Hello everybody!!! I am so glad to hear that you all had a good week. I can't believe you bought a motorcycle! haha It seems like every week there is something new. This week was another awesome week though! We had our zone training this week and it turned out really well. We had been planning it for a couple weeks now, and with all the time and effort that we have put into it, we are very pleased with the results. The theme of our zone conference was, "Do what YOU do with Jesus Christ". We focused the first section on what we need to do. We did some training items and role plays on effective ways to find and how to commit people to baptism. After that we focused on who we are and what kind of missionary we want to become. With this big wave that came in last year. A lot of them have become very robotic and don't enjoy doing missionary work. They are wearing themselves out and becoming less effective. it was a great first section helping them find out what kind of missionaries they were. The second half was focused on the will of the Lord and how we submit our will to His will. We sang a song and they were laughing and they really learned a lot, so we were very excited about that. After the training, a HUGE weight was taken off our shoulders. We were exhausted but so relieved. We could finally do some normal missionary work again. We talked to a lot of people this week and taught a really good lesson to this guy named P.
P has been investigating for almost a year now, and he has a lot of potential to be a great member. He is really smart and interested in the Book of Revelation. So we have been reading the Book of Revelation with him and explaining it to him in Dutch. Let's just say they haven't been the easiest lessons I've taught. We have been tying them in to the first lesson a lot though because it talks a lot about the Great Apostasy and Restoration of the fullness of the Gospel. We had a really powerful lesson and committed him to read 2 Nephi 31. We have another lesson this Friday and plan on committing him to be baptized! We really hope it goes alright.
Saturday, some elders in Amsterdam were having a tough week. All 6 of their appointments fell through and they had nothing on Saturday, so we went down there and helped them find some more people. We got some new potential investigators and gave out 3 copies of the Book of Mormon with them, so it was a success.
That night Elder Cooper and I were asked to go to a Priesthood Meeting in Haarlem. At the Priesthood meeting, they introduced the 2014 Den Haag Stake Plan for missionary work. It is incredible!!! It's called, 'Het Heilswerk Bespoedigen' or, "hastening the work". The Hague Stake has been chosen as a "test-stake"in Europe for this plan. It is focused on Mormon.org and facebook. Like Elder Perry said in the missionary broadcast last year, the nature of missionary work is changing. The Branch down in Gent, Belgium has a mission leader who has worked with the internet for over 20 years and he created his own blog and worked with facebook. he has places where people can request different things from the missionaries or even just a visit from the missionaries. He has invested quite a bit of money in it, but the success they are seeing is unreal. They got 45 referrals in one month and a baptism came of it. We are launching this in the Netherlands starting with our stake. The Stake Presidency has been working with Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City to help launch this plan. The mission is going to EXPLODE this year! I am so excited to be a part of this. 2014 is going to be a year to remember in the Netherlands.
The Lord is Hastening His work and I am grateful for the tools He has given us to do so. I love this Gospel and the joy that comes from sharing it is indescribable. I love you all so much and I am glad you got the package. I hope you all have another good week and I am excited to hear the surprise for next week.
veel liefjes,
Elder Bishop
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