Surprise of the week: I ate raw Hearing this past week! And that is a big surprise because I HATE fish!

Hey everybody!  Thanks for the emails, and I'm sorry that I couldn't reply yesterday.  Like I said, I was really busy giving a training in Amsterdam and then we had an appointment in Hoorn that evening, but we woke up early so we could email before district meeting.  Anyways, this past week was another good one, and crazy too, because it was transfer week!  There are three main things that I will talk about that happened throughout the week.

1. Tuesday was our last District Meeting for the transfer.  We had been focusing the whole transfer on, "Do what You do with, Jesus Christ" We gave a big Zone training all about that focusing on who they are as missionaries, and what kind of missionary they want to become, all while keeping Jesus Christ and who he is in mind.  At the end of the Zone training last month, we asked them to come up with "Titles".  This would help sum up the kind of missionary they are/want to become in one word and help them keep that in mind throughout their mission and also throughout their lives.  This is something that Elder Cooper and I have both done earlier on in our missions and it changed both of our missions.  Our goal was to help these younger missionaries not be so robotic, but help them recognize their strengths and apply them in their work.  Elder Cooper and I didn't want them to ever forget the titles they came up with, so we made the buttons for them online and ordered them.  At the last District Meeting of the transfer we gave them the buttons and a personal note of appreciation to go along with it.  They absolutely LOVED it!  It was cool to see how much that meant to them, and we hope that they will always remember who they are, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they have to offer to the mission.  It was a cool way to see that all this time that we put in to the zone and sacrificing our success for their success really payed off.  It was a great day with the zone, and we are happy that a lot of them are staying in the zone for one more transfer.

2.  At the beginning of the new transfer we do a lot of planning.  We plan out exchanges, create a vision for the transfer including goals and how we are going to accomplish them as a zone, we plan for different trainings we give.  Let's just say, it is a lot of planning!  But we came up with an awesome new vision for the zone this transfer.  So after last transfer and finding out what kind of missionaries we are, and developing the desire to do the work, we want to focus on doing the work better and increasing our skills.  As a mission, we are focusing on improving our teaching skills, and that fits in perfectly with what the zone needs, so our theme for this transfer is, "Teach as Christ Taught".  We will be working out of one of my favorite chapters in PMG, ch. 10, and some of the qualities that a good lesson contains.  We are going to be working on 5 different qualities, 1. Use Scriptures 2. Ask Good Questions 3. Listen and Teach with the Spirit 4. Extend Commitments 5. Teach in Unity.  We hope that as we work on these 5 things that we will develop more power and authority as we teach.  The whole vision is based on, "teaching with Power and Authority from God" given by David M. McConkie in the last General Conference.  We are VERY excited for this transfer and helping the missionaries teach with more Power and Authority.

3.  The third thing I want to talk about is an awesome lesson the Elder Cooper and I had this last week.  It was with our investigator P.  He hasn't been making any progress lately and just wanted to read with us from the Book of Revelations.  It is hard to teach from that in Dutch and it was kind of pointless to be honest.  Last week Thursday we witnessed a miracle.  We saw a "mighty change of heart".  P didn't want to talk about Revelations that night though, and he actually had more questions about Joseph Smith and the Doctrine and Covenants.  We talked a lot about that and tied it in to the restoration really well.  We talked more about the Book of Mormon, and we bore strong testimony.  At the end of the lesson, he
told us that this wasn't just a conversation between men, but that the Spirit was definitely involved, and he feels the Spirit whenever we talk to him.  he opened up big time and explained to us that he wants to become a better person and he wants to know what God expects of him.  He asked us to give him some chapters from the Book of Mormon about those topics so that he could read them.  We gave him 3 Nephi 27 and Mosiah 18.  This week we will be committing him to be baptized, because baptism is the perfect answer to both of those questions!!!  It was such a miracle!!  We are very excited.

Well I am running out of time but that was pretty much my week.  I hope you all have another great week!  I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Bishop

Ps. the surprise of the week:  I ate raw Hearing this past week!  And that is a big surprise because I HATE fish!  I threw the first half up, but I swallowed the second half :)  I got it filmed, but it's too long to send, so you will see it later I guess haha.