On Saturday, September 11, 2010, we made a trip to Denmark with the single young adults from the center to visit the Copenhagen temple for baptisms and a session or two. For economy’s sake, we rented 2 9-passenger vans. All in Sweden don’t drive – getting a driving license costs about 6000SEK (roughly $850) and few can afford it. But 2 of our YSA have licenses and they were the official drivers. We left the center at 6am! Driving south we picked up 3 passengers in Kunnsbacka and continued for 2 more hours to a town called Helsingborg where we got on the ferry for Denmark. There was a 30 minute trip across the sea to a Danish town also called Helsingborg, but in Danish. There we exited the ferry and drove south another hour to Copenhagen. Once in the city we followed some busy streets through a business district. Just as I was thinking “where in the world is this temple?” the kids shouted “there it is!” And sure enough, there it was – right in the middle of a busy area of the city. Sort of like the Salt Lake Temple — right downtown. It is quite small, having been built on the spot of an old chapel that the members had been using. There is no ‘temple grounds’ per se. The front of the temple has several flower pots arranged on a brick foundation, with a couple of trees, but no lawn to be seen. We drove behind the temple to a building that had the church logo on it, through a passageway in the middle of the building to a parking lot (with spaces for about a dozen cars). We parked and walked back to the front doors. Oscar and Elder Anderson went in to see the schedule while the rest of us took some photos. Robert and I didn’t know if we would be able to participate as the Copenhagen temple doesn’t rent temple clothes. (We thought about bringing ours from home but opted to bring winter coats instead!) They came back out and took the 10 who were going to do baptisms in then the rest of us went in and dressed for the session. (Luckily, the temple president and matron had a few dresses and trousers we could use.) The temple is beautiful, with danish furniture and wood throughout. There is only one endowment room. They were doing 3 sessions that Saturday with a grand total of 9 workers. When we all finished, we went back to the cars where we ate a lunch that we had prepared. Then we went our own ways for about an hour before starting for home. There was an LDS bookstore about a block from the temple that Robert and I wandered around in. We arrived back at the center about 10pm, tired but well filled after a fine day.
Copenhagen!!
