November 8, 2010

Dear Family,

Oh my goodness what a busy week! I wish I had more time last Monday to write because now it feels like I have so much to say and not enough time to say it all! So first things first, we found out about transfers last night and... I'm staying! Haha no surprise since Zuster Driggs is leaving, but what the surprise is that I'm training! Haha weird, when did I become old enough to do that? I will be training Zuster Kremer (her picture is on the blog already). She came a week early and spent the week in Antwerpen while President decided who her trainer would be. She is from Hungary and absolutely amazing! I met her at the sisters’ conference, and even though I didn't get to talk to her a lot I can tell she will be a lot of fun to work with. So yeah, that's crazy and exciting and a little intimidating and all that but I'm really excited!

Miracles of the week. So members keep telling me that there is a street here in Amsterdam called Holbeinstraat, and we'd been meaning to look it up but never had time. The other night though we were praying and it just felt right to go there and do some finding. So we went and had an awesome consecrated hour of finding! It was hilarious because when I would introduce myself to people or they would look at my name tag they would say "You know this is HOLBEINstraat, right?" And I would laugh and say something like "What... really?" Haha it was great. We actually found a bunch of awesome new investigators so that was cool. We also set another baptismal date this week! We got a referral from someone who had looked at the Dutch church website and ordered a copy of the Book of Mormon. Her name is Melinda and we went over to deliver the book, had a great lesson with her and set a date for the 18th of December. She's lived all over the world and actually knows a lot of members of the Church in Germany and she would always talk with them about the Church but no one ever gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon! And then a couple of months ago she saw “Legacy” on TV ... random, I know ... and was really touched. So she decided to investigate a bit on her own, and then she asked for missionaries to come. She already knew so much when we came and is totally on board to prepare for baptism. When we challenged her to the 18th she said, "Oh well that would be a wonderful Christmas present for me." Haha ELECT. She's great, I'm so excited to teach her.

Everything with Daphne and William our 2 investigators with dates is going well; people are just getting really busy around here and are hard to meet with. That can be hard. But we're not worried and everything is going to work out.

A funny moment was this week in a lesson with a new investigator named Glen. One of the older woman from the ward came with us, and we had a really good first lesson. At the end of the lesson I was going into challenging him to baptism and I started to say something along the lines of how we would be having a baptism on the 11th of December and before I could finish my sentence, you know, “would you prepare yourself to be baptized on this date” or something, the older sister says, "...and we'd like to invite you to come and watch." Bahh haha I don't think I've ever wanted to hit an old woman before that moment! Haha ok so that's harsh; I wasn't upset, I just thought it was hilarious. I was like oh...haha...ummm, yeah that too... but the date is for YOU. Anyway, we had to go and it didn't end up working out. I'm taking that as a sign though that we just needed to wait. We have another appointment on Wednesday though and I am totally going to try again!

Saturday we got to go to the temple again. That was of course amazing. It was great for Zuster Driggs to be able to see Sekou Kieta a man she baptized a year ago and it was beautiful. The session was in French because that's his moeder taal, so we all had headphones and got to listen in English. I love the peace of the temple. It was a great end to the week and preparation to finding out that I was training.

Yesterday was stake conference and William was able to come which was great. The ward rented a bus and we all traveled together. It was about a hour trip and it was a lot of fun. Wijk Amsterdam is so great!

The longer I've been in the Netherlands the more random things I keep learning about “The Best Two Years,” and the more people I keep meeting who are in it. It's funny, no one is going to want to watch it with me when I come home because I'll keep saying, "know him, know her, been there..." But the funniest one was this week. The Reijnders are one of those big families here in the Netherlands, kind of like the Hattons in Kentucky, and they are all over the movie. We were having lunch yesterday after Stake Conference with one of the sons, Jos, and his wife and somehow got talking about it. I asked him if he was in it and he said "Yeah, I'm the jerk missionary who stole the girlfriend." Haha, apparently they had him come and do this photo shoot and then gave him 20 euro and told him that it might be in the film. And then the movie came out, and before he had seen it someone called him and was like "Hey, so you got the part of the bad guy!" Haha which is so funny because he is one of the most soft spoken people ever. Anyway, so when you watch the movie and it shows the picture with Elder Rodgers and Elder Christiansen (I think is his name) you can know that is Jos Reijnders and he does have a beautiful wife and he is nice and they feed us dinner all the time.

Well that's it for this week. Ik hou van jullie! Happy birthday again Dad! Thank you for the cards, the emails, the prayers, the love, and your testimonies.

Liefs,
Zuster Holbein