Our Mission President shared an experience he had years ago with Elder Tom Perry

I was visiting with President Olsen after the Baptism on Saturday and he shared an experience he had years ago with Elder Tom Perry. He said that he came into the Stake Center which is the same building that our ward meets in today. I believe he said that he was a young Elders Quorum President at the time and came into the Church building but was not dressed in church clothes. He said that Elder Perry was there for a fireside and came over and introduced himself. He thought that maybe Elder Perry initially thought that he was not a member because of the way he was dressed. He said he visited with Elder Perry and had this overwhelming feeling that he was a man of God. He said there was a long period of silence and then he asked Elder Perry if he had seen the Savior and Elder Perry told him that he had. He said that it was one of the most spiritual experiences he has had in his life.

Vilhelm Borg Pedersen's Baptism

A young single adult named Vilhelm Pedersen was Baptised last Saturday. He has attended several of our YSA activities and I think he will be a good member of the Church. Another young single adult who was baptised last fall named Isabella spoke at the baptismal service. She did a really good job with her talk, I was impressed. Denmark does not get too many baptisms, however many of those joining seem to be young adult age. The Danish Mission currently has about 50 young missionaries and last year we had 58 Baptisms. So that averages out to be about one baptism per year per missionary. The good news is that even though the number of missionaries went down, the number of baptisms actually went up. I am impressed with these young missionaries they are dedicated to the work of gathering Israel.

Concert at the Seaman's Church

The huge center piece detailing different periods in Christ's life is all hand carved out of wood

Denmark has numerous Church Buildings that were built centuries ago and the craftsmanship that was utilized to both build and adorn the buildings is pretty amazing. Especially when you consider they did this work without the power tools and technology we have today.

The senior missionary couple down stairs from us who work on records retention are both well versed in classical and what many consider the great music. There are often free concerts put on by very talented musicians and those performances are often held in the churches. They have attended a number of these concerts and invited us to one last evening. Last evenings concert was put on by Gilles Apap described by Yehudi Menuhin as "A true violinist of the 21st century" he was accompanied by an Orchestra composed of bachelor and Master students studying symphonic instruments. They performed Mozart's Violin concerto no. 5 in A major and Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" I figure if we continue to go to these I might eventually become  a little Cultured.

The Church is referred to as the Seaman's Church. It is built right on the canal, 
The Holmen Church (Danish: Holmens Kirke) is a Parish church in central Copenhagen in Denmark, on the street called Holmens Kanal. First built as an anchor forge in 1563, it was converted into a naval church by Christian IV. It is famous for having hosted the wedding between Margrethe II of Denmark, current queen of Denmark, and Prince Henrik in 1967. It is the burial site of such notabilities as naval heroes Niels Juel and Peter Tordenskjold, and composer Niels Wilhelm Gade,^[1] and contains artwork by, among others, Bertel Thorvaldsen and Karel van Mander.

New York has Central Park but we have some beautiful parks in Copenhagen

On our morning walks for exercise Copenhagen offers lots of options, The streets of Copenhagen are bordered by buildings with interesting and unique architecture. There is Tivoli which is always lit up. and Strøget the famous walking street.We have the 5 lakes behind our apartment building. There are also several large scenic parks nearby. These parks or gardens as they call them are filled with a variety of birds and waterfowl. This morning we walked Frederiksberg Gardens.

Frederiksberg Gardens (Danish: Frederiksberg Have) is one of the largest and most attractive greenspaces in Copenhagen, Denmark. Together with the adjacent Søndermarken it forms a green area of 64 hectares at the western edge of Inner Copenhagen. It is a romantic landscape garden designed in the English style. Frederiksberg Gardens was established by King Frederik IV in connection with the construction of Frederiksberg Palace as his new summer retreat on high grounds atop Valby Hill. Work on the project began in the last half of the 1690s with inspiration from Italy and France which Frederick, at that time still Crown Prince, had visited on several occasions

The Park has many very old trees. Frederiksberg Have's most unusual attraction is its suttetræet (sucky tree), located north of the Chinese Pavilion. The 250-year-old tree is hard to miss, its branches hung with hundreds of colourful ribbons tied to baby pacifiers. Where children who have outgrown the need to use a pacifier leave their pacifiers by hanging them on the branch, sometimes with a letter.

Here are a few of the pictures I took

I had to look up the name of these birds to the right and this is what I found.

The Grey Heron (Ardea Cinera) is a stork-like wading bird that is most often found in or near aquatic environments. They can be found in most of Europe. Some migrate while others stay all year.

The grey heron is up to 1 m tall, with a wing span of 1.75-2 m. It is the largest heron in Europe. The plumage is mostly grey (the body) and white (the neck). It has a distinctive long black plume on the back of neck and black flight feathers. The beak is long and narrow, the eye is yellow.

They fly with the head and neck retracted.

The heron is most often seen fishing. They hunt alone, standing quite still in the shallow waters, sometimes motionless for hours, until they snap very quickly at the prey. They eat almost any kind of small aquatic animals like fish, tadpoles, insects, crabs and sometimes even small rodents.

They breed in colonies in trees, which are not necessarily close to the feeding grounds.

The heron is mostly silent, but if disturbed it can make a loud shriek.

Most of these photographs are taken along the 19th century fortifications of Copenhagen, Denmark, where the grey heron can been seen quite often. Though the areas are in the city centre, quite noisy with a lot of traffic, the noise and traffic don't appear to disturb the fishing herons.

There is a nesting colony in a public park in Copenhagen, called Frederiksberg Have. Within the park is a non-accessible island where many birds nest, including a colony of some 20-30 herons. From there they move to the different feeding ground around the city and surroundings, including the old fortifications and even the Zoological Garden, where they like to eat with the seals and penguins. They know the schedules and are usually there on time.

Grey Heron

Denmark has an Authorized Version of the Bible

In Denmark apparently only authorized versions of the Bible can be published in Danish. I assume our King James Version is not authorized since it is not available in Danish in our LDS library.

My former Missionary Companion still handing out Books of Mormon

I have a former missionary companion named Van Johnson who's wife passed away several years ago. I think he decided to travel to Denmark as a kind of therapy to get away and help him overcome the loss. Since he was attending a ward over here that made him eligible to serve in the Temple. So he has kind of made a habit of traveling to Denmark and serving in the Temple for three months until his visa runs out and he goes back home. I believe he has done this 3 or 4 times. He is about to go home and he told us that he met someone that he wanted to give a Book of Mormon to and he wanted us to meet him so we could follow up with this individual. This person runs a souvenir gift shop on Strøget which is Copenhagen's famous walking street right in the middle of the city. So we went with Van to meet this person who's name is Fred Johnson. It turns out this person was very pleased to receive a copy of the Book of Mormon, Van was purchasing a souvenir knife and Fred wanted to give Van the knife gratis in exchange for the Book of Mormon. We make the trek down to Strøget fairly often for our exercise walks.  We have determined it takes us about 25 minutes to walk to the Church in the middle of Strøget and 25 minutes back which completes our 50 minute walk. So we do plan to follow up with Fred Johnson and hopefully he will be open to receiving the missionary discussions.

Actually the last time we walked down to Strøget the Church I mentioned was open so we took several pictures. This church would be translated as the Holy Church. All the old churches in Denmark are adorned with beautiful objects and great architecture both inside and out.

Tycho Brahe Planetarium

Around the corner from where we live is the Tyco Brahe Planetarium. They have about 10 different documentary type movies about space they show on the big screen. So we purchased annual passes to the Planetarium. Since movies are expensive here we have gone to the Planetarium for our Friday night dates. We had watched several movies there, but last week we realized the entire ground floor has all kinds of educational exhibits about space. I am thinking our children and grand children may want to put it on their list of things to see, since it is so close and convenient.

The view from across the lake behind our apartment, I actually took this from the top or our apartment building

The Stairs inside the planetarium

Tycho Brahe, (born December 14, 1546, Knudstrup, Scania, Denmark—died October 24, 1601, Prague), Danish astronomer whose work in developing astronomical instruments and in measuring and fixing the positions of stars paved the way for future discoveries.