So today has been really cool! At o'clock I went with Elder Dearden to Rosendaal because they had three appointments today, one of which was in the church in Breda, which my companion and elder Dearden´s companion taught. Elder Dearden and I taught the other two. The first one wasn´t very well recieved, and the second one the lady didn´t answer the door. So, we went to the centrum to a tailor to take in my black suit and lengthen the pants on a nice suit that I got from Elder Packard,. He got it in the MTC from 6'7 Elder Steele who was in his group. He tried to have it tailored to fit him, but it was still too long so he let me have it (Yes!). So that makes up for how I lost my grey one a while ago. So it´ll have the two of those tailored . The guy that´s doing it is this nice middle eastern dude. He´s doing it all for only 40 Euro! He´s taking in my two pairs of pants that go with the suit and this jacket on the sides. He did a good job with the other one so I´m excited. Anyways, as soon as we got out of his shop, the other Elders called us (they had the rosendaal phone) and told us the lady that hadn´t answered the door had called them to ask where we were and that she wanted us to come back. So, we jumped on the bikes and headed back to her place. This lady, in the past year, had been knocked into by three sets of missionaries accidentally. Each set had set up an appointment, but each time something really big and distracting had come up. Anyways, she welcomed us in and we started to have a really friendly conversation about each of our situations. We learned about her gradual search for the church that she needed. She is faithful to the Catholic church because her mother (who passed away 15 years ago) was a very devoted catholic and she doesn´t want to disappoint her mother. It´s really serious, I´ve met a lady like her before, it´s a tricky situation. But, she´s been attending other congregations gradually, which has been difficult because of her mother´s memory, especially because each church she´s been to have insisted that she needs to be re-baptized (she was baptized as an infant), but she feels that it has been good for her. She kept talking very openly with a lot of real interest in us and our reason for being here. She was surprised to learn of all that we have given up and continue to give up to be here and was very impressed by it, which isn´t exactly typical, I´m not sure why.
Anyways, she was then very ready to let us tell her what we're here to teach, with added anticipation, she knowing our special amount of dedication. We began to deliver the message of the restoration. She listened intently. At the moment of truth, when we explained Joseph Smith´s special calling in light of God´s pattern of bringing forth prophets and the necesity thereof, her reaction was perfect. She had both and open heart and realized something the significance of our message that the church of Jesus Christ is restored. She has been prepared. As we continued, answering her questions and then reading moroni´s promise, she indicated that she felt something, something that she has actually recognized feeling before. She said that there have been times when she feels that there is something that God wants her to accept, but she has recognized that she is so afraid step away from what her mother held so dear. She indicated that she still feels that, but it is also obvious that she is very excited and optimistic about learning more about our church and she says that she thinks that she can recieve confirmation that this is the right thing to do. So she´s letting baptism be a possibility already! Even though that has been such a bother for her to hear from other churches. She´s a really tidy slightly older lady that takes care of babies in her house.
I´m really excited to hear how things go with her. Again, she´s rosendaal´s investigator, but she´ll attend church in Breda, so I´ll be seeing her again. One more cool thing, A man I had a good feeling about that we found in Etten Leur called us back an hour ago and set up an appointment with us for next week! I felt like I should him this morning and answered and said he´d call us back this evening after he´d talked to his wife and he actually did! That´s very rare. He kept his word. We didn´t really get to talk to him when we first met him, he just said we could call him and gave us his card. Also, earlier this week, we had a lesson with a man the missionaries have run into a couple times over the past year. He let us in and wanted to hear what we have to tell! He says he never used to have any interest or patience for people that knock on your door, but he believes in God strongly and says that we are "convincing" and that he trusts us. We missionaries recognize that as the investigator letting themself be influenced by the spirit. He has a lot of questions about why people do bad things to each other, especially in war. He fought in the Falklands conflict. He liked the restoration, although his scriptural knowledge isn´t enough for him to really see it´s significance. We´ll explain it in a way he´ll understand soon though. The important thing is that he believes that he can get the answers that he wants from God and that we will be able to help him do that.
So, great things are happening! We meet tons of people every day that don´t give us much of a chance to share the gospel with them, but there are still a relatively large amount of successes that we see weekly! I know that the Lord is working among all the people on this earth and that his work will keep rolling forward in power. His work is to save us all from our personal failures, bring us together, and make us happier, as well as many more greater purposes that we have yet to find out! I know that our Heavenly Father loves us and watches out for each of us, his children. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ is where we all need to be to be sheltered from dangers and built up to become more like our Heavenly Parents. Each person on earth has divine attributes inherited from them and can learn and grow to be happy as they are. This is accomplished by applying the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have prophets on the earth today that recieve specific and crucial guidance from God to help us in our daily lives. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, written especially for our day.
Love, Elder Knaupp
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