We will be having the wonderful opportunity of having an Apostle and three other General Authorities tour the mission in September!

Hey guys!!!  It sounds like a lot has happened this week with the big trip to Salt Lake and Lagoon and a concert!  I had no idea you were even planning on doing that!!  haha but I'm sure it was a blast and I knew Lainey would ride all the rides eventually.  She is so grown up now!  14 years old!  I was in Australia when I turned 14 and that doesn't seem like that long ago!  Anyways, I'm happy you all had a great week.  I also had a great/crazy/spiritual/awesome week!  Sunday morning was church.  I LOVE the Amsterdam Ward.  It is so unique.  I am convinced there is no other ward like it.  There are people from EVERYWHERE!  We have people who only speak Dutch (of course), but we also have people who only speak english and people who only speak spanish.  A lot of people visit from all around the world, either on vacation or business.  There are new faces every week, but despite all the changes and different people, I feel welcome in this Ward.  After church began our week of hunting.  We were trying to get in contact with people throughout the whole week, and it is so hard to do!  We have been trying to contact all our investigators to teach them, but something terrible happens in the month of July in Holland.  People get 6-8 weeks of vacation time here, and EVERYBODY leaves the country to vacation!  haha It is so frustrating.  People are always going to Spain or Turkey or anywhere else warm in Europe.  We stayed diligent though and found some more potentials throughout the week.  So that's what Sunday consisted of.

Monday was our office day...  Luckily that is our only day in the office throughout the week.  It drags on, but we are able to get a lot done in the office.  We meet with President and I learn a lot every time we meet.  This past week we set up a new program that we will be implementing in the mission.  It gets the Zone Leaders a lot more involved in training the district leaders and helping their zone see success.  The biggest problem we have is our communication throughout the mission.  We train the Zone Leaders every month, but they don't get a chance to train the district leaders on the same thing, and all the material we send through gets lost.  We need it to get to the District Leaders because they are the ones who really run this mission.  They have the biggest impact on all the missionaries.  We created a program with President Robinson to help patch up the leaks and make sure our district leaders know what they need to be doing.  We also talked about something very exciting.  We will be having the wonderful opportunity of having an Apostle tour the mission!  He (I will tell you who "He" is next week after Mission Leader Council)  and three other General Authorities from the 70 will be arriving in September!!!  I am so excited, and I hope that I will be able to have some time to talk with them.  They will be giving a two hour training at a mission conference.  This is an incredible opportunity, but it requires soooo much work on our end!  We are so excited though.  We talked about that with President and a few more things and then got all the numbers totaled up.  The numbers are increasing every month.

Tuesday we drove to Zwolle to see their District Meeting.  Afterwards, I drove Elder Cockbain back to Amsterdam for an exchange with him.  He is from South Africa and he is SO cool!  We talked about Rugby A LOT.  He played lock and he told me that I would be a good flank.  I don't know what that means, but dad would, so I wanted to get his oppinion haha. It was a good day as well.  It was raining when we woke up and it didn't stop before we fell asleep that night.  We had a service project helping this member move.  Not gonna lie it was pretty miserable moving all her stuff in the rain haha.  I felt bad for her, and she really appreciated the help, so it was good.  We looked up a few more people with little to no success...  We were able to find two new people who were positive though.  So that was a plus!

Wednesday we woke up and it was still raining!  We taught a lesson to a guy named J that morning.  We taught him the Plan of Salvation and it was a nice lesson.  He has some different ideas but was open to hear what we believed.  He plays the guitar and wants to jam with me on the piano sometime haha. That would be awesome.  After that we had a long day in front of us.  We talked to a lot of people and looked some more people up.  We got let in by this guy who we met last week.  He threw out some objections, "I'm Muslim", "I have no time", etc. but we agreed to leave a Book of Mormon in his mailbox and come back to give a 5 minute explanation.  We came back and he let us in.  We brought up the fact that he was a Muslim and he said, and I quote, "Oh, I was just kidding.  There are a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses who knock on my door so I just tell them that and they go away."  HAHAHA it was so funny.  We began to explain the Book of Mormon and how we can learn of God's Plan when we read it.  It was really good and at the end, he asked us, "What is God's Plan then?"  We told him that's a good question, but our five minutes are up.  We offered to come back another time to tell him about it and he agreed.  it was perfect getting him hooked, inviting the Spirit, and then leaving while on top.  He is SO excited for us to come back next week!  That night we received permission to watch the world cup game.  Nederland v. Argentina.  it began at 10 pm and it was a heart breaker!!  We made a good run though.  Nobody even expected Holland to make it past the group rounds.  it was fun to watch though.  We got home LATE that night.  Totally worth it.  

The next day we were on exchanges with the Den Haag Zone Leaders.  I worked in Den Haag with Elder Bitters.  He is one of my best friends out here and we had a blast!  We found a really positive potential investigator and set up an appointment with him.  he taught a recent convert there, and we had a lot of fun catching up on things.  We ate at this place called "Hapje" and they have the closest things to American Hamburgers there.  They were super good, but still just not the same.  It was a good day though.

Yesterday was our planning day.  We began arranging sleep overs for the big mission conference in September.  It is a big project trying to fit the whole mission in 1/3 of the mission boundaries.  We also needed to plan for a new sister arriving today.  We just found out about it this week, so we needed to talk with President and decide where she needs to go.  It was a pretty long day of planning and we were on the phone so much yesterday!  I went to bed that night exhausted.

This morning we woke up and picked up the new sister at the airport.  We brought her here to meet her trainer and now we are emailing.  It was a pretty crazy week.  We didn't teach a whole lot of lessons this week and we were very busy with other things, but it was still a really great week.  I am SOOO tired!  It is a lot of new stuff I am dealing with, but I love it.  I love serving in Amsterdam, and I really am happier than I ever have been in my life.  This city is incredible.  there are soooo many people who are ready for the Gospel here.  I have ran into a ton of people with really weird names too haha.  For example, I have met people named, Ghost, Chocolate, Prem, and Bright.  Haha I'm sure I'm forgetting some too.  I really am gaining a testimony of Matt. 16:25  and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.  I am learning what God expects of me while being out here and serving in Amsterdam.  I miss you all so much and hope you all have a great week!  I love you!

Elder Bishop