With Love

Hello family dear :)

Thank you so much for your wonderful emails! And for the Thanksgiving card. That really touched me when I got it and as always it came on a day when I needed it. I really do love getting those cards in the mail. Letters mean a lot and you all are wonderful!

It's been a really blessed week. I love Amsterdam more and more every week that I am here. I think that having someone new to the mission field as my companion has especially helped me to see just how much I love it here. Every bit is great – the investigators, the members, the people, even the challenges because they usually make for a funny story after.

Zuster Kremer is an absolute doll, I love working with her. She is such a hard working missionary already and she's a lot of fun to be with. Training is well, good. I don't think I really do anything different than what I did before. People seem to learn best by example and love more than when someone says, "Do this or do that." Besides Zuster Kremer already is fantastic. We have seen so much success since she came, it's like the work is on a jump start again. We've been doing so much finding, which I LOVE. I don't know why, because I know a lot of missionaries who don't like it, but I love love love finding. It's like the life-blood that keeps me going. I love talking too and so I think that helps – haha.

We've met some interesting people this week, and we've had the chance to use Zuster Kremer's French a lot. We had a random man come up to us in a park and ask if we speak French. Totally random, but thank goodness we did and we ended up getting his number and everything. We also got proposed to, again – you'd be amazed how often that happens – and a lot of other crazy things.

As a side note, the weather this week has been horrible! Big storms have been coming through and everyone has been amazed that we even went out in that weather. Haha, best moment of the week – it was super windy on Friday and we were biking to go do an hour of finding and a gust of wind came that was so strong it blew me off my bike! Literally! We could not stop laughing, it was so funny. Thursday was particularly crazy. It was rainy and hailing and we were trying to bike from an appointment with Melinda to the church, which takes like 45 minutes when it's not raining. And then all of a sudden Zuster Kremer's fiets breaks and it starts pouring and all this crazy stuff and we were totally not in the best part of town. So we locked the bikes up and went into a gas station where we had to call the senior couple to come and pick us up because we were literally in the middle of nowhere. It was insane. But everything worked out.

So the miracle of the week came in working with one of our investigators who is really struggling with drug addiction. My time here in Amsterdam is teaching me so so much about working with people in situations like this. Addiction to anything really is a real thing, and it's sad because when someone is addicted to something they do give up their agency. But people can overcome these things, and the Church has an excellent program for addiction recovery. We are using this program with one of our investigators and they have really been making progress. But then this past week during studies I was studying for them and I came across an activity in Preach My Gospel that talked about trying to give up something that was just a part of our lives, something that is so normal we don't even think about it. That's how hard it is for someone who has an addiction. So I thought about that. And Zuster Kremer and I talked about it. And we decided that to help support this investigator we are going to give up sugar, which considering Christmas season is coming up that is going to be interesting. We're still working on the details, but we really want to try and understand better what these people feel.

I guess another thing that I'm really coming to learn is that the Church is like a big hospital. The Church isn't for the spiritually healthy fine people. For one thing, none of us are like that. We all have problems and weaknesses and that's why we come to the Church; that's why we come unto Christ, so that through the atonement we can be healed. That's what repentance is. It's a healing. And it's beautiful. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to repent. I love helping others come to realize the joy that it brings. I love that famous painting of Christ visiting the sick and poor people, the one where he is reaching down looking to the one homeless man under a tent or something. I was looking at it the other day and one of the members was with me and she pointed at it and said, "This is Christ's church." It's true. I'm grateful for the opportunity I have to be a member and to share the gospel with people. I love the line in Hark the Herald Angels Sing that says that Christ is "Risen with healing in his wings." My favorite way to picture the Savior is with his arms wide open. I've been looking for that in my scripture study lately, scriptures that talk about Christ's arms and the way he is always reaching out to us. I know that Christ lives. I know that He loves me. I know that everyone here on this earth is a child of God. That's such a precious truth. Thank you so much for your testimonies, they strengthen mine. You all are wonderful!

Met liefde,
Zuster Holbein