Miracle of home teaching~Finn back!~Susan ontrack for baptism

We have had an amazing week! We have met with Susan 3 times this past week! The members invited her to dinner on Tuesday with her two sons, we taught her the next day with her kids about the Plan of Salvation (They loved it!), than she came to church! We had an eating appointment after church yesterday with the amazing Ringheims (Had New years with them). Brother and Sister Ringheim were nice enough to invite her over for dinner with us! Susan had a wonderful time and even helped Sister Ringheim cook. The members have stepped it up and it is an honor and a privilege to see the hand of the Lord working through the members and missionaries to accomplish his works!
We have had an amazing miracle happen this week! Monday after the short emailing session, we went to an eating appointment in Blovstrød. (about a 20 minute bike ride from Birkerød) We had a fun time with them, and when we stepped right out the door we noticed we missed a phone call. ANY GUESSES!!!!! Finn Poulsen called us. I was having a heart attack!!!!! We walked to our bikes by the street. I called Finn back, and he told us that he would like us to come and visit him right now!!! I was jumping for joy. And the nighbors possibly were thinking of calling the cops. I don't care! I was dancing in the street and full of so much joy! We biked as fast as we could and were able to meet with Finn. We found out that Brother Ringheim went to home teach/ drop by him on that previous Sunday. Finn wasn't home and he left Finn a letter. Finn called us because of that! It is the miracle of home teaching and yes this helped strenghtened my firm testimony of Home teaching!
He is BACK! After we visited with him we called the Bishop, notified him, and we could help but to call President Sederholm. He was filled with joy and was excited that he wants to come back! We have had many opportunites to visit with him this week. Each time we visit we can see his appearance change. As Elder Lindstrom puts it, he has a light that is getting brighter and brighter each time we come. Bishop has been sick this past week, so we are waiting for him to get better so that we can visit Finn with him. Elder Lindstrom had a brillant idea of sharing with Finn President Uchtdorf's prevous general conference talk on ''Come join with us''. We printed off his talk. Elder Lindstrom than looked at his record that Elder King wrote down that Finn loved President Uchtdorf's talk, for last general conference. We took the hint that that was what we needed to share with him last night. We shared and read with him. It worked wonders. We kept stopping and talking about the different points. Finn acknowdleges that he needs to come back to church and he can see a difference in his life since last Monday! What a wonderful blessing it is to see him want to come back! It feels my heart with so much joy!
We recieved a referral this past week from one of the members. He told us through Brother Jens Andersen that he was less active and that he moved, and that is why we haven't been able to find him. We recieved his address last week. Elder King happened to contact him just before President Sederholm's last open house. (He told Elder King that he wasn't a member, but a Melkesidek Preisthood holder, okay he is a bit of an older fella haha) And contacted we him the day after that. And after over 30 years he wants to come back to church. We met with him this past week. And He knows that there are somethings that just stick with you and you cannot denie it. He wants to come back and get his life back into order before he passes from this life. He even agreed and is willing to do a refresher on the missionary lessons. Last Sunday he came to church and it was amazing that he still has the testimony and knowledge of all the stories in the Book of Mormon!
We have also had the miracle of meeting with an elderly danish woman who met with the missionaries many years ago. We went over with one of the youth in our ward. It was an amazing expierence for him. We found out that the missionaries knocked on her door gave her a Book of Mormon and never followed up with her. Me and Elder King were knocking in her neighborhood and saw her outside. We contacted her and she told us that it was okay to come back. We tried contacting again many times. All times were just bady timing for her. But me and Elder Lindstrom tried again and we scheduled a time we could come back. We taught her and invited her to baptism. She said yes when you finds it to be true! She wants to read first and still meet with us. I loved this because it gave one of the future missionaries in our ward, an opportunity to have a fantasic expierence with missionary work! We are looking forward to continue meeting with her!
It has been a wonderful week. It feels this week has gone by fast, but so slow as well. It feels like a month or two ago that me and Elder Lindstrom were riding as fast as we could to go and make contact with Finn Poulsen again. So many wonderful things are happening in Birkerød! I am so grateful to finally see success and miracles everyday in our area. It has been a huge help from the Ward. We are doing a monthly fast as a ward. Where each day a family fasts for missionary work. All six missionaries in our ward have the opportunity to look back and see what happended in our day and report it to that family that fasted! I can honestly say that we truly have seen miracles everyday! Wheither big or small!

Well thank you eveyone! Your prayers and love are felt out here. I am so grateful to be serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! This is God's kingdom here upon the earth! The time is now to find those in need of the Gospel! Continue finding opportunites to serve. ''Let us rise up! And lift where we stand''-President Uchtdorf. It is my honest and true testimony that this work is real and that God lives! We have a Saviour who knows what we go through everyday. And as we rely on him and his Atonement we can do all things! Have a great week! Until next week!

Love,

Ældste Jantzen Richard Read

Staying for transfer Yay!

Hallejula! I am staying in Birkerød for another Transfer. Elder Gifford will being tranferring to Aarhus and will be a Zone Leader over there. I have already picked up my new companion, Elder Lindstrum. He was a previous Zone leader in Fredericia, but he won't be the District leader. So no more trips to Bornholm =( Been out for over a year and a 1/2 and will be going home in June. He is awesome and I am so excited to serve with him in the next couple of weeks. He is just an outstanding missionary. I can tell that he has a strong desire to serve. He is from Kaysville Utah!!!!! Shout out to all in Kaysville. Tried naming off names, but he couldn't place any of you. Apologizes haha. He so cool. Did track (discus and shot put) and did Cross country for his Senior year. Brownie Points. I apologize also because the computers are down again and I am using the ones where i can not download pictures. But for the weekly report...

Not much has happened this week. It's been a good week of finding and miracles. Last Monday for preperation day, we went to a Sushi Buffe Resturant in Helsinge. I wish I could send Videos to you all. I survived but you all know how much I love fish. GAG GAG. I was just trying to down as much as I could and finally had to give up and go with the Chinese food. Had to try it, but probably never will do it again. I am in Denmark and I don't like fish, go figure. that was really my first time eating fish in Denmark. haha Elder Lawless had a bet to eat over 100 pieces of Sushi and he made it to 53, man he looked like he was going to die. And it took him a day and a half to digest it all haha.

We had Splits with Helsingør and I was with Elder Peterson (he's from VERNAL). He made me miss Elder Gifford. hahah. Man I had no time to myself of piece and quiet ahha. He loves to just talk and talk. haah.(As my Dad would say it good old Relief Society visiting... no offense ahaha) And now he is the District leader so this is going to be fun haha. He's really great and energetic, I just don't know how long I could survive as his companion. We gave a Turkish Book of Mormon to a lady and she told us she'll read that book and than after we read the Karon then we can come back. Does anyone know Arabic.. we are struggling with Danish actually, so that was a quick dead end aha. We actually went and taught the American family this week YaHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! They loved Elder Peterson, the husband had actually been to Vernal. Shocking haha and they asked so many good questions. We taught the Restoration. And someone didn't want us to teach them because on all the good parts every one of the phones went off in the house when we were teaching haha. But they loved it and understood so much. We invited them to baptism and they said yes when they find it to be true! We will be meeting with them again shortly. Man I love this family!!! Elder Lawless and Gifford missed there train and Elder Peterson had to stay another night..... leave it at that haha. I love him haha.

We taught a less active. She initailly said it was okay to come over for dinner, but she forgot. We didn't want to be rude, she she made the food and it took the rest of our night. Man it stinked that so much time was used.... And than we woke up the next morning and she initially asked us to come and do service for her. And again she forgot haha. So she asked us to come another day. Maybe we'll forget haha jk. She is awesome, but we had some spare time so us and the Hillerød Elders went and bought a pastry in Hillerød. Really this was my fist pastry. It was so good though.

I would dare say that our greatest miracle of the week has been Susan. We found her knocking and she is one of the happiest Asian people I have ever met! She is so nice and we already love her. We stopped by last Saturday and we invited her to church and President Sederholms open house. It was cool to see that she decided to come with us to President Sederholm's open house instead of church. (She picked the evening rather than the morning, not because she was missing out on church =) It was amazing! We traveled with her to President Sederholms. And got to know her even more. It was such an amazing Open house!!! President taught on Prayer. Afterwards She spent a great deal of time talking to us after President closed off his message about prayer. The spirit was so strong there!!! She said that she could feel something strong inside. She loved it and we helped her recognize that it was the Spirit! You could tell that she wanted more of it. We had the thought previously to invite her to Baptism on the way over to the open house (it was more joking, because she was so happy and postive all the time). But what was key was the Spirit. Me and Elder Gifford testified, promised blessings and invited her to Baptism for the 15th of March. She gave us a soft yes and we were litterally freaking out!!!!!!!!! We made a baptismal date in President Sederholms house ahha. She is so prepared. She now wants an Indonesian Book of Mormon, to meet again, and come to church next Sunday! We are looking forward to helping her prepare for that day. And we hope that we can teach her children as well! This is just remarkable. We have an assumption that her ex- husbands parents might be the referral that President Sederholm got from his mission president. Her husbands name was Giovani, or something like that, and it is Italian. Her ex-husband lives in that same area in Rungsted kyst. So it is possible to open even more doors with this family and your referral. We hope the best! It all has come because I truly believe that we were working our hardest! The Lord will always bless us when we do our best. What an amazing way to end the transfer with Elder Gifford. And it was really last second (last night). We started out alot at the begining of this tranfer, it dropped to almost nothing, than we have seen the miracle of the area grow and grow! What a blessing! It has litterally been worth it in the END!

Another quick miracle is that I just found out was that Bunmi Lawal sent me an email back. We have finally recieved contact. Unfortunatly she forgot to leave me an address so that we could send the missionaries.So we are hoping that she will reply back soon. It sounds like possibly she might be coming back her to Denmark, or possibly the Farjoes when she gets her Visa approved.

Quick upday is that our whole entire District has changed. Elder madsen is leaving Bornholm and he will be replaced by the Assistant Elder Elsbury. Elder Lawless in Helsingør, got replaced by Elder Holbrook (1/2 Danish, he was in my MTC group for the last 2 weeks) and the saddest one to leave is Elder Ogden in Hillerød, being replaced by Edler Zenger. Elder Ogden and I were the last originally members of our District group. It is sad to see him leave. And now I am the only one left from the original group. (of Elder Earl, ogden, King, read, peterson, and Lawless) Members are now calling me The Senior haha. Man I love these Members.

thank you all for your love and support. It is truly felt out here in Denmark. I am so grateful that I have been called to serve in this amazing Misson! I know without a doubt that there are people here that need the Gospel. We all need to find them. An area Seventy recently said last year that ''There are more people in Europe that are ready for the Gospel than the missionaries are able to handle'' If that is the case with just Europe, why not with the rest of the World? I encourage everyone to find those opportunites to serve, teach, talk, and let others feel of your Spirit! The Lord will truly bless you as you work to help birng his children to the Gospel! We could see it this morning, when we were waiting for our companions to arrive at the station, we decided to go walk around København. We went to another Station and were looking at a map and we were speaking in English. He contacted us and told us the best route to get to where we needed to go to. We got on the same train as him and had a conversation with him!!!! He ironicly forgot his computer at home. Had to run home and grab it for a meeting that he was going to have. Ironically we were at the station at the same time. Ironically we got on the same train. and Ironically he contacted us. There ARE People prepared and are waiting for YOU! I love you all and know you all will do great!

''What are you willing to give?.... Would you give it all for the Lord?''

Blessings will come when we decide to ACT! Have a good one and until next week!

Love,

-Elder Jantzen Richard Read