Foolin around at familie de Jonge
Bible from 1768!
In nearby Wezep. Reminded me of the Oregon coast
Yesterday I had a talk in Sacrament, and the past two weeks we've taught a lesson. Most of the material in my talk was from conference talks, but I tried organize it clearly and put in my testimony as often as possible. It was kinda fun, I wish I would've prepared a bit more, but I think I'm still making small steps forward in the procrastination department. Our days are really busy, and most days of this next week are packed already. We're visiting a bunch of members and giving them thoughts on the living Christ every week to help them build their testimony of Him. We met a young man from Iran this week and returned the next day to teach him the first lesson (or that was the plan). He doesn't have super good dutch, but he says he has a group of friends that he spends a lot of time with and that they talk about religion and that he is interested in getting baptized. I'm a little suspicious of his sincerity for wanting to be baptized, but I guess we just need to teach him what baptism really means. We only talked with Lilian once on the Phone this week, she says there isn't time this week, I think she's been trying to deal with problems with her family and extended family. We need to try to do more for her. About the title of the email, we had a dinner appointment with our new investigators (more like friends for now...) Amer and Samer set up on thanksgiving, but Amer texted us and told us his grandma died so they have to go to Germany. So almost Arabic thanksgiving. We had a lot of lessons this week (7 regular, 2 with a member, and 5 for less actives).
This Sunday for 5th sunday the ward went over the Europe area plan which involves bringing a friend to church or a church activity. It's great because missionaries are just about the least effective people in the world at getting people interested in trying out the church. Members are so essential to getting people to the point where they want to learn more. Here there are so few members so they should have just a bout all non-member friends, we just need to help them figure out what they can do. Every day mission life is just so busy it's really hard to integrate an hundred new things at once.
We met with a guy that's met with the missionaries a few times before this week, he's pretty cool except when it comes to his beliefs, he's basically believes the opposite of every doctrine that we hold dear. It was interesting.
There hasn't been any snow here, we have a bunch of people that have invited us for Sinter Klaas and a bunch for Christmas, but the transfer ends on the 17th so I probably won't be here for Christmas. We'll give out the Calendars tomorrow hopefully. Speaking dutch isn't really hard for me, getting the experience and understanding of the language in order to better express myself is what will take longer. It's pretty fun, it just takes a lot of extra dedication to fit a lot of study into the everyday routine. There's so much to think about and it doesn't help to have a short attention span and bad focus. Ít'll come, it's just growth that takes a lot of faith, willpower, and time. I really like learning dutch and I've been gifted to pick up a fast understanding and ability in it. I'm excited to start reading dutch Liahona articles and other church material for study. The R's are interesting, there's a few different ways of doing them, with your throat, your tongue, or sort of the american way depending on how the R is placed in the word and what letters are next to it. There's also tons of dialects here so that's interesting.
Thank you for the support and love!
Love, Elder Knaupp
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