This week was quite uneventful, but we kept ourselves busy spending a lot of time walking around in the city talking to people. We're making progress with having the drive to talk to people one after the other, but sparking their interest is still very difficult. We'll keep working on it. We had a lesson with Milene and her mom, it went well. She reminds me of Alexa except younger. We've been making a lot of progress with getting out on time and working until the day is done, we're outside and working from about 1 to 9. We both really like to study and that's what is making it hard to get out on time, but we're making progress. The study schedule, in case you've forgotten is 8 o'clock personal study, 9 o'clock companionship, and 10 o'clock language. So, we've got our poorly used time in a chokehold. It helps that talking to random people we come across is getting easier and more enjoyable. We only had two lessons last week, one with a member and the other with Milene. This is my mission low in that catagorie, but the alternative of having to just try and find people to teach all day is teaching me to be a lot more actively engaged in my duty since I have to repeat the process of investing effort in a person and then moving on to the next dozens of times a day. It's difficult to keep sharp and really exercize faith every time we talk to someone that that person could be prepared by the Lord to hear our message. It's a difficult balance to keep pressure on yourself to improve your results and to acknowledge that you are doing your best. I don't feel like I'm being to hard on myself though. But, we only got to teach one person we contacted last week, so there's obviously room for improvement. They took a book of mormon, but didn't ask to hear more. We half offered it to them, but they didn't seem to want to know more. I should've asked though.
Success last week: Last night it was ten minutes to nine and we had done everything in the area that we could do. I hurried to park my bike because I saw a man on his way to being in front on the apartments where I could contact him. I ran out front and contacted him. He said he didn't have time and kept walking his dog. I felt really motivated to keep going. I looked all around for someone else. I saw another man in the distance and instantly headed his way. He said he was homosexual (actually the first or second time I've heard that believe it or not) and that therefore we couldn't do anything for him. I politely disagreed, and told him we would love to talk to him. He declined and left. I looked around, another man in the distance, headed his way, one of the breda bums I've seen a lot. Didn't matter, I was going to invite everyone. Said he needed to go buy something to eat, walked off. I walked around the corner and saw a muslim man who let us talk to him for a while. It was five after so we headed back in, 9 is planning time. I did my best to invite everyone no matter how many said no. I tried not to take any excuses, but let them choose of course. I was proud of that and felt successful.
I learned some really cool things about Jesus Christ, the atonement, and our Heavenly Father. I'm so grateful that we have the fulness of the gospel through which we can come to know the true nature of God and though loving God, become more like Him. I also got a shiny new translation of the dutch bible from a member for free, so that was really nice :).
Love, Elder Knaupp
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