November 28 through December 19 in Sint Niklaas

Today our zone is having a turkey bowl. It began eight minutes ago, we had some problems this morning with transportation. This week was pretty busy, it's hard to remember what happened. We had a lot of dinner appointments, so that was nice, also a zone training with a nice meal. We have a perfect record so far this transfer of cracking out of bed and working out on time, but it's really hard to start studying at eight. Elder Sutherland is determined to make progress in proper time usage, so I think that we'll have a great transfer obedience wise. We found and nineteen year old this week and have taught him two lessons, he's really open, his family is from Armenia, he listens and is interested.

We've gotta take the bikes to the train station.

Love, Elder Knaupp

December 5

First with the missionary work, we've been hitting the streets hard giving out cards for the "light the world" campaign. We've been asked to give out twenty cards a day and we've probably averaged around fourty. We've also had some good lessons this week. One with the young man from Armenia which we gave at the bishop's house a couple doors down, the bishop's son was the joint teach. I hope he decides to take a step towards learning something on his own or else he'll probably drift away. He listens though. We also finally got back in touch with S., it has been a few weeks, we were all busy and just didn't get in contact each other. We had tried to contact him on the phone and a few times in stopping by, but we couldn't get a hold of him. Sander said he thought about calling us a few times but he kept having doubtful feelings that we would still want to talk with him. The day after we gave him a tour of the church, he got baptised in the church he's been going to for a while. He said it was a nice experience. We did a lot of catching up on how he's been the past few weeks, his 9 or so month old has learned to walk since we had been there last! He also said that he's been getting pretty weighed down through the week with thoughts that he's not a good person. We all agreed that that wasn't true and that it was clear who the source of those feeling was. He's still pushing ahead. I still feel like he's really searching and that he won't entirely give up until he finds what it is that he's really looking for. He's happy that we're back and we're having a lesson on tuesday. He's a special guy.

We're getting a group together to sing in church for christmas! Last sunday, a less active young man in the ward called us and asked us if we could get a group together and sing. Tuesday night we're going to go to another member's house and practice. It should be great! I really great, it's something I'm really good at. 

Tonight is Sinter Klaas. It seems that the holiday is not quite so popular here in Belgium, although there is more catholic influence here. We have a dinner appointment with the Patriarch and his wife tonight, maybe we'll do something to celebrate. There have been a couple big "Kermis"es in the center of town, big carnival rides and other wagons. The have loud music and bright lights. It's been pretty cold, but people are still go there. We'll have to stop one time by for oliebollen, fried balls of dough. I ate a box of chocolates this week, it was really good. I got it at a grociery store to test it out to see if it was worthy to send home. Thank goodness I have so little appetite, one can really load up on the chocolate and fried food here. Fast sunday came timely. Thanks for the containers and the knife, they're great! 

Love, Elder Knaupp

December 12

I love the Messiah too! We have a CD of it but it's not so well done. It's super cool to hear about missionary work back home. I've got a lot of emails to reply to today and we need to go soon, we're going to antwerp to see the sights.

Love you bye!

December 19

It hasn't been too cold lately, which is really nice. 

We had a great lesson with S.! By the way, the investigator from Armenia isn't really interested anymore so we let him go a week ago or so. There were two lessons with sander. In one, we talked about Joseph Smith and sander voiced some of his concerns, which were all very reasonable. The next lesson, we talked more about prophets and the organization of the church. We talked about what S's feelings about baptism were in our church. He said he still thinks that he may get baptized, he just needs some time to prepare. He doesn't want to dump all of his new friends in the other church, but he also mentioned that he doesn't feel like church services there allow him to pay proper devotion, in his own words. He's probably going to come to church for the first time on new years since his church has no service that day. So that was all really exciting. It was so great to hear him say how he believes that what we say is true and just needs some time to make his way there! Even through opposition from family and friends, he recognizes that this is what he and his family needs. His prayers are really great. He asked us if we really believe that Thomas S Monson is a prophet. I said that from seeing local priesthood leaders, I know that they must be guided by God by a prophet. They are ordinary men empowered through priesthood service. 

We've found a few good potential investigators this week, we'll see if they end up really investigating. This wednesday I'm going on exchange to Antwerpen and holding my first baptismal interview with a middle eastern man and his wife. I've heard a lot of really good things about them. He speaks some english and dutch and translates for his family who've all together been investigating. They have a testimony of Jesus Christ.

Today we are going to play some basketball (just the two of us) and then we've going to Mechelen to get together with a bunch of missionaries to do some caroling. 

We're still not sure where we're going to skype, but I'll let you know when we do.

Love, Ammon