Elder Hayden Bishop Belgium/Netherlands Mission: the two lessons we taught this last week made me want to stay out here forever and keep teaching people about the Gospel. I love it so much!

Hey guys! Another week has come and gone and it sounds like things are going well in good ol' Cedar City. Dad and Ross are the mountain men who always help people shoot big bucks but can never shoot any for themselves haha ;). Mom is busy being a mom and a grandma now. Meleese and Kevin have been parents for about a month now. Lainey's volleyball team still sucks haha but it's okay Lainey. My senior year of football we lost our first 4 games and went on to make it to the semi finals, so there is still hope! Don't give up! And yes, I am still here haha but I had a killer week that I am excited to tell you all about.

So Saturday we went to the Amsterdam Museum. We learned a lot about the history of Amsterdam. It was a cool museum and a relaxing day. That evening we looked a lot of people up but no success. That's the hardest thing about keeping the work going in our own city, is keeping the investigators progressing. We are gone so much that when appointments fall through and people aren't home, we can't schedule another appointment for another week or week and a half. We are trying to fix that by finding loyal investigators who always keep their appointments, and we have been able to do that this week, luckily. But I will explain more later.

Sunday was a pretty easy going day. We had a nice church service and J, an inactive who is just being reactivated showed up, but the best part was that she showed up with her son, who we are teaching, her nephew, and a friend she brought with!! It was awesome, and they all really enjoyed it. We set up an appointment with her and her son for later in the week. We stayed after church for a while talking to members and setting up appointments with them. We are trying to get to know them better. After church was a lot like the previous day. A lot of lookups and not a lot of people home... We were both too excited about the appointment we set with J and her son to get down though.

Monday was our office day. It all went smoothly, but we were still there until late scheduling some stuff. We have a lot of members here who all at the same time want to serve mini missions. That's just like a two or three week mission working with a companionship in this mission. Elder Alston and I organize those, and we spent a lot of time getting contact with those people and assigning them to different areas. We are happy they are doing it though because they are usually big assets to the mission, and it will be a great experience for them. We also got everything ready for the Zone Trainings we would be attending that week. And those trainings took up the biggest chunk of our week. And it got off to a pretty crazy start haha.

Tuesday we woke up in the mission home and left early to drive to Sint-Niklaas, Belgium for the first zone training in the Antwerp Zone. We drove through Rotterdam in the morning, and that was a rookie mistake. Everybody knows that there is terrible traffic there in the mornings! I guess we forgot, and that resulted in us sitting in traffic for 1 1/2 hours getting through that city. We hit a little bit more traffic through Antwerp and got to the Zone Training an hour late... whoops haha. It was a great zone training though. Elder Bourne and Elder Bosco are the Zone leaders there and they did a great job. Elder Bourne has been one of my favorite companions on my mission, and he did a great job. We got done with the Zone Training and drove back to Amsterdam. We hit more traffic getting through Antwerp mainly because the roads there are terrible and the whole layout is a joke. There was a point when 4 lanes merged down to 1 lane in the span of about 10 meters. it cause a huge traffic jam and a lot of impatient Belgians honking. And then you have two poor american kids, dressed funny in the middle of it all. We managed to get through and we made it back to the mission home later that evening.

Wednesday we only had to drive 15 minutes to Zoetermeer for the Den Haag Zone Training. That was really nice and really well done too. I saw some old friends and ate pulled pork sandwiches from the crock pot for lunch. Super american and I LOVED it. We left for Amsterdam for our appointment with J, the less active, and her son who isn't baptized. Her son is 12 years old and a skater kid. We got pretty tight with him at church and it was fun talking with him again. The mom wants him to get baptized soooo bad. We taught him the second lesson, the Plan of Salvation, and it was probably the best second lesson I have given on my mission! I have never taught a 12 year old before, but I love it, because I love teaching simply and that's exactly what we do with him. We taught a simple, powerful Plan of Salvation lesson, and he opened right up and had a lot of great questions. We were able to answer them all and he LOVED it. The mom had some questions too because she has been inactive for about 20 years now and she forgot a lot of things. The Spirit was so strong. And the mom was in tears when she saw her son so engaged in the lesson. It was really cool to be a part of, and I feel like they are getting closer as a family as we teach them, read from the Book of Mormon with them, pray with them, and as they come to church together. We will be teaching them weekly. They are the loyal investigators we have been looking for! We drove back to the mission home that night to stay the night.

The next morning we drove to Zwolle for the Apeldoorn Zone training. That was the last one we would be attending for the week. It was also really good. These past few transfers, President has really been stressing following his training plan. We have created a program for the missionaries to do so, and it is really working. His training plan item that the mission is focusing this transfer is Preach My Gospel Chapter 2, and all of the Zone Trainings were based off that chapter. It was really nice to see that the whole mission is unified, and we are seeing more success from that too. chapter 2 is all about planning and studying and that is something that our mission could definitely improve on. Elder Alston and I focused on it this week as well, and we made two really good lesson plans for our appointments and they were some of the best lessons I have taught on my mission. The first one was that Plan of Salvation lesson, and the second one was later that night after the Zone training. We drove back to Amsterdam and taught this young couple. They are member referrals from this great member in Amsterdam. She brought them to church once and I talked to them afterwards. I tried setting up and appointment and they told me that they would just call if they wanted us to come over. That's just a nice way to reject us, and it happens all the time and they never call back. I didn't want to be pushy, so I pulled out a mormon.org card and wrote our number on it. I also referred them to that website if they had any questions, because coming across anti material happens way too much here. And then I left. But on Monday they called! So we had our appointment on Thursday night, and it went so well! They are a cool young dutch couple. They both work and have a really nice apartment in a beautiful part of Amsterdam, and they are both interrested! That doesn't happen very often! haha we taught them the first lesson and they understood it so well. We stressed dispensations and apostasy, and after we taught about the great apostasy we asked the question, "If there was only one church when Christ was on the Earth, then why are there so many christian churches on the Earth today?" They thought for a long time and she gave a killer answer. She told us that the churches all have a piece of the puzzle, but they don't have the full puzzle. We asked what we needed to get the full puzzle and she didn't know. She looked at him and he thought for a second and then said, "We need a prophet!" It was awesome. We then told them about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. She loved it all. She told us that it is like she had heard this before and it makes perfect sense. We told her that was the Holy Ghost communicating with her through her thoughts and feelings. She had been raised more religious and was more interested and open for it than he was, but he was still open for it. We are excited to continue to teach them. They are our other loyal investigators that we have been looking for!

Yesterday was even more driving. We had our interviews with the Zone Leaders and drove the whole mission. We met with them and had some good talks. Things are going really well in the mission right now and we are all unified. Elder Alston is really funny and he makes the long car rides enjoyable. We are doing great here, and I am loving it so much. Honestly, I am getting pretty excited to come home. I am going home to great things and I feel ready to start that next step in my life. But those two lessons we taught this last week made me want to stay out here forever and keep teaching people about the Gospel. I love it so much!

I love you!

Elder Bishop