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| Haarlem |
Hey guys! Here we are, another Monday emailing. I Always love hearing about things going on back home with everybody, and I am glad everybody is safe, healthy, and happy :) That makes it a lot easier for me out here. This week has been another busy week with a lot of time to work, and a lot of miracles to see. Last Monday was definitely not the highlight of the week though haha.
After we got done emailing, we wanted to bike to the beach and see those cool WW2 bunkers that I saw at the beginning of the year while serving in Alkmaar. It was a lot longer bike ride than I thought and it rained the WHOLE way! We got there soaking wet and saw a few bunkers and then went back home haha right when we got home we had to change and then bike back to the northern part of Haarlem for a dinner appointment and then back for the night. That was our whole Pday we biked for a total of about 5 hours that day. Pdays are supposed to be days to rest, but that was the most tiring day of the week! Oh well, what do you do? haha we just laughed about it later cuz it was so stupid! Poor Elder Silva, that was his first Pday in the land and it was probably the worst one I've had on my mission! At least they will only get better for him.
Tuesday was District Meeting in Amsterdam. We got to the station there and it kinda felt like I never left haha. We have the coolest district in the mission if you ask me, so it was fun being with them all. Elder Cooper and I are in that same district again and it's cool to see him every week. After district meeting we went back to Haarlem and we stopped by and met some investigators. There is a mother and her daughter. They have a goal to be baptized on December 6, and we are working with them to try to make that happen. They are super cool though. The mother is from Ethiopia and her daughter is half Ethiopian and half Greek, weird, I know haha but they have been investigating for about 6 years now! And they now understand that baptism is necessary. I hope it works out! But they are super cool and we are already really tight with them. After that we had a dinner appointment with the Den H's. They are a nice older dutch couple. She is the relief society president and he isn't a member. We are gonna try to work with him and hopefully start teaching him soon. it was a nice dinner appointment though. We had a really dutch meal. It was sauerkraut mixed with some potatoes and then some meat and green beans. That's about as Dutch as it gets haha but it was good.
Wednesday we had some stuff that we had to do in the morning and the afternoon we met some more people and did some finding. We had an appointment with a recent convert named Y. She is a really nice lady and we had a good visit with her. We will be doing some service for her this next week. That evening we had an appointment with a new investigator named J. He is an older Dutch man and loves to read. He is very smart, but just socially awkward. That makes teaching less intimidating though to be honest haha. It was a pretty good lesson. We tried teaching the Restoration, but we only got through the first two sections. We got hung up on the fact that God is a loving Heavenly Father. He brought up the infamous question, "If God loves us then why is the so much bad in the world today?" That wasn't the first time I had been asked that question and we talked about agency and opposition, and the bigger picture. That is acutally one of the big lessons I have learned out here. Gods ways are higher than our ways. His perspective is way bigger than our perspective. I also believe that when we try to change our perspective to match his then we understand who He really is and how we can follow His will. It can get pretty deep, but it's very interresting. Anyways, we came to an agreement in the end and set up another appointment with him. It was a nice way to finish off the night.
Thursday was a pretty tough day to be honest haha. Some plans fell through and we had to do a lot of door knocking and didn't see any success. I have had tons of days like that these past two years, so I wasn't too discouraged, but poor Elder Silva haha he was pretty bummed. I talked to him about it and told him that's missionary work, and we need to find the positives every day or else we won't enjoy our mission cuz a mission is filled with days like that. I also told him days like that make the good days even better, and I was just hoping that we would have some good days to finish up the week, cuz it was still pretty hard for him.
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| Haarlem |
Friday was better than Thursday luckily. We had an appointment with The mother and daughter again. At the beginning of the lesson I told her that we brought her a present. I pulled out a Book of Mormon in Amharic. She almost started crying she was so happy haha. Amharic is the native language in Ethiopia, but not a lot of people know that. It's not a common language, and I was surprised we even had a copy in that language, but I have taught a few Ethiopians throughout my mission, so I knew that they spoke Amharic. haha the things you learn on your mission... She was so surprised, and she absolutely LOVED it! It was a good way to start off the lesson haha. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was a really great lesson. She really wants to be baptized with her daughter, but there is one thing holding her back. She works a lot of Sundays... She needs to come to church two more times to be baptized. We are praying and she is praying that she can get it off. I really hope it happens! It was a good lesson though, and I am super excited to be teaching them. That night we had dinner at the Bishop's. We go there every Friday night and the sisters come too. It's a lot of fun. The ward here is really good at feeding the misionaries! It makes the work a lot better when you are fed well and have a good relationship with the ward. I love the Bishop here. He is a great man and has a sweet wife. They have two sons around my age who are both inactive. We are gonna start playing soccer with one of them though and hopefully he will come back to church soon. We will invite him in a couple of weeks after we become better friends.
Saturday was our miracle day. Finally!!! I was praying for this day all week, and it came :) In the morning we had a lesson with a potential investigator. His name is J and we found him on the street. He is a nice guy too. He didn't have a lot of time, but we explained the Book of Mormon and gave him a copy. He is gonna read and we are going back next week to follow up and hopefully teach the first lesson. We came back for lunch and then did service. We met a sweet old lady who is a member at her care center. Her name is Sister Den B. We rolled her down the street in her wheel chair and helped her with her grocery shopping. We brought her back and unloaded all her groceries. She is about 80 and such a sweet lady. She is very lonely and really liked us, so she asked us to come have family home evening with her once a week. We are excited to visit with her every week and have a family home evening with her. We both had a great feeling after serving her. After that we had another lesson with Jan. We finished the Restoration and he actually really liked it. He was very interested in Joseph Smith and wants to know more. We invited him to church and he said he would love to come, but he works a lot of Sundays... Why does everybody work on Sunday?! haha it's so frustrating cuz we can't do much about it. Why can't people have concerns we can actually address?! haha it was still a great lesson though and we have another appointment with him this coming week. After that we had some time to knock some doors in his area. We had a really good feeling about this area, and it came through for us. We got three new potential investigators (2 of which we made appointments with) in just 30 minutes! The really miracle was how we found the last one though. So we found the first two and we were pretty happy. We got to the last door of the street and then we were gonna go home for dinner. Just to make it fun I told Elder Silva to say any word in english and I would use it in my door approach. He said, "Chocolate" haha. Nobody answered the door, but he really wanted to see me use the word chocolate in my contact, so we went to a house around the corner. Nobody answered. We walked down the next street a little ways and knocked on a door there. A woman answered and I said, "Good evening maam, my companion and I are here in the area to share something. It's even tastier than chocolate, and that's the Book of Mormon" haha she laughed and so did I, but it caught her attention. I told her it was another testament of Jesus Christ and asked her if she believed in Christ. She is very religious and was very interested! Her cute little daughter was in the back and we made an appointment to share this book with them this coming week! They were super positive, and we were both so excited! haha it was a miracle we even knocked that door, just to use the chocolate contact... God works in mysterious ways haha. It was a great day though and Elder Silva was SOOOOO excited! it was cool to see how excited he was. He reminds me a lot of how I was my first transfer.
Sunday was a great day in church. I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting and it went really well. I talked about how there is only one true Gospel. I shared the Joseph Smith story and it never fails. It brings sucha strong Spirit. After church we had a correlation meeting with our ward misison leader. They fed us lunch. I really like our ward mission leader. He is a good guy and supports us in everything we do. We had a fun dinner appointment that night to finish off the week.
It was such a great week, and I love this work. I love my mission, and it scares me how fast it is coming to an end. It's definitely bitter sweet though, because I am so excited to see you guys again. It feels like forever since I last saw you! I love you all so much though and I hope you have a great week!!!
Elder Bishop
**this is what you get when you move into a sisters apartment...
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| workout set |
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| My Bed! |
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| bottom drawer |
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