Amazing

Dear Family!

I am so happy. :) It has been such an amazing week. Heavenly Father has been hearing our prayers and we are seeing miracles. I love it! The weather even warmed up a little, but of course it is supposed to snow again soon. The weather here is so bipolar. I haven't gotten the coat yet, but I am looking forward to it and I am so so grateful. I got a card from you today Mom with the picture of Rhett. My goodness he is cute! I can't believe you have a baby Julia. I hope everything with school and a new semester and work and everything is going well. I am excited to get your testimonies, they are always a strength to me.

So this week. Where to even begin? How about with Delroy because he is just amazing. We've been using the teaching calendar with him, the most inspired thing President has ever encouraged us to use and we had 3 regular appointments in a week with him. It's amazing the progression he has made with his testimony just in the last week.

On Tuesday we taught him the law of chastity, always a fun one, but he totally accepted it and agreed. And then Thursday we taught the word of wisdom. That was the one I was worried about because, yeah, he smokes. Or should I say smokED. :) We had the lesson at Jennifer Linkers' house, an amazing member who also had word of wisdom problems before she was baptized. We planned to have lunch and then teach the lesson. So Delroy comes and the first thing he says to me when we comes in is, "Trouwens, het Boek van Mormon is waar." Translation, "By the way, the Book of Mormon is true." Haha - yesss!! Awesome start to an appointment, I'd say. He already knew it was true but the more he reads, the more confirmation he gets because he says that he feels like he reads HIS life in the stories of the other people. He really likes Alma the Younger and Ammon. I told him that's because someday he is going to be a missionary too.

So we sit down for lunch and then right out of the blue Jennifer just goes off asking him all these intense questions like "Do you do drugs? Have you ever? Do you drink?" Zuster Kremer and I were thinking - ahhh, not the intro we wanted. He's never had problems with any of that stuff though, just smoking. And when we explained the word of wisdom he totally accepted it because it came from Joseph Smith and if the Book of Mormon is true then Joseph was a prophet and well, you all know what that means. :) So that was incredible. And when we saw him again on Saturday he said he has already stopped. It's hard but he's praying, we're all praying, and he's doing it! We had a baptism on Saturday of one of the elders investigators and he came and loved it. He's so prepared it's amazing. With his prayers and our prayers and the Lord's help things are going to keep going great.

Besides that we had a lot of other special appointments this week. We went to visit a woman named Aleyda. She's from Columbia and only speaks Spanish. Luckily Zuster Kremer does too and I am honestly trying to learn a little. We went to visit her because she is going through a really hard time right now. Her son was kidnapped in Columbia and has been missing for 2 months now. They've hired private investigators and everything, but no one can find him. It's so so sad. We went and she cried and cried. She hasn't lost her faith though. I really wished that I could've actually talked to her without Zuster Kremer, but I think it actually meant more to her and I just sat and held her hand and cried with her. It was a powerful appointment and it really taught me the importance of listening. Anyway, if you could pray for her son that would be great.

On a different note here is the funny moment of the week. Yesterday we went on splits with the members to do finding. I went with Lucky who is from Thailand and just hilarious. Crazy things always happen with her. So we're finding and we meet this middle aged couple and had a really good lesson with them over prayer and our relationship with God. At the end of the talk Lucky asks if we can pray with them. They say yes, and so I asked if there is anything in their lives that we can pray for. They said health; Lucky turns to the woman (who is kind of bigger) and touches her stomach and asks if she's pregnant! Guess what? SHE'S NOT. Haha, AWKWARD. Thank heavens they still let us pray with them but let's just say they weren't interested in hearing more. Oh goodness it was funny. We couldn't stop laughing after. Oh well, they felt the Spirit, I know they did. :)

Sounds like the ward is doing great. I got a letter from the stake presidency this week. It was a Christmas one but was at the office so it took a while to come. Send everyone my love. Haha, I say that all the time, don't I? Well it's true. I love you all, I love my Saviour, I love everything haha. :)

Liefs,
Zuster Holbein