Hey Everybody!! thanks for the email and the big news!! I'm coming home to a niece!!! I am soooo excited and happy for Meleese and Kevin. You two will be great parents and I will be her favorite uncle (sorry Ross). Haha That's crazy about Rugby too! keep up the great work all of you and keep me posted on everything.
Well this week was my first week in my new city Apeldoorn! it is a great area with a lot of trees and forests, unlike Alkmaar with fields as far as you could see. It is still flat here in Apeldoorn. There arent many tulips or windmills, so it's not "Ideal" Holland, but it is still very pretty. Our apartment isn't too bad. it's the worst apartment I've lived in, but I have been blessed with good apartments, and it's really not that bad. it's on the top floor of a 5 story building. Elder Alston and I are cleaning it up and getting things in order. The Ward here is amazing! it is a big church building (about half the size of our church building in Utah) but that is big here. And there is a nice ward with a lot of families and kids. I am excited to get to know that families here.
Apeldoorn is definitely different than Alkmaar. it is a bigger zone geographically, and there are more missionaries, so work as a zone leader is also different here, and I am still trying to adjust, but it is coming really well. One of the differences, for example, is that the area is so big that it takes too much time to meet somewhere and exchange with another companionship. So we just leave our city and go on splits with them both working in their city. There are pros and cons to both. The pros for splits is that you have four missionaries in an area instead of two and you can get twice as much work done. The cons are being away from your city multiple days throughout the week. it makes it a lot harder to get things going in your own area. So since our zone is so big and we do more splits, it is a lot harder to do actual missionary work in our own area, but our responsibility is to sacrifice our success for the success of the zone, and Elder Alston and I both understand that and are both okay with that. it is actually cool, because we are able to witness a lot of miracles in other cities witht he missionaries there. I will share a few examples.
Before I run through the week, I need to mention one more thing. Our mission has been supporting the members with this big "Digital age missionary work" vision. The members are behind it, well at least the ones under the age of 70 and have cell phones haha, and President Robinson is behind it. We are focusing our efforts as missionaries to support the members with this as our first priority. We have an official church facebook page in Dutch that was cleared by church headquarters and everything, and they are running a facebook campaign right now offering free "Finding Faith in Christ" DVD's. All you have to do is click on the link and order it, and the mission office sends them a dvd within the next couple of days. This Easter facebook campaign started last week and the mission has already received 250 referrals!!! our job as missionaries is to go to their houses, make sure they got the DVD, and explain how we share a message about Christ and offer to teach them. We are seeing MIRACLES with this already!
So having said that, Tuesday we went to the district meeting in Groningen. Elder Rudolph is the district leader there now. I don't know if you remember him, but he was my companion back in Brugge. He is the massive lineman for SUU haha. He gave a good district meeting, and after the meeting, we went on splits with the Groningen Elders, and guess who I went with?... Elder Toole!!! I trained him almost one year ago back in Brugge! He was one of my favorite companions and I was so glad to work with him again. We had a great day catching up on everything and biking in the rain. We didn't see much success with the referrals in Groningen that day, but it was still a lot of fun being with him. He has made a lot of improvements since I trained him, and I would consider him one of my best friends on the mission.
Wednesday we were on exchanges with Heerenveen. It is west of Groningen. That was honestly a pretty long day. Elder Alston was in the car with the other elder looking up some referrals really far away, and I was on foot talking to people and looking up people in the city. I was with Elder Pugh, and we had a great time. We got along really well and had some good talks about life, and good talks about the mission and goal setting specifically. After a long day we looked up the last referral, gave him a Book of Mormon, and set up a return appointment for them for next week! It was nice ending a long day of walking and talking to people on a good note of seeing some success and scheduling an appointment.
Thrusday was the miracle day. I was with Elder Bitters in Zwolle, and we had a great day! They are doing great work in Zwolle right now, and we had three planned appointments with investigators that day. The first one was with this lady named E. She is a really cool lady and understands the Gospel. Her sister is an active member and she wants to be baptized. The only thing holding her back is her boyfriend. They have three kids together but aren't married. He was sitting in the corner playing his nintendo ds. We was completely silent throughout the whole lesson until one of us said something he didn't agree with, then he would start arguing with us. Toward the end of the lesson, he asked her, "Do you really plan on becoming a member of this church." She replied, "I don't know yet." Then he just shook his head no and went back to his ds. It was sad to see that he is the only reason holding her back from baptism and there isn't much we can do about it. It was still a spiritual lesson, and even her boyfriend bowed his head and said amen after we prayed. The second lesson we had was with their baptismal date. He has been taught everything and is just waiting for his girlfriend to come back from vacation so they can get married and both get baptized. He is a great guy and very prepared. The lesson was more of a conversation than us teaching him. The third lesson was with this lady named J. She was one of the referrals who ordered the dvd. They called her and she agreed to meet with us, so we went over that night, not really knowing what to expect. J is from ecuador but has been living in the Netherlands for 16 years. She has a dutch husband and three kids. Her husband is dutch reformed and she is catholic, but they don't practice their religion anymore. She told us that when she lived in Ecuador, her and her mom met the Elders. She got a Book of Mormon when she was 13 and read the whole thing! They weren't baptized, but they liked the church. They lost contact with the Elders, and she hasn't met any since we came. We had a great talk with her and learned that she believes in God still, but she never reads or prays or goes to church anymore. Her faith has dwindled and she told us that she wants to gain the relationship with God again and build her faith. Obviously, we opened up the Book of Mormon to Alma 32 and read with her. She loved it and agreed for us to come back. She asked if she could have a Book of Mormon, and I pulled out the Book of Mormon that you guys sent me last fall with your picture and testimony in it. I had been carrying that copy in my bag for over 6 months waiting for a family who I knew would appreciate it, and I decided to give it to this woman with a family. She opened up the cover, saw it, and read it, and I explained to her that I was waiting to give it to somebody who I knew would appreciate it. She was SOO grateful and started tearing up. It was a great lesson and the Spirit was strong. A lot of that was thanks to the testimony you shared in that book, so thank you. I am so excited for the missionaries to start teaching them. It was such a great day of miracles!
Friday we had to drive to leiden for mission leader council. It was a good council and we talked a lot about the referrals. Other than that though, there isn't much to say about friday haha. Saturday we went over to this inactive members house. We call him big B. He is from Ghana, Africa and is really cool. I told him that my cousin was going to Kumasi, Ghana. He was really excited and told us about the stuff they eat there! He said they eat a lot of "Bush Meat" aka rodents. He told us about this animal called a grasscutter. It is kind of like a beaver. He told us, word for word, "Every single part of that animal is tasty, even the poop!" hahahaha. He wasn't kidding either! They eat the poop with different herbs and spices mixed in hahahahahahahahaha sorry Layne, but tell me if it's good! It was a good lesson though and we are working on getting him back to church.
Sunday was a cool day in church. President and Sister Robinson came as guest speakers for sacrament meeting, and what's even cooler is that their daughter and her family was there visiting them! I met their daughter and her family and Elder Alston and I translated for them. They were great talks, and President and Sister Robinson are great people. it was a good church service to end a solid week.
Later that night we called the zone to follow up on the referrals, and most of the ones they contacted were fairly positive! The zone got 13 new investigators this week thanks to the facebook project. We are excited to see where this goes and the success that comes from it.
I miss you all so much and I am so grateful for the family that I have. Ik wens u een heel fijne week en ik ben entusiast om weer van jullie te horen! tot dan!
Elder Bishop
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| Church in Alkmaar (last area) |
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