This week was filled with a lot of miracles and a lot of learning experiences.

Hey everybody!  First off, I am very surprised that neither dad or Ross mentioned anything about shed hunting!  THANK YOU!!!  haha It sounds like you all had a great week, except for Meleese, that just stinks.  I had another awesome week though. Tuesday, I was on exchanges with Elder E in Amsterdam.  We looked some people up and got some appointments scheduled for them, and then later that night, we had a correlation meeting with all 8 of the missionaries in Amsterdam and their ward mission leader.  We are focussing a lot on the stake plan and having everybody create a Mormon.org profile.  They were talking a lot about ideas and after time got some things figured out.  It was a good correlation meeting even though some of the missionaries were really young and didn't seem to understand how much the ward mission leader put in to make this all happen, and they were very impatient at times when they found out that some things were taking longer than wanted haha.  I talked to the ward mission leader after and told him how good he was doing.  He really appreciated it.  Afterwards, I told the missionaries that he was doing a great job and reminded them to make sure they let him know that.  I have learned a lot about working with ward leaders and getting on the same page, and it is SOOOO important to be their friend and all have the same goal, and thank them for everything they do to help.  As you do that, then they will want to help even more, and you will build each other up.  It doesn't work if you try to motivate them through intimidation or force, only through love and appreciation.  I don't understand why so many people don't get that simple principle!!!  haha anyways, it was still a great meeting.  Elder E and I had a great time that night.  We have become great friends and I have been able to give him a lot of advice for the rest of his mission.

Wednesday was a pretty slow day to be honest.  Elder Cooper and I were sooo tired from our crazy Pday, if you could even call last Monday a Pday, and then the exchange after that.  But we had time to do some work so we built up the energy to get out and talk to people.  We didn't see a whole lot of success, but no efforts are wasted right?!  It was an opportunity to show Heavenly Father that we are willing and have desires to find new people, and we are confident that as we continue to show that desire, we will be blessed with people to teach. 

Thursday was an awesome day!  We went on exchanges with the Assistants, and I was with Elder L in Alkmaar.  he is a great missionary and we saw a lot of success.  Elder L served in Alkmaar for 6 months, so he knows a lot of people and former investigators.  We took about an hour to go through the area book and got a lot of names of people who he used to teach.  We spent a lot of time looking them up and we got a couple of appointments set up!  He told me that the people we looked up who weren't home were very positive, and he told me that if we want to teach more lessons, then look these people up!  I am convinced that that was a blessing from God.  Like I said, we have desires and we show those desires through our works, and the Lord blessed us in an indirect way.  I have seen that over and over again and have a testimony now, that God answers us as we show that we have that "real intent".  A lot of times, it comes through different sources rather than how we think it would come too. 

The coolest part of our exchange though, was our lesson with P.  Elder L was the first missionary to start teaching Him when he was back in Alkmaar.  They hit it off and are great friends, and Elder L and I were able to teach him that night!  The lesson went great.  We based it off of 3 Nephi 27, and talked about baptism, and then moved into Mosiah 18 and talked about the baptismal covenant.  The Spirit was SO strong and he has the desire to be baptized!  He still has a few questions though, and said that he would pray about it this week.  We are praying for him too.  Elder L was so happy after the lesson.  He told me that he is convinced that this investigator is the reason that he got called to this mission.  It was a great lesson to be a part of.  We celebrated afterwords by getting some KFC haha.

Friday Elder Cooper and I were back together.  We spent some time looking some people up and got let in to this inactive guy's house.  His name is C.  He is SOOO Dutch! haha The typical Dutch person is like a turtle.  They have a big shell around them, and come off very rude at first, but once you see passed the shell, they are a bunch of softies :)  We talked to him for a little at first and he was really mad at us and told us it's annoying when people show up to his house unexpected.  The trick to get past a Dutch person's shell is through compliments.  We gave him a few and he opened right up.  He is a great guy and has a testimony.  He prays every night.  The reason he doesn't come to church is because he thinks the people there don't like him, and he doesn't like a lot of them.  Dutch people are so stubborn sometimes!  haha He told us that he will go back to church though, sooner or later(hopefully sooner).  We are going to be meeting with him on a weekly basis now :).  That night we had a great dinner appointment with the D family.  We ate the typical Dutch meal during the winter time, Stampot and worst.  They are an older couple, and they are a little different, but they are great people and we have a great relationship with them.

Saturday we were in Haarlem in a meeting with the sister training leader in the zone.  She is over all the sisters in the zone, all three of them haha.  but we talked about her vision for the transfer with the sisters and how we can help her with that.  We also talked about our zone training that we will be giving in a few weeks.  It is gonna be about teaching as Christ taught, and we will focus a lot on teaching skills and do a lot of role plays.  We hope that it will be a good training and that all the missionaries will become better teachers because of it.  After that, we stopped by the church so I could run though the hymns we would be singing in sacrament meeting.  The organist has been sick these past couple weeks, so they asked me to play.  We also had some time to talk to people on saturday.  It was the market in the centrum so there were a ton of people out.  We talked to quite a few people and got rejected hard core haha.  This would be a typical conversation we had on Saturday... "Hey excuse me sir, we are sharing these cards (mormon.org cards) with people today..." and they would interrupt and say, "Good luck with that!" haha all we could do is just laugh it off, buy a fresh stroopwafel, and sit on a bench and enjoy the beautiful city.

Sunday was another great day.  It was fast Sunday, and I gained a stronger testimony of feeling the influence of the Spirit more abundantly as you fast.  It was a very Spiritual day.  We had great lessons in church and then we had a killer testimony meeting.  it was one of those testimony meetings when you feel like the branch grew closer together by the end of it.  I got up and bore my testimony about my time in Alkmaar and thanked them for helping me with everything.  After the closing hymn.  Brother and Sister De B came up to me and thanked me for my testimony.  They told me that it really touched their youngest son, who is 14, and he was crying afterwards.  It has been cool to help him and become his friend, since he is the only young man in the branch. 

This week was filled with a lot of miracles and a lot of learning experiences.  I wish I could tell you all of them and explain them better, but I am out of time!  Ik heb jullie ZO veel lief en ik wens u en fijne week met veel geluk!  tot de volgende week!

Veel Leifjes,

Elder Bishop