Miracles Everywhere

May 16, 2011

Hey hey hey. :) How is my wonderful family doing?

I finally got a card from Mom earlier this week. I don't know why they've been taking so long, probably just the mail here. You never know. But no worries, I feel your love. Thank you everyone for the pictures! I'm surprised you got mine so quickly. Everyone looks great! William -- YOU LOOK SO OLD. When did that happen? Do you have pictures from prom? I would love to see them. What about John and Britt? I would love to see pictures of them too. I'm glad to know that the weather in Kentucky is doing about the same as here. I don't know what happened to our lovely spring weather, but it is gone! The past few days have been coooold. Luckily they’ve been sunny. Today is raining as well, but it's not too bad. I'd rather have it rain on P-day. Everyone says that it's supposed to get warmer on Wednesday. I'm crossing my fingers.

So it's been a great week! Hard in a lot of ways with finding and things, but overall great! I think I've had more doors slammed in my face this past week than I ever have before. Haha – dang; sometimes finding people is just hard! But still good, no discouragement here. I think it's funny more than anything. Some people freak out so much when they see us on the door and I think, really? Like do we look THAT scary? If I had two beautiful girls come to my door I think I would want to know what they had to say. Haha kidding. But you know what I mean?

Anyway, despite the door slams we are seeing miracles left and right. We have found so many new investigators just out of nowhere! Sometimes I think that's the whole point of going along the doors. Just to show our faith. And it always puts us in the right place at the right time to meet someone who will listen. For example -- we're going along knocking on doors and Zuster Perry and I just started to talk about how much we love flowers and how nice it is to get them. And then, all of a sudden, I see a woman walking down the street carrying a big bunch of flowers! And I thought, she has to be a nice person. So we went and approached her and she accepted us right away! She even knows where the Church is, and she let us walk all the way to her house with her, and told us we could come back to teach her and her husband! Eternal marriage anyone? Yes! Awesome miracle. Oh and the flowers ended up being for her neighbor who just got back from vacation. Nice, huh? :)

Other miracle -- A woman just walked into church yesterday and announced that she has been investigating the Church for 7 years, was in Finland for the last 10 months, but now wants to start meeting again and possibly prepare for baptism! We were like... ummm... okay. Yes. That's possible.

Oh and then today, we're on the train up to Amsterdam (oh yeah, I'm writing from Amsterdam, we had to come and pick up some legal papers), a woman calls us who is a friend of a member and she said, "So I hear you give lessons to people, and that this is the true church of Christ. When can you come?" So we have an appointment with her on Thursday! We're so busy I'm almost afraid to be excited about it (haha) cause then we might lose everything. It's all been great!

Things with Joeri, our baptismal date are also going super well. He loves the gospel! And he's really changing. I love love love LOVE the light that comes into people's faces when they start to learn about the gospel. It totally fills that dark hole in them. Last night we were going around taking cookies to some of our investigators -- daily contact you know -- and we went and took him some. They were double-double chocolate chip and when he saw them he said, "You brought me chocolate pancakes?" Haha it was so funny. They don't even sell chocolate chips here; we had to break up a chocolate bar. I guess it's really an American thing.

Other things are also going really well. We started working with another less-active woman this week. She's actually an American, married to a Dutch man and she's pregnant. The only thing is her water broke... last week. So everything is crazy now. Luckily the ward has been on it helping her. We went to see her last night and she was super happy, and told us she's been praying again! We're planning on starting to teach her and hopefully her husband as soon as the baby comes which could be very very soon.

So yes -- I'm super happy and even when I'm not or things are hard, it's still okay. :) Life goes on, and there is always a little miracle waiting around the corner of some funny moment.

I hope that you all are doing well, and I pray for you all the time! I love you!

Met liefde,
Zuster Holbein