Smith Family Lighthouse

Jens and Annie Jesperson Conversion and Life in Sellerup Denmark

Compiled by Wendy Kay Smith

Jens & Annie Jesperson and their children (Mette Catherine, Mads Jensen, Hans, John Yern, Mads, Hans Madsen) lived in Sellerup, Denmark. Mads Jensen died when he was seven years old. Sellerup is on the Vieje Fjord. A fjord is an inlet from the ocean. The Vieje Fjord is about fourteen miles long. The fjord’s generally calm surface waters are surrounded by low forested hills.

This painting was created in the time frame when the Jesperson’s were there. It is such a beautiful place.

Jens was a blacksmith, and they owned a farm. Hans tells of helping his father in the blacksmith shop: “When I was a boy of six or eight years of age, living in Denmark, I helped my father in a blacksmith shop. I was so small that I could not reach the handle of the bellows so dad tied a string to it. I would then pull it down and it would go back itself. Between eight and nine years I made horse-shoe nails out of iron rods. The next year I helped my father make bricks.” (Hans Jesperson Personal History – FamilySearch)

Jens was the first to meet the missionaries and invited them to their home. They then began to hold meetings in their home. At first Annie wasn’t too sure about all of this but over time her heart softened. Annie tells of her conversion “The first time I heard them, the Holy Spirit worked on me so I could understand it was Jesus’ true religion….and we were soon convinced that Joseph Smith was a true prophet.” (2)

Sources:
1) “Personal History of Hans Jespersen.” https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/KW8H-PJ1

2) “From Denmark with Love: The Jespersen History.” The History of Mickael Jens Jesperson and Ane Marie Hansen Jesperson, Margaret Peterson Thomas.