October 26, 2015 A Warm (not really its getting cold here) Welcome!!

Greetings family!

Ældste Ericksen arrived in the land last week and he has been doing awesome! I'm pretty sure he's fearless because I haven't found anything he's not willing to do haha! It's be an awesome few days! We've hit the ground running and things have been happening! We met with this guy named A... he's a young Danish guy who Elder Sakurada met and gave a Book of Mormon to almost 2 months ago. We've had almost no contact with him since then and suddenly it works out that we can meet! It was Ældste Eriksen's 2nd day in Aarhus and we had an amazing first lesson sitting cross legged on the grass behind the church building. We have some really high hopes there! 

Then yesterday we were out finding and we kontakted this 20 something year old girl. We ended up in a really awesome conversation and by the end of our talk she was holding the Book of Mormon tight to her chest and thanking us for giving it to her! It was really special.  She definitely felt something powerful! Also expecting some amazing things there :) The work is going well here and training is a new pace that I have to get used to! It's a little tough because I have to do anything that's in Danish basically alone.  It's really been teaching me to just give God control of the situation otherwise nothing good would happen out here! Just an awesome week really!

Anyways Ældste Ericksen comes from the town of Morgan Utah. He has three other siblings and he is 8 years younger than the next youngest! His hobbies include blacksmithing, drawing, video games, and being generally awesome. Other talents include playing various saxophones in big band jazz and making a rose out of Iron for his girlfriend. Once upon a time he had long red hair, that he pulled back into a ponytail. He can also do the voice impressions of approximately 50 famous characters from tv shows and movies (the Joker one is very very scary, terrifying really). He has read the Bible around 5 times cover to cover because he times it to match up with his BofM reading (i.e Isaiah while reading 2 Nephi, 3 Nephi while reading new testament, etc.) Ya that's him, quite the guy! He's just rock solid with his faith.  It's quite impressive and very helpful! He's doing great! The Danish is coming and he doesn't have a fear of talking to strangers (most important missionary skill), so good start!

In the land I've gotten haircuts from members, an Iraqi man in his shop, and other missionaries. Most recently I met an Egyptian man who offered to give "you and all your friends free clips whenever.  Just call and I tell you where shop is ok? Free haircut you and friends!" He's pretty awesome, his name is Chiko. There are a suprising amount of carved pumpkins out here ya!

Anyways I love you all! Mwah mwah hug kiss kiss hug

Ældste McBride

Max and his new Trainee AEldste Ericksen with Pres. & Sis. O'Bryant

Meet the Trainee/Trainer

October 19, 2015 I'm expecting!!! (sounds weird but oh well)

I am currently in Odense, awaiting the arrival of my son on Wednesday! Those Pictures of you Guys copying the statues are hilarious oh man! I laughed loud in the library at Ike the Mermaid in his natural fall forest habitat!

It was a bit of an odd week again for me. I tagged along with the zone leaders this week and because there was a zone training this week they had to prepare for that and with the people they had to visit I just kind of followed them around.  It was fun but I feel like I've been on this weird sort of vacationish thing since Ældste Sakurada left and I've just been following around other companionships. It's kind of fun but I'm getting restless and just want to put in some serious work in my area again. It needs it! 

Other than that I've had just a ton of time to think about this new transfer and I'm really excited.  There will be some seriously amazing miracles, I'm sure of it! In other fun news we had a zone Halloween party where we carved pumpkins! I won the zone ping pong tournament hahaha turns out all that practice really paid off haha who knew? Dad any pro tips for training a new missionary? Oh, we also had interviews again with President. Turns out Pres O'Bryant knows his way around a racquetball court, so that was pretty fun.  I think that means we're officially friends now, so that's good. Anyways I'll send you more info on my trainee once I get my hands on him. 

Fun story of the week, we(Ældste Bradshaw, Æ Vance, and I) visited this guy named Mr. T.(yep thats his name) He's from Cambodia and his wife of 8 months is from Denamark. It's such a fairytale. She was traveling as part of some student organisation around asia and was on this Island for about a week and just about to leave when she met Mr. T and she missed her plane home and lived there for months and months and then had a fully traditional Cambodian wedding with like 900 guests and now they're newlyweds living in Denmark. I've met some pretty amazing people on my mission! We also taught this family from the Faroe islands, and earlier today on the train I had a nice chat with a lady from the Faroe islands. Theres not so many Faroese people but now I've met a couple.  Pretty crazy, huh?

I love all of you so much!

kys kys,

Ældste McBride 

I found this on the Mission blog!  Pretty proud that our cute moose made their blog & newsletter!

October 12, 2015 No Such Thing as a Normal Transfer

Mom you're decorations were so fancy oh my gosh!  That's seriously has to be the most fun job for you. My favorite is the one with the giant cheesy wedding picture I think!

Here in Aarhus we had an interesting week! Last Monday we got a phone call ring ring. It was President! He said Elder Sakurada, pack your bags, you're moving to Bornholm (Little island thats a train to Sweden and a ferry ride away from Sjælland) you'll be leaving as soon as possible! So 48 hours later we hopped on a train with all his stuff and he left to København and I stayed in Horsens for a few days. It was kinda sad because me and Elder Sakurada were such great friends! Now I'm in a tri with Elder Vance and Elder Bradshaw covering Aarhus. It's been really weird. I have to wait until next week to get my companion because that's when he'll be coming from the MTC! Yep, thats right I'll be training! So until then we're pretty busy trying to cover both areas but it's going well so far. 

In other news I'm ponderizing D&C 121:45-46 which is one of my favorite scriptures ever so I figured it would be a good start! Well I'm sorry this is really short but most of the weeks just been doing random things, not really any huge experiences just transfer craziness haha! I love you all so much! Have a great week! Tell Cole and Ike if they start ponderizing now they'll be very wise missionaries indeed!

MKH

Ældste McBride

This the picture of us getting the surprise transfer call! Pretty Epic huh?

October 5, 2015 Conference!

Elder Bateman and my brother, Elder Magleby, got to visit for general conference as well! 
This is a pic from the top of building looking out over our area! 
We live in a really beautiful city!!

Ok now its letter time! We had another pretty great week here in Aarhus! I've now officially been here longer than when I was in Odense, which is pretty crazy to think about! Ældste Sakurada and I have been learning a ton here because we've been really focusing on figuring out our weaknesses and then trying our best to improve on them! Everyone remembers "weak things become strong", but sometimes we forget the first part which is "I will show unto men their weakness" This part is sometimes uncomfortable (usually) but it's just as important! Since we've been doing that we've both become much more focused missionaries, which has been really necessary because we've had a lot of work to do! We met for the first time with a couple different people this week and we're hoping we can meet with them more! 

Conference was really great! We watched both morning sessions live but it was 6:00 pm here haha! It was set up in the church, so we saw Saturday morning session Saturday night, then Sunday morning we watched preisthood, then Saturday night, and then Sunday morning at a members house that night. We still haven't had the chance to see the last session! I really liked a bunch of things, one quote was "reach up, not out" I forgot who said it, its written down somewhere haha. Such good advice, it's not up to other missionaries, or other family members, or ward members to solve all our problems. Most of the time it should be between us and Him. That was smart council for sure! I'm excited to hear that surfer talk that sounds pretty awesome! Also how about Elder Holland delivering a sermon that will echo down from Mothers day to Mothers day for decades. He's always impressive, however I don't think anybody beats Elder Uchtdorf. Elder Stevenson "the Lord qualifies those he calls" and Elder Renlund saying how the Gospel will go forth, preached by simple men. What an amazing attitude all three of those men have! Hey, too bad you didn't get the Elders over that would've been fun! 

You'll have to say hi to Brother Pickron for me and the Benches! How are those families doing? Isaac you should've just unmade Cole's bed.  That could've been a sneaky way to keep him in your room. Also I give permission for Cole to use our room as long as he puts the giant blown up picture of my face on the ceiling over his bed, so that it stares down at him while he sleeps! Also, I'd love to see more mission stories, tell Bryce to send them! That goes for you too Dad hahaha. I should've realized how much I could've figured out by asking people about their missions before I left on mine haha. Oh well! It's a long shot, but ask Eric if a Roberto Arriaga served in his mission! 

Anyways I love you guys!

MKH

Ældste McBride

Taco night! We even had guacamole and those tortillas were so so good!

This is the inside of the cathedral in the center of Århus! 
It had some really weird weird paintings and things inside!

These were some really weird people running around in Horsens when I was on splits! It was for some art/drama week. One of them ran up to me took a look at my nametag and then looked at me as if I was the crazy one hahaha it was really funny!

This is me and Elder Burton posing in front of a sweet hummer! 
I played tourist in order to contact these two girls that took
 the picture, ended up in a pretty good conversation!