July 27, 2015 SURPRISE!

Well....I'm in Odense. I got transferred and man we had an insane week! I'll try and explain as best I can but it will probably come out very rambly so just bear with it. I'll start on tuesday. We met with --- for the first time since we got the best phone call ever. She is 100% getting baptized on August 15! Wooooo! She is so great, we basically started making the baptism program with her and she was joking around about what we would do without her as an investigator! It was really really fun! She asked --- to baptize her which is so awesome because he's a member I became really good friends with and he goes out with missionaries to lessons all the time! So we're feeling pretty great and going to get some food with --- and then...duhn duhn duhhhhh the assistants call. They have us put the phone on speaker which means transfer calls usually. They tell us that this isn't transfer calls buuuuut that both Ældste Bateman and I were both definitely leaving Aalborg and that the other two elders would be taking over and to make sure they know the area by next monday (today). That was seriously the craziest mood shift ever. Man it was rough. There aren't enough missionaries coming in right now so more areas had to close and the first ones that go are cities with more than one companionship. So since then we've been on crazy splits with the other elders. We had so much going on so we just worked like crazy to try and track down everyone and anyone that we needed to so that Ældste Hartmann and Hafen wouldn't have to clear out anything and could just focus on the good stuff it was insane and really a ton of fun! I love those guys and I know they'll take good care of Aalborg! Now I'm in Odense its on the island of Fyn which is in between Sjaelland and Jyland! My new companion is Ældste Lee who seems pretty great! He is only one transfer older than me and our DL just hit his year mark and is training someone right now. So basically our district is way young which is super exciting! My brain is running like a mile a minute because of how much we've done in the past few days and now I need to like fully shift focus but its going good! I get to visit Aalborg in a few weeks for the dåb so that will be sweet! 

Everything sounds way fun at home! Cole and Isaac are so awesome! How does the Adventure time song go again me and Æ Hafen were trying to remember? Keep up the sweet adventures I love hearing about them! 

I feel kind of bad because my letters haven't been very spiritual but that's just tough for me to put in words while writing. I'm learning a ton though and especially these past two weeks I've really started to understand what the missionary spirit is as things just started to take off! The gospel is just the happiest way to live! Anyways I love you all!

Med Kærlig Hilsen

Ældste McBride

We were able to slip in a trip to Blockhus Strand which was super fun!
It was our district activity and that place is so pretty!

July 20, 2015 I spent time trying to think of a good subject but it just didn't happen. Sorry

All those pictures are so sweet! I definitely want to go to Yellowstone someday! 

Over here we've had an absolutely rocking week! It started on Monday with the dream phone call a missionary can receive! C--- called and said "jeg vil gerne døbes" which for you Americans means she wants to get baptized!!! We set a date for August 15 with her and are just way excited! Her trip to America apparently went just as amazing as we could have hoped! She's been really busy so we haven't had a chance to meet since then but we're feeling pretty great about it! Also we met M---! She's the girl that stayed with a family in Utah for a year! It was way fun talking to her because she was in America during 4th of July, in Park City actually! Her dad was way nice and her little sister was way good at using an Ipad for an 8 year old. She's had all the lessons and a testimony but we're just going to try and help her get involved in the church over here now! We also began teaching M---'s friend M--- and that has been going really really good! He came to church last week! Also at church yesterday M--- brought his family tree! It was this scroll that fully rolled out was the width of the Chapel! So awesome! It was really really impressive! So that has been our week. We've got quite a bit cooking and things are looking really good!

Also this week marks my last week of training! It's pretty crazy but Ældste Bateman and I have seen some just awesome things happen over the past 2 transfers it's just been so great and it's way too bad that we're probably going to get split up. I'm pretty nervous about these transfers because there are just a ton of crazy factors going into them and I feel like everything could get all mixed up but I guess that's just how it goes!

One thing that I really love about serving in Denmark is the crazy amount of cultures we get exposed to! I'll just give 3 examples real quick. In guest class during church we taught M--- in English while he read in Czech while other people were reading in Danish so just like 3 languages flying around. We also taught a man visiting a family member in Denmark who was from Kenya. On the train the Sisters, Æ Bateman and I met a man from New Zealand who is moving back to Australia with his Danish girlfriend and said that he wants to meet with misisonaries in Australia once he gets back. We talked to him for a long time and he told us all about how is father was a white collar criminal so he moved around all over the world as a kid and then his dad disappeared and years later they got in contact again before he disappeared again. It was just an amazing story like better than a movie!

President and his wife visited our apartment and we had interviews with them. It went really well they liked the couch! :) Anyways I think that's about it!  No pics this week because the normal library is closed! I love all ya'll keep on being great!

MKH

Ældste McBride  

July 13, 2015 The Great White Whale

Hello Family!

The Great White Whale is the name of the couch Æ Bateman and I found! It is ridiculously huge and pure white and now takes up like half our living room! It took some serious effort to get it up the stairs and then we had to rearrange the entire appartment so it would fit but it was all worth it. I'll start this letter with that great victory! (The thing is fantastic, we literally couldn't stop smiling anytime we sat on it for like 4 days)

This week we had a couple first lessons at the beginning of the week but they can't meet again until August which is too bad. That's kind of been the story with everything lately. Denmark has a really short summer holiday and it feels like everyone just takes off but oh well. Probably the best part of the week was this wednesday. We had set a district goal to get a certain number of potential investigators (phone numbers and addresses basically) from contacting. Æ Bateman and I were a little behind so we set a goal for 3 that day and blocked off a ton of time for contacting and worked on our technique during studies. The very first person we contacted gave us his address! Score! then it started raining and we didn't have any success for quite a while. Then Æ Bateman said he'd buy me a pastry if the next person I talked to turned out to be a potential. The next person I talked to was a very nice, young Danish girl. I started the contact and it wasn't very well done but I was able to basically friendly my way into getting her number and address and also giving her a Book of Mormon. It was really funny because we'd gone prob 2 hours without any positive contacts in the rain! I gave Æ Bateman a chance to redeem himself by getting a potential before the bakery he wouldn't have to buy me one. He got one the last person before the bakery! Double score! We then enjoyed some victory pastries and then contacted some more. We snagged another phone number making 4 a grand total of 4 and man what a day that was! just huge success! The rest of the week was pretty normal. 

Well except Æ Batemans B-day! We went to a restaurant with the other missionaries the day before and then that Sunday we had dinner with this awesome family in the ward where they had like a surprise birthday for him! There was flæskesteg (like this crazy good pork stuff) and basically just tons of classic Danish food! Super fun! 

I've been studying a lot in Jesus the Christ and the New Testament lately and that's been quite the experience. I never realized just how many miracles Jesus performs. It's like he heals somebody and then on the way to another healing he heals somebody just non stop! It's been leading to some good insights about how our Church really does follow the Gospel according to how Christ taught it!

Park City looks crazy fun and I can't believe you waited till we left to go to Yellowstone! what the what! By the way thank you so much for the music! We've had the top 50 playing non stop. So fantastik!

Anywhooze I love all y'all!

Med Kærlig Hilsen

Ældste McBride

the Great White Whale!

We found a sweet hill in the forest and took a rockin picture!

Epic street art! This is really close to our apartment. You should all look up Aalborg street art
 there is stuff like this all over the place here! but this is my favorite one!

July 6, 2015 Miracles and Other Stuff Too!

We had a fantastic week! Things are seriously taking off over here! If things go according to plan today and tomorrow we will have taught 6 new people since last sunday. We've been finding a lot and getting a ton of potential people and now we've finally been able to start meeting with them so it's way exciting! One of the people we taught was the girl we trekked through the woods to find! She had already read like 100 pages in the Book of Mormon and the lesson went really well. She also came to church and had a really really good experience! She's in the sisters area so at church we made the transition to ahve them teaching! It's kind of a bummer but for a bunch of other complicated reasons besides just area boundaries it'll be so much better for them to teach her! Plus we have some really great sisters so she's in good hands! 

This week we also met the new mission President and his wife! The O'Bryants are fantastic! We shook their hands and they told me that they met Sam's mission president in the MTC and those 2 somehow made the connection that they had us in their missions. I don't have any idea how our names got brought up but pretty sweet huh! President met our whole zone together. We're the North Jylland zone by the way. Before the meeting started though he pulled the Aalborg missionaries aside and just dropped a miracle in our laps. Apparently his old companion from when he served in Denmark had a Danish foreign exchange student in his YSA branch who has taken all of the missionary lessons and apparently wants to be baptized as soon as she gets back to Denmark. She gets back this week and shes in our area! Wooooaaaahhhhh!!! we haven't met her yet but man how exciting is that! Remember how i said a while back I feel like something big is about to happen here in Aalborg? A lot of big things are happening its pretty incredible.

Anyway I don't have a ton of time to write today because we've got to go teach some lessons (Pretty great right?) but all that summer fun sounds so great! The weather is finally warmer now so thats really nice also thanks for the 4th of July package! I got it on the third so that was perfect! I love all of you and especially way to go Ike with the Bike (intentional rhyme) as soon as you can ride with no hands you'll practically be a missionary!

Med Kærlig Hilsen

Ældste McBride

Mildly lame pics compared to big parade floats! But these are the Aalborg missionaries the funnest district around having a 4th of July picnic!