Update On Our Temple Mission: School Daze

Fredensborg Castle

Confirmation Day in Roskilde

I had an interesting experience in the Temple Saturday. There was a brother Thompson visiting from New Zealand. He asked me where I was from. He said he had visited the Portland Temple and was very impressed with its beauty. He proceeded with an interesting comment: “I was visiting one of my missionaries; Elder Price and his wife. I stayed with Bishop Chamberlain and his family while I was there. Portland is a large city with many wards and stakes so you probably wouldn’t know them.” When I told him we had all lived in the same ward at one time, he was pleased and said, “You know of the theory that there are only two degrees of separation between two people.” It’s actually “six degrees of separation”. A study done in New Zealand showed that at least there it is only two degrees. It may have something to do with “social networking”; however, in this case “social networking” didn’t have anything to do with this particular coincidence.

I would say this was only one degree of separation. The world does seem small on some occasions.

Norma admiring the Køge Church

As I mentioned last week, we have started language school. For three hours each day, four days a week we attend a free school for foreigners who must learn to speak Danish in order to be allowed to stay in Denmark. We are permitted to attend the class, though we do not intent to stay here. Norma’s is an advanced beginners class, and mine is more advanced. The students we meet with are generally twenty-something and thirty-something. We are the grandparents. We are novelties in our respective classes. A young lady from South America came to me on Thursday and said, “I need to talk to you. You’re a Priest aren’t you? I would like you to baptize my son.” I asked how old he was. She said, “He is two, but I haven’t had time to get him baptized.” I explained that I couldn’t baptize anyone in the Catholic Church, she would need to find a Catholic Priest. I also said I didn’t believe in infant baptism. She accepted an invitation to attend our special Sacrament Meeting on the 17th. Another young lady from Kosovo has asked about the Church, and accepted a “pass along card”. She came back the next day and said she and her husband had gone to the English and the Danish web sites and read about the Church. She has also accepted a “pass along card”. I think she will come to Church on the 17th. The national language of Kosovo is Albanian for which the Church has a web site. Tomorrow I will give her the Albanian web site. Norma is also finding opportunities to explain about the Church in her class. We’re very careful not to be active in doing missionary work in class because it is against the rules in the State School to do missionary work. The students come and approach us about what we are doing in Denmark so we feel it is alright to answer them. They come from many countries around the World – Japan, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey, Kenya, etc. We’ll keep you posted.