We were excited last night to get our transfer call, Elder Wright was called to be the new district leader here in Zwolle! And I'm staying too, I'm glad mostly because I want to leave here feeling like I did my best for everyone here. I've been praying for it the last few days and it happened. Hopefully I stay excited and motivated, I think it's going to be a really good transfer. Since Elder wright is now district leader (we were surprised, he's only one transfer older than me),'it'll mean two exchanges a week and District leader conference every other week. So that'll keep us busy. I'm excited for the opportunity to do more exchanges and be more busy.
Answers to questions:
We have a whole bunch of invitations for Christmas, Christmas eve, and second Christmas (they celebrate on two days here, to settle the dispute of "whose parents are we going to this year'), we'll definitely be able to Skype. Hopefully by next monday we'll have everything planned out so we can tell you when we'll Skype and how to arrange all that. I'm excited for everything.
I've sung and played piano in the past few conferences, that's been fun. Nothing super fancy, but still enjoyable. I'm grateful i'm so comfortable singing anything in front of pretty much anyone. We have a guitar in our apartment. I try to stay away from it as much as possible. My morning and night schedule is about the same, but not bad. It's coming along, just need to plan better.
This week we had Christmas conference in rotterdam, it was super good. Lots of great counsel and inspiration. We also had the best first lesson I've ever seen so far when elder reese our ZL was here on exchange. We had met the lady the week before and we knew she was special. It's hard to describe exactly how it went, but basically she loved everything and is reading the book of mormon and just seems to recognise that this is something she''s been looking for. She's asking to be taught more and come to church, that never happens. Also this week we had a big service project with the local food bank. I really enjoyed sorting donations and passing out fliers at stores asking people to buy things.
I often get the feeling that anything is possible for me if I can just make serving God my greatest focus and desire. Mom shared with me about personality types and how we're the type that among other things does a lot of thinking. I see benefits to that in me, for instance a lot of things I learn I learn completely, or at least I make sure I have a full understanding and grasp of them so that a can create the exact result I want. I'm noticing that in missionary work (and probably everything else important) that it's usually better to take steps of faith and work with an imperfect knowledge, especially when it comes to missionary work and the gospel because you will never master it or understand exactly what's going on. The blessings of exercizing faith are infinitely greater than the benefits of relying on yourself.
One thing President Bunnell taught us we need to do (something the mission's been emphasizing lately) is have our "fly on the water", learn what the fish are biting on, and listen to our guide. It's so hard for me to work hard and long especially when it comes to talking to random people, it's uncomfortable and just hard to bring ourselves to do, but we simply must learn how to find and talk with as many people every day as possible and develop teaching and testifying skills so that we give everyone a better change of recognizing what they're prone to instantly say no to.
Anyways, I'm planning on having a good week this week (I was thinking about having a miraculous week but I don't know if I can necessarily commit to that) so I'll be looking for something great to share with you next week!
Love, Elder Knaupp
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