I have so much to say and I'm having an anxiety attack trying to remember everything about this week.
First off, I have a new niece! Baby Caroline is just the sweetest, cutest thing. Congratulations Clark and Amy! I love you both. Emmett is such a sweetie character too. I just miss the heck out of you all, family. Not too much though.
Elder Graves emailed me today to tell me about Midland. Curt and Patty are legit getting baptized next Saturday at 4 p.m. and I'm freakin' out. We were somewhat concerned to teach them the Word of Wisdom because they drink tons of coffee and Patty said several times, "I can't give up coffee, I live on that stuff." But nope. Once they were taught they were totally cool with it. Elder Graves will be performing the ordinace and he and Elder Hess are KILLING it in Midland 2.
I'm seriously hyper-ventilating right now. Everyone in the library's looking at me.
SO YEAH I don't even know where to begin with this week. Holland is seriously the best though. It is so so pretty (especially because it's Tulip Time) and the people are somehow even nicer than the Midlanders. People seriously yell NICE THINGS at us when they pass us in the cars ("Jesus loves you", "God Bless you", "May the Lord's choicest blessings fall upon you", etc). I can hardly even believe it. Some super cool stuff happened this week but I'm going to organize it by day so I can attempt to remember everything.
Tuesday was transfers and the transfer van was a blast. I wrecked everyone at "Book of Mormon Golf" (you read a chapter heading and guess the chapter) so maybe I'm a little pridful about it so what. I met Elder Jackson and we are super good friends already. He is from Cedar City, UT. He served a 3-month mission in Utah before coming out to the MLM and Holland. We doorknocked all day and got to know each other.
Wednesday was sweet, we mostly did finding because none of our investigators could meet with us all week because of Tulip Time. That's okay though because we had some cool people we contacted during the time we were supposed to meet with investigators. We gave the car to the sisters at coorelation (our rotation is one week on, one off).
Thursday started off super well. Weekly planned, contacted formers and set quite a few return appts, and found this guy named Devin. His only source to the church previous to us teaching him was South Park, so yeah, we get that a lot. He was somewhat hostile at first but he listened intently as we taught him the message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. More and more he lit up and got involved. Finally, we talk about Joseph Smith and give him a Book of Mormon. We ask him to read the last two paragraphs of the introduction. He does so. When he finishes, he closes the book, throws it down on his coffee table, and says, "MAN, YOU CAN'T ARGUE WITH THAT. All you're asking me to do is read the book and pray about it?!" The spirit had softened his heart so much in the time we had met with him. He admitted that he let us in to listen for a while then bash with us but he was confounded by our message. He's super interested in learning more and we'll be teaching him next week hopefully.
Later in the evening, Elder Jackson's bike tire/tube exploded while we were way far away from our apt. A super nice non-member named Mark (and his family) recognized our distress and bought us ice cream while we waited for a member to come and pick us up. They had met missionaries before and were more than happy to help us out. They weren't interested in learning more but that's ok, they're saints. They'll be prepared soon I'm sure. Anyway, our Thursday proselyting schedule kinda went out the window but it was whatev.
We called a member to help us fix the bikes on Friday but for some reason they just never showed up and they weren't answering (they're alive we know, they were at church). We were completely stranded though. The bus schedule was wrecked for Tulip time. We got very little done Friday.
Saturday was better because we went downtown and just struck up conversations with people on the street. I had never done this before for a planned finding activity so I was nervous but once you start talking to people they just are the nicest. We talked to quite a few awesome people and got some return appts. We had to take time out of our schedule to take the bikes via bus to a shop to get the tire fixed. We also got to meet with a less-active which was a good end for the day.
Longest email. Dang. Sunday was seriously the best. HAPPY MOTHERS DAY BTW. Church was really good, the Holland ward is great, I met a bunch of people and made good friends. So coolest thing though- after sacrament, this young lady named K.C. came up to us and was like, "where's your gospel principles class?" We showed her around and heard her story. She had just moved back to Holland from Tennessee (mom she went to W. Ottowa) and was just baptized in March there! She is way cool. We or the sisters are going to hopefully finish teaching her the new-member lessons and maybe teach her non-member family! I'm so excited. She is so nice. After church we had a tasty grill-out lunch with the Betzold's. After that we gave a blessing to our very sick recent convert and member girlfriend, Roger and Jessica. The Spirit was strong and we taught a great lesson after. They gaves us four huge boxes of Pop-tarts to take home too. So yeah. Can't complain. As we biked home to call Moms I felt prompted to stop and take a picture by this windmill by the bike trail (p.s. there are bike trails going everywhere in Holland and it's just green and gorgeous and heavenly). Well, walking by was this college-aged kid who was super friendly and stopped to chat. Turns out he's from the Detroit area and his family had been taught by the missionaries when he was younger. I simply asked him, "Do you want to learn more?" and he was like, "OF COURSE" and I was like, "really?" and he was like "OF COURSE". We exchanged info and we'll be meeting with him next week. SO YEAH. It was nice to talk to Momster as well.
So that's about it. Today we went to a store called Aldi and it was basically the coolest. Have you heard of it? We also biked to Five Guys and had a delicious lunch AND they were playing the Killers and the Doors and I just about burst into tears like I usually do.
Sorry for the word vomit, this week was just so FULL. So many miracles, I didn't even tell you about all of them. I left my camera-to-USB converter at the apt. so you'll have to wait for pics until next week. I have quite a few of them.
Love you all! I should get going :)
-EKS
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