One More Week Till Conference!

Dear Family,

Hurray for General Conference week!! Can I get a "wahoo!!"? Haha ok so I'm a conference nerd, but I fully accept it. I am so so excited for this weekend. We have a lot of people coming and it's going to be great. I'm so grateful for the prophet and apostles. And I have a real testimony of going to conference with a question, and then listening to the Spirit and the speakers for the answer. That's actually something we can always do at church, we don't have to wait till conference to do it. We've been giving a lot of our investigators a card during the week and telling them to write down a question on it, and then to go to church and pray to receive the answer. Elder Kopischke told us we could PROMISE them they would get an answer. It's been wonderful to see a lot of sincere people get answers that way. This past Sunday I was really struggling with something, and I took my own advice and went to church with a question. And I got my answer, exactly in the personal way that I needed. I love that.

So things here are going great! We are still busy and doing our best to get everything done. There is so much work to be done here in Amsterdam. Investigators, members, inactive members. We're blessed to get to work with a lot of great ward leaders and they help us a lot. I really encourage all of you to go teach with the missionaries -- they need you; I know it!

This past Tuesday we had a great zone training. We learned a lot about measuring success. I love President and Zuster Brubaker. They are the best.

So one of the miracles of the week – We've been teaching this amazing 21 year old girl named Jennifer. She's actually from the Dominican Republic and speaks Spanish (and a little English). So, thank goodness for Zuster Kremer's language skills, we teach her in Spanish. We have to do a lot of translating, but thanks to the Spirit it works. (I want to learn Spanish as a side note.) My comprehension is actually pretty ok. And Zuster Kremer has taught me to pray in Spanish, so that's cool! Very simply. Anyway, on to the miracle. Jen has been coming to church, reading from the Book of Mormon, all of that. And she has friends back home who are members, and they have been encouraging her to keep meeting and praying and everything. She knows it's all true and she wants to be baptized. Her concern though has been that she never wants to go inactive, so she really wants to take her time with investigating. And I really respect that. Everyone has their own timetable that it takes them to join. So at this last lesson we were talking about baptism and she started talking about how she couldn't be baptized because she already had been and the Bible says one baptism. I was sitting there and all of a sudden this scripture popped into my head about people in the Bible being baptized more than once. The thing was I could NOT find it. I was praying a praying though and all of a sudden I just opened me scriptures and there it was! Acts 19. Thank you to the Spirit!! We shared it with her, and her face lit up and she started laughing and said, “This is it! This is my answer!” It was such a beautiful moment because I saw the enlightenment just come. She wants to get baptized, and I know it's going to happen. She's amazing.

Funny story of the week. Because Amsterdam is such an international ward we have to do English translation every week. We have a translation booth, and usually one of us missionaries will go back, and then everyone who needs translation will wear headsets. So this past Sunday I was translating. And then one of the Spanish members got up to give a talk, and so another woman went to the front with her to translate it into Dutch. So in my head I'm sitting back there thinking, okay cool, there's already translation, and I understand it so everyone else can too. So I'm just sitting there. And then I see people with headsets turning and looking at me, and then someone knocked on the door and said, “Umm... you still need to translate too.” I felt so silly. Haha -- oh well it ended up working out.

Well dears, I love you all. Thank you for your faith and love. Keep doing the small and simple things, and you will see miracles. I looove you. :)

Met liefde,
Zuster Holbein