much to offer in that aspect! It's awesome. So, President asked all of us to email home and ask for two things: 1) Faith promoting stories from our ancestors and 2) The history of our families in Denmark-where we come from, when we moved to America, WHY we moved to America...things like that. So basically, call Grandpa Van Orden. Tell him to pull out all the stops and email me everything! :) Thanks in advance!

Also, edit to last week-that quote about excuses is from Thomas S. Monson, not C.S. Lewis. I can't keep all of those wise people straight. :)

Anyways-this week was super good! We taught Michael about the Plan of Salvation and he was in church this week-he's doing great! We went on splits in Horsens and I got to see George-we went to a Danish class in the church together. His mom isn't getting baptized on Saturday because she has more of a language barrier, but things are still going really well with her! She's been Skyping the missionaries in Romania so she can get the lessons in her native language. But George IS getting baptized on Saturday! General Conference and my friend George's baptism. That's going to be a wonderful day.

We had a Zone Conference where President emphasized the importance of teaching repentance.  In one of his mission president conferences, the apostles said that retention in the church is being hindered because missionaries are focusing so much on baptism that they skip over teaching our friends how to truly repent. The biggest things I took away from it was that repentance is not just a 'one and done' process. It's a daily attitude. Repentance is change. Repentance is recognizing the gap between us and God and trying daily to close it. Also, repentance is meaningless if it's just a checklist. 1. recognize the sin. check. 2. feel bad. check. 3. pray for forgiveness. check. 4. don't do it again. check. All of these steps are important, but they don't mean anything if they don't bring us closer to the Savior. It's not the checklist that saves us, it's Jesus Christ. The 'check-list' are actions that we use to access the power of his Atonement. If we just go through the motions with them, then that power will be absent. It was really powerful and I learned a ton! We were all excited to go out and apply it in our teaching.

I am so excited for General Conference. I might be more excited for this than for Christmas. It will be so interesting to see who our new Apostles will be, and I just can't wait to hear what they all have to say!

I love you all! Thanks for being so wonderful-I hope you all have a great week!!