Hello! I come to the library to email every week waiting to see what has changed in the Bishop family, and this week I found out about a new jacuzzi, Rugby Playoffs, and Meleese actually looking pregnant in the pictures. haha I am coming home to a totally different family at the end of this year!!! I am soooo excited though because they are all changes for the good. I'm really glad, because you all seem so happy, and that makes me happy. This week was another typical missionary week, busy, and sporatic. Those are always the best ones though.
Tuesday we went to district meeting in Zwolle. Elder Bitters is the District leader there, and he gave a great district meeting. he is a great missionary and his district is blowing up right now with success. We went on exchanges with them that day, and I stayed with Elder Ames in Zwolle, and Elder Alston was with Elder Bitters in Apeldoorn. Elder Ames and I had a great day in Zwolle too. some of our appointments were cancelled so we spent a lot of time outside on the streets talking to people. It was pretty crazy in Zwolle because just two days earlier, the soccer team in Zwolle (PEC Zwolle) upset Ajax (Amsterdam) in the dutch finals!!! Luckily, it had settled down a little bit and we were still able to talk to a lot of people and find a couple people who were interrested. We also taught a first lesson to this man from Curaçau. He is a Jehovahs Witness but was open to hear our message. We taught a really good restoration lesson that was very clear to where he understood the need for a Restoration. He loved the lesson until the very end when he realized that there must be only one true church and that wasn't his. He asked us, "So I need to leave behind the Jehova's Witness church because it isn't true?" He wasn't too excited to do that, but we committed him to read and pray, and if he came to know that it was true then he would want to join the restored church of Jesus Christ. he agreed and we set up another appointment for them. it was a good day with Elder Ames. he is a diligent missionary, and we had a great time together. Elder Alston and Elder Bitters, on the other hand, had a rough day haha. they had an appointment in Apeldoorn for someone to come fix our fax machine. It had been broken this whole transfer, and this is the WORST transfer for it to be broken because we have received over 100 referrals for the zone through the facebook campaign, and we receive all the referrals for the zone through fax. And so since it hadn't been working, we had to get them through email, and it took a lot of time and it was really annoying. So even though they had the appointment, we were excited to get a working fax machine so we could send through the referrals faster. They sat in the apartment with him FOREVER and he could not figure it out. Finally he told them that he would have to search for the telephone line and they would have to go underground and everything haha it was a big mess, but basically, they had that appointment for a couple hours just so they could make another appointment for friday. It was a big waste of time and we still had no fax machine. Elder Bitters was good about it though, and they still had a successful exchange.
Wednesday we went on splits in Heerenveen, and I was with my old companion, Elder Rudolph! it was fun to be with him again. We worked really hard and long because their appointments fell through as well. We went to this really rich area and knocked about 100 doors for a couple hours. It was brutal. The people were SO rich and selfish, and they just laughed when they saw us at the door. One lady was sitting outside reading a newspaper and drinking coffie. We approached her, and without even looking away from her paper she said to us, "Geen belangstelling" or in English, "Doesn't interest me". We went on to the next door and got the same response, and the lady outside started laughing at us haha! it was ridiculous! We did, however find one man who was interested and accepted a Book of Mormon, and they got his information so they can come back. The feeling of introducing one person to the Restored Gospel is definitely worth 99 doors slammed in your face. We had fun with it too and Elder Rudolph and I talked a lot about SUU since he played football there and is going back when I will be there. That night was a lot of fun. Those two elders are great and it felt like a night back home hanging out with friends.
Thursday was another great day of finding and teaching. We were on splits in Groningen, and I was with Elder Knudsen. He is actually from bountiful, and he is a great elder. We went to a park in Groningen and talked to a lot of people and a lot of students since there is a big university in Groningen. We were able to give away another book of mormon to a guy. We also had a lesson with this guy from Sierra Leon. he is CRAZY! haha he has a totally different perspective of God, and he was going off about it. The whole time I could only think about the talk Elder Holland just gave about people creating God in their own image, comfortable gods. He was soooo closed that we couldn't share anything with him. it was a crazy place and he was just yelling while his canary was flying around the house haha it was funny, but there was nothing we could do. I told Elder Knudsen he isn't ready to hear the Gospel yet and they could use their time more wisely teaching other people. He agreed 100%.
Friday was a killer day! haha NOT!!! We had people in our apartment fixing our water system and then the fax machine guy came and set up our fax machine. We were stuck in our apartment for the whole morning. We were able to study and do some planning though, so it wasn't a total waste of time. But after the people were done and our fax machine was up and running, we had to drive to Den Haag to pick up my dutch residency card because my old one expired. We spent that afternoon driving to Den Haag and back and then went to a dinner appointment that night with a nice older couple in Apeldoorn. They are a great family and very smart. The guy looks like Colonel Sanders and is a big time banker in Europe. afterwards we went to institute with the young single adults to help support. We had a great lesson though about setting spiritual goals. I have a strong testimony about spiritual goals as well. I really thought about them on my seventh transfer back in Brugge, and I set goals for the rest of my mission focussing on the questions, What kind of missionary am I? What kind of missionary do I want to become? What are my strengths and weaknesses? How can I strengthen my strengths and get rid of my weaknesses? I thought about them a lot and prayed about them. I figured out how I can answer those questions and made goals, and then I took the goals to the temple and thought about them more. It has definitely pushed me and given me direction throughout my mission, and it has sped up my progression incredibly. Goals are a catalyst to progression, and I really encourage all of you, especially Melees, Ross, and Lainey, to think about where you want to be in 5 years, or 10 or 20 and set goals to help you actually get to where you want to be. I promise that if you do then you will be successful in life. Don't forget to make them spiritual too. Converse with the Lord, read your patriarchal blessings and see what He expects of you. That way, you and the Lord are on the same page and He will help you achieve those goals. It was a lesson I learned out here that has changed my life and will change my life. And that was a great institute lesson that reminded me of it.
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| Koningsdag (Kings Day) |
Anyways, Saturday was the highlight of the week!!! It was Koningsdag (Kings Day), and that is pretty much the party day of the Netherlands! EVERYONE is outside dressed in orange going to parties in the centrums of every city in the country. There are MASSIVE flee markets in every city where everyone brings their junk to sell and goes back home with even more junk than they brought. As a mission, we organized missionary booths in every big city where missionaries stand there with LDS material to give away. The zone leaders organized them in their zones, and we got one in Enschede and one in Groningen. We were at the one in Groningen, and it was awesome!!! There were people everywhere and we gave away 70 copies of the Bood of Mormon! With that we got four people who gave us their information so they could learn more, and we also handed out hundreds of mormon.org cards. it was a HUGE success, and the missionaries in Enschede saw success too. Around 3:00 the people were all getting pretty drunk though, and even though we saw so much success, we got ridiculed like CRAZY!!! haha SO many drunk people came by and were yelling at us and making fun of us and calling us names. it was pretty brutal at times and it kept getting worse and worse, so we decided to call it quits around 4:00 because it was starting to rain anyways and everyone was super drunk by that time. It was a memorable day and really fun actually. I'm sure the whole mission saw a lot of success as well.
Sunday came around before I noticed, and by this point I was SO tired... Church was honestly pretty boring and it dragged on. I had to do everything I could to stay awake. There were a TON of people there though, because we had the Amersfoort ward with us because their church building was being refurnished. I remembered that Clint and April Miller used to go to church in Amersfoort when they lived in Barneveld. I met an older lady from Amersfoort and asked if she remembered them. When I asked her if she knew Clint and April Miller from about 25 years ago, she got a big smile on her face. I told her they were family of mine and she thought that was so cool. Her name is Sister Otto and she used to have really red hair. She told me to send the Miller family her regards. It was a pretty easy going Sunday though. We had a dinner appointment with a cool family. Elder Lee and Elder Tjong Ayong cooked for us all because it was sister A's birthday. The Deventer Elders, Lee and Tjong Ayong, are really good cooks!! They made orange chicken and it was sooo good haha and then the sisters, made brownies for dessert. Since Elder Alston and I didn't prepare anything before hand, we got stuck with dishes afterwards hahaha. It was a good day though.
Despite all the unexpected
craziness, we had a great week, the zone is doing great, and we finally have a working fax machine! Elder Alston and I always joke about how we just need iPads because fax machines are out of date anyways. We are having a lot of fun together and making a lot of memories. I look forward to seeing miracles the last half of this transfer. I hope you all have another great week though and I can't wait to see what surprises I will hear about next week with the Bishop family. I love you all so much and can't wait to skype on Mothers Day!!!
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| Fax Machine Troubles |
Groetjes,
Elder Bishop
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