Happy late Father's day Daddy!! I sent a card for you and pictures
home last week, so hopefully you will get them within the next few
days. Thank you so so so so much for the wonderful example and the
wonderful father you are to me. I learn so much from you and I tell
people about you all the time. I wish they would let us talk on the
phone on Father's day too. Haha I think it's because they think
Fathers don't need all the verbal reassurance of love as much as the
mom's do. But do know that I love you so much and am sending you a
big hug and kiss.

Oh and please do not worry about what Zuster Tibbitts said in her
email. What I assume she was talking about was an inactive family we
teach who does live in a not as nice part of town. Don't worry
though; they live right on the outside of it right by the tram halte
so we don't ever go anywhere dangerous. And we only go in the day.
Haha trust me, we're smart girls. I do appreciate your concern
though. We talked to President yesterday, isn't he wonderful, and
everything is all good. I'm glad you were able to talk to him.

So this has been an incredible week! We have had so many powerful,
Spirit packed lessons I am actually pretty tired today! It's funny
how spiritual experiences can do that to you.

We had our first lesson with Sebastian, the man who stopped us on the
street, and his family and oh my goodness was it powerful. The Spirit
does amazing things! Haha I take no credit. We watched the
Restoration DVD with them and they loved it. The wife kept saying
everything was prachtig, beautiful, and Sebastian couldn't take his
eyes off it. They also have 4 daughters who really liked it, and they
had so many questions. Everything is very new for them, but slowly
they are beginning to see the truth. Oh and we definitely had a big
miracle at the beginning of the lesson. The Restoration DVD we have
is in 12-plus different languages and in order to get it to play with
Dutch subtitles you have to have a remote to choose it. Otherwise it
starts playing in Chinese I think. Anyways, for some reason they
couldn't find the remote, and so we weren't going to be able to watch
it. But then, it just started playing, and all of a sudden Dutch
subtitles popped up. Haha it was such a tender mercy and miracle from
the Lord! Trust me, I know from experience if you do not have the
remote that does not happen. Oh the miracles. :)

We also had another great appt with Enok and Marie Christine and their
family. Marie Therese actually came to teach with us which was
awesome! They are committed to being baptized but because of some
circumstances can't set a firm date yet. Everything will work out
though, and they are growing beautifully in their testimonies.

Oh other awesome news -- I can't believe I forgot-we have another
baptismal date! Her name is Adella and she is wonderful! She will be
baptized August 24th. She just had a baby and it's been wonderful to
see how the plan of salvation is opening up her eyes to the eternal
perspective of her’s and her family's life. William too is also still
getting baptized, but his date was pushed back and after praying we
decided to give him to the elders. He really doesn't live in the best
part of town and we felt the elders would be wonderful for him.

We've done a lot of great work with the members this week. Thursday
Zuster Fritz and I made dinner for Marie Therese and Rene, another
recent convert. It was a really random dinner, fried rice, and then
what I told them was homemade Kentucky fried chicken but they thought
it was so good. We made no-bake cookies for dessert haha and they
thought they were so gross! Haha not it a mean way, but it just goes
to show the difference in taste here. Haha it was great to see their
reactions.

We also ate with Br and Zuster Schiltz and older couple in our ward.
She's from Ireland and he's from here, and they are hilarious! I
don't think I've ever laughed so much. And they gave us a referral
which was awesome!

Last night we went and ate with Brother Nuyens, our ward mission
leader, and that was quite the interesting experience. Haha I love Br
Nuyens, he is amazing but he speaks Antwerps, which is a dialect of
Vlaams, and thus very difficult to understand. It was just funny,
even Zuster Fritz has a hard time understanding him sometimes. He
taught us a lot though about the culture. They thought it was
hilarious when we started speaking English really fast and they
couldn't understand us.

Overall, another wonderful week full of miracles, hilarious moments,
and tender mercies from the Lord. I love you all! Please keep doing
missionary work. Help the ward missionaries; be good examples. You
are wonderful!

Met liefde,
Zuster Holbein

Weird Eating Appointments

Dearest family,

I loved your emails this week! Really, they were so inspiring for me
to get. Thank you John, Britt, and William for your wonderful emails.
I always tell people I have the best family ever and it really is
true. I wish I had time to email you all back separately, but I
don't. I did buy a bunch of cool postcards though and I am planning
on writing you all today. But again, thank you, thank you, thank you
for your support! It means a lot to me. By the way, I know Father's
Day is coming up, and this is completely horrible but I don't remember
what day it is! Haha please forgive me if I missed it Daddy and know
that I love you and am sending you a card this week. Thank you for
being a great example for me.

So once again we had another wonderful week of miracles and blessings
from the Lord. Where to begin? This keyboard is really weird today
and isn't letting me type very quickly so if I don't have time to get
everything out right please let me know. I'll start with our funny
crazy story of the week. Wednesday night we went to Grace and
Joseph's house, two of our favorite members in the ward, to give them
a lesson. We made them cookies because they really are so awesome and
have done so much lately to help us. We told them we had a surprise
for them, and they told us that they also had a surprise for us. So
we went to their apartment and it turned out their surprise for us was
a referral, a woman named Moni who wanted to take the lessons. It was
so awesome, haha as a missionary that is the best surprise ever! And
then, Moni told us that she had a surprise for us... she had made us
dinner. Haha oh my goodness. I am attaching a picture below of what
we had to eat, and I will have you know I ATE THE WHOLE THING. Zuster
Fritz has a picture of the bones. Talk about the ultimate stomach
experience. Haha you all should be very very proud of me. I was
praying the whole time that I would be able to do it, and as always,
and thank goodness, that prayer was answered. Haha oh the crazy
things we do for investigators. Moni is wonderful though; we had
another lesson with her last night and she is coming to church on
Sunday.

Thursday night we got to travel up to Amsterdam and spend the night
with the sisters there. We had zone conference on Friday in Apeldoorn
which with the train is like 5 hours from here so we had to stop over
for the night. It was a lot of fun to see the sisters there and to
see Amsterdam. It was only my 2nd time in the Netherlands oddly
enough. We also had quite the experience when we first arrived. To
make a very long story short… I ended up getting stuck on the other
side of the closed doors of a tram and got separated from everyone for
about 10 minutes! They had my bags and my wallet and everything haha
so I was kind of nervous for a few minutes, but it ended up working
out fine. Friday zone conference was wonderful! I love getting
together with all of the other missionaries; they are such a strength
to me. And I love love LOVE Pres and Zuster Brubaker. I love how
positive they are. They are really big on encouraging us to always
have a positive attitude no matter what is happening because that is
what brings miracles and the Lord's help. Oh boy do I have a
testimony of that! It was great, and a very inspiring conference.

Ok now I have a miracle that I am slightly hesitant to share because I
don't want anyone (MOM!) freaking out. So I have been running while I
have been here and last week my knee really started hurting. To make
a long story short, I ended up being on crutches most of last week.
Now do not freak out, it was not that bad, and with the crutches we
weren't stuck inside, we still got to go out and do work. I was
frustrated though because the crutches hurt. And really, who wants to
be on crutches?

So at zone conference I got a blessing from Elder Wood our zone
leader. In his blessing he said that if I had the faith I would be
quickly healed. That was on Friday and I am happy to report that
today I am crutch-free and my knee doesn't hurt! Talk about a miracle!
The Lord blesses me more than I deserve and the power of the
Priesthood is so real. I love it!

Well that's about all the time I have. Sorry this email is so short!
I will make a note not to use this computer next week. You all are
wonderful. I feel the strength from your prayers and love. The
Church is so true. God is a God of miracles. Angels are sent to help
us everyday. We are all so blessed and it's our duty to share why
with the world!

Met Liefde,
Zuster Holbein

Miracles

Hello family dear. I love you all so much! I really hope you know
that. I pray for each of you all the time and I love reading the
emails and hearing about all the wonderful things you are doing.

Please let Brittney and her family know I love them and am praying for
them in this difficult time. Thank goodness for the gospel in our
lives and the knowledge we have of the plan of salvation-that life
goes on after this. Our whole purpose here is to prepare for the next
life. Still, the death of a loved one is hard. Brittney I love you!
You will be in my prayers.

Congrats to Laura and Clara! Send them and the new baby my love. Our
family certainly is growing. Thanks Julia for your email, you always
make me laugh. I can't believe it's almost time for the baby!!!! So
crazy!! I can't wait to see pictures.

So as a preface to this email I just have to say that this past week
has been filled with more miracles that I can ever even do justice to
in writing. Seriously, every night this week Zuster Fritz and I have
sat down and just laughed asking, how can we possibly write about all
of this in our journals? The Lord has been pouring out His miracles
this week. I have a very strong testimony that miracles are real
things. If we have the faith, God has the power and he will use us to
make things happen! Haha so on that note let me begin.

Zuster Fritz and I have chosen our theme for this transfer to be
“More.” I think this may have something to do with the fact that our
favorite EFY CD is “A More Excellent Way.” But our goal is to give
more in everything. More love, more service, more diligence, one more
door, just more everything. We dedicated ourselves to it this week,
and tjonge jonge has the Lord been giving more in return.

I'll start with Tuesday. Haha besides the biggest miracle day of the
week, Tuesday gets the award for the funniest day of the week. So we
had a little bit of extra time before our district meeting so we
decided to go and knock a few doors in the neighborhood by the church.
It was a nice day and Zuster Fritz and I were laughing and talking
between doors. As we were walking up to this one door, I told her a
joke, and I told the punch line just as we rung the bell. Zuster
Fritz starts laughing really hard and accidentally snorts! Haha the
thing is she did this as the woman opened the door. And instead of
being able to say anything we both bust up laughing! Haha and we
couldn't stop! I tried to struggle out the words “We're missionaries”
or something but I couldn't stop laughing. The woman just looked at
us and then she started kind of laughing. Finally I explained that I
had just told a joke; she said don't worry, she thought it was funny.
We told her about the Book of Mormon and she said maybe her uncle
would be interested, so it ended up working out. Oh goodness though
was it funny.

Ok so on to the miracles. Tuesday after district meeting we got a
call from one of our investigators Adella asking if she could push her
appointment back later. We said that was fine, we could just switch
our dinner time with her appointment time. So we go to head home.
Tram 6 is the one the takes us home. We went to catch it but missed
it by literally 3 seconds. But it wasn't a big deal, we decided we
could just make phone calls while we waited for the next tram. So I
took the phone out of my pocket, but it said “SIM card rejected.”
What?? So random… our phone just broke. Not good for a missionary.
So we think, ok we can just go to a member’s home use their phone and
call the Elders. All of a sudden, I looked up and Tram 3 was in front
of us. Tram 3. On the 6 line. That doesn't happen. It stopped
right in front of us and we didn't even flag it down, something that
also doesn't happen. I speak from having missed many trams not
flagging them down. We jumped on it and it was completely empty;
something that also doesn't happen. I figured ok this is weird but
fine, we'll just take it to Central Station then home. But then it
took this random turn and went off in the wrong direction. We had no
idea what was going on. And then all of a sudden Zuster Fritz said,
“Hey this is the street where a former investigator lives. We have
wanted to look them up. We have to get off; this is a sign.” So we
jumped off the train, and you really could feel a miracle in the air.
We saw the door and headed purposefully to it. And then all of a
sudden this man pops out of this house in front of us. He looks at
us and asks if we speak Dutch. We tell him we can and he says, “I
need to know who you are and what you teach.” Oh my goodness! Long
story short -- we talk with him for a long time, his 3 daughters come
out, and THEY ask US to come back on Saturday to teach them. Talk
about a miracle! More happened but I have to get on to the next one.
I'm so excited for this family though; they are so open.

Thursday is the other miracle I wanted to tell you about. The night
before we had prayed and felt good about doing a consecrated hour
using surveys in Central Station. So we went to Central Station, and
all at once we both got a really weird feeling. It was like an
absence of the Spirit almost. We knew we were not supposed to be
there. So we said a prayer and looked again at our map. The Grote
Markt seemed to be glowing. It was so cool. Now usually we wouldn't
go there to do finding because it's mostly just tourists. But, you
can't deny the Spirit. So we went, and weird of all weird things,
there was hardly anyone there. We stood with this stupor of thought
not knowing what to do when suddenly we both got the idea: SING. So
we pull out some Dutch hymns we had with us and started to sing. And
then (this is SO COOL) different groups, both with about 20 people, of
German tourists came and started to listen to us. I have never been
so nervous. I was singing the melody and Zuster Fritz harmony. We
sang “Gij zijt grote” (“How Great Thou Art”) and a bunch of others.
Afterward we talked to them, Zuster Fritz happens to be a German
major, and gave them pass along cards. They all said they knew the
Church and were so touched they wanted to learn more. We made a few
old ladies cry. IT WAS AWESOME; more powerful than I can put into
words. You are welcome German missionaries haha. So now we sing all
the time. It's so great.

Helaas -- is that all the time I have?!? I love you, I love the
gospel. I love miracles, and I LOVE MY MISSION.

Oh and Mom, I talked to President Brubaker and he wants me to get my
flute. Is there any way you could send it? Maybe in a flat rate box?
There are a few other things I need, so you could just put them all
in there? I'll put more in the email next week about it. Oh, and
could you send me some of the girls’ addresses; I want to write them
but I don't know where they are. Maybe Facebook Hannah and ask her?
Thanks you're the best!

Tot ziens,
Jane

Another Blessed Week

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for your wonderful emails this week! It has been
quite the week full of change and new things and it was wonderful to
read your testimonies and feel of your love. Tell William good luck
with finals! I can't believe he is going to be a junior, that's so
crazy. I probably won't even recognize him when I get back. I loved
the picture of Tyler and Lisa they look so good and so happy. They'll
be great parents, please send them my love. Tell everyone in the ward
I love them! I can't believe the Austins are moving! That's exciting
for their family but boy will they be missed. Haha thank goodness
with the gospel we are all never too far apart.

So it has been a growing week for me! The Lord is good at giving me
experiences I need to grow and helping me out so much. Zuster
Gulliver left on Wednesday and it was a lot sadder than I thought it
would be. She really became one of my best friends haha and I cried
when she left. There I go loving people too much again. Haha no, it
was great to work with her, but I am happy for her to go home and see
her family and all that. And now I have my wonderful new companion
Zuster Fritz. She is an incredible sister! She has been out for
almost a year now and has gone through so much and is such an amazing
missionary. She was a German major before she came out so she's
really good with Dutch. She's very enthusiastic about the work and
has been wanting to serve here in Antwerpen her whole mission. I love
her already and I think we make a good team. Look out Antwerpen! :)

It has been interesting taking over the city and being the one who
knows the people and where she is going and all of that. The Lord has
definitely been helping me out with the map! Haha I am happy to say I
can now get around with the metro and the map pretty well...who
would've thought? It's been great fun.

So everyone has been asking about the city and the food and all of
that. Let's see. Antwerpen is a really big city but we (in my
opinion) have the best of both worlds because while there is the
bigger city part with all of the beautiful architecture, there are
also the parts outside of the city with gorgeous parks and what not.
We live in Deurne which is a small little down about 15 minutes on the
Tram from Central Station. We do a lot of finding in our area but
other good spots are just outside of central station, the Grote
Maarkt, and Groenplaats. You should Google Image Antwerpen; I bet
there are a lot of pretty pictures. I promise to send some home
soon. I seriously have taken so many!

Hmmm what food do we eat? A lot of food from all over the world
actually. Goulash is one of the most popular things here. Marie
Therese made us some the other night before Zuster Gulliver left and
it was so good. People also make a lot of Indian food. Anything
spicy they love! The funny thing is everyone ALWAYS gives us orange
juice to drink with it which is the worst thing to drink with spicy
food. And it's funny because I don't even like orange juice... I am
learning to. Oh and herbal tea is very big over here and I love it!
Hmmm so nice after a long rainy day. I'm trying to think of some more
things but it's hard off the top of my head. Friets of course are
delicious.

So a little bit about the people. We have 6 progressing investigators
right now who are all amazing! William is doing very well, but we had
to push his date back a week because of some work issues. He has so
much enthusiasm though and his way of feeling the Spirit and talking
about it is so sweet. He loves the hymns of the Church. Haha he says
that when I sing them it gives him chills. Haha hopefully good ones
since we all know I don't have the best voice. We always sing at his
appointments though and he loves it.

Enok and Marie Christine and their 2 sons are another family I think I
have told you about. We had a wonderful 2nd lesson with them and it
led right to baptism. Before we even committed them Bob, the youngest
son said, "So wait, I have to get baptized if I want to live with
God?" We said yes, and he said, "Well then I have to get baptized!"
Haha YES. It was great. There are some complications but we should
be hopefully setting a date with them soon.

We also had the opportunity to help Marie Christine in her garden this
week. It was quite hilarious considering how bad I am in the garden.
I was totally trying to pull a weed out and fell backwards into a
rosebush. Talk about funny but painful! Haha oh I love this work.

I love you all so much! I pray for you all the time. I pray we can
all be better missionaries. I'm so proud of your for going out with
the Elders! Way to go, members make all the difference!

Tot volgenda keer, met veel liefde
Zuster Holbein