Flemish and Contacts

Hallo familie. :) Happy Voorbereidings Dag!

It has been an amazing incredible week full of so many miracles it is
just crazy. So awesome! Thank you for your emails, as always they
inspire me and give me that boost I sometimes need.

So I have so much to say! Where to begin is always the problem. So
this has been a week of lots of firsts for me. Last Monday night we
had an appointment with one of the ladies getting baptized, Marie. She
is an older Flemish speaking woman, probably in her 60s. She is
probably the hardest person for me to communicate with. At the
beginning of our appointment Zuster Gulliver got an important phone
call and had to take it. Which meant it was just Marie and I sitting
at the table. Haha I kept drinking my water at first because I was
scared to talk. But then I thought, "Zuster Holbein you are being
stupid...TALK." So I opened my mouth and just started talking. And I
honestly know it was the Spirit because somehow it worked! She
understood me and I understood her and it was cool. Zuster Gulliver
said later that she had been half listening and was like "Yeah
companion!" It really helped strengthen my testimony that the Spirit
does help us. Yeah!

Another first - on Friday we did our first contacting on the tram not
sitting by each other. I was so scared but once again I just opened
my mouth and was able to share a pass along card and my testimony with
a man. It was scary but cool. So overall the Spirit has been helping
me tons. Thank goodness because Flemish is hard.

In answer to your question Dad, here Flemish is the Dutch they speak.
There is no difference. So while it is like Dutch, the accent is very
very different and they have some random weird words. And they talk
really fast! Haha little kids are my favorite they talk like crazy.
Please continue to pray for my language skills because I do get
frustrated sometimes. I actually cried to Zr Gulliver a little last
week after a frustrating day. But I know I can do it. Slowly but
surely. :)

Thursday we traveled to Gent one of the most beautiful cities in
Belgium for interviews with the President. I LOVE the Brubakers. I
received a lot of needed counsel; it was great.

In other good news we have found so many new investigators and all
through the coolest ways. My testimony grows everyday that if you
plan and tell the Lord you are going to be somewhere and promise to
talk to everyone he will put prepared people in your path. Our theme
for finding is none shall pass. We do a mixture of different things.
Mostly it is just street contacting but we have gone to doors several
times. Our normal approach on the street is "Mag Ik een kaartje met u
delen?" which means "Can I share a card with you?" And then while they
are looking at it we go into the restoration or families or faith
depending on the card. It is a lot of fun, and we have had so many
hilarious things happen.

We have two very promising investigators both found on the street.
One, Judith, wanted a copy of the Book of Mormon, so we brought it to
her home shared a bit and then read Moroni's promise. There was a
beautiful spirit and after she said that everything we taught was very
encouraging. I thought that was a beautiful way to put it. Our other
is JoJo who doesn't speak Dutch, but he doesn't really speak English
either. Yet we had a beautiful lesson with him, and he said when he
knew it was true he would get baptized.Yeah! The people here are so
ready for the Gospel its great.

Oh, and Zuster Gulliver is great! Really I am so blessed to have her
as a companion. We are very similar and are always laughing.

Other random quick story - the little boys here think its funny to
call us nuns and sing inappropriate songs at us. Of course we never
respond, but the other day after not responding these boys came at
spit at us! Haha how rude! Whatever, it didn't bother me; I thought it
was way funny. Well time is up. The Church is true. I love you all.
The work is great; so hard, but SO worth it. :)

Doi - Zuster Holbein