U.H.a.t.d.: Mission Week 21 - First Temple Conference

Scripture of the Week

Mosiah 27:35-37 - "And they traveled throughout all the land of Zarahemla, and among all the people who were under the reign of King Mosiah, zealously striving to repair all of the injuries which they had done to the church, confessing all their sins, and publishing all the things which they had seen, and explaining the prophecies and the scriptures to all who desired to learn them.

And thus they were instruments in the hands of God in bringing many to the knowledge of the truth, yea, to the knowledge of their Redeemer.

And how blessed are they! For they did publish peace; they did publish good tidings of good; and they did declare unto the people that the Lord reigneth."

Hallo,

This week was pretty sick. On Wednesday we had the opportunity to go to the temple. That was great. The temple here is pretty small but very beautiful and yeah. It was super good though and after we got pizza and Temple Conference. We were able to hear from many great speakers including the Bunnells and the APs, Elder Neptune and Elder Bonner. One of my favorite parts of the conference was Elder Bonner's training where he was just getting everybody pumped up and telling stories from the Marines and at one point he said, "Every capable person can cut hair." Now I'm not sure if he meant to teach us something by saying that because he was talking about him and Elder Neptune cutting each others hair, but it is a very deep and true statement. Every capable person can cut hair. Every capable missionary can work hard and get stuff done. Every capable follower of Christ can feel the spirit and walk in His light. Anyway, it was great and I took a lot out of it. I also was reunited with the Elder Fairbanks. Elder Fairbanks is awesome. He's just stranded down in Belgium now along with half of the rest of our MTC group so contact with him is limited.

Friday was awesome. Elder Wilson went down to Brussells to get some legal work done, along with a lot of the new missionaries that just came in. I was with Elder Sosa and Elder Jardine for the day. Mini exchanges lead to miracles. It was crazy and we knocked doors half of the day. We found a lot of sweet people on this one street who were all willing to let us come back. After that we were able to get in with this guy named Kissi who I had met a few weeks ago. We were able to teach him a little bit about the Restoration but he was explaining his philosophies to us and laughing a lot so we didn't get too far. Fortunately he enjoyed meeting with us and gave us his number so that we could set up another appointment for this next week.

Oh year, sorry this is very out of order, but on Tuesday we got to eat dinner with Oma Buntin again. We also had dinner with her the Saturday before. She is going to be out of town and won't be able to feed us for two weeks so she invited us over. It was a lot of fun and we were able to sing happy birthday to her before we left. I'll miss Oma :(

Back to Friday. We had dinner with famlie Van Doder Waart. Zuster Van Doder Waart is from Brazil so she made this delicious dish of beans and rice called fijuada(definitely not the right spelling). It was super good and they decided that Elder Strikwerda's companion, Elder O'Loughlin looks like Mr. Bean so Broeder Van Doder Waart pulled up a Mr. Bean episode and that was great.

On Saturday we had DLC down in Gouda. Before DLC we were able to play a little bit of ping-pong while waiting for everybody to arrive and then after DLC we went to Subway. It was the first time I've had Subway in a very long time and it was pretty good. Not too different from American Subway.

Saturday night we had dinner with familie Aukema and then Elder Wilson and I went to look up a referral named Vincent. It was a long walk that we had done on Thursday also, but he hadn't been home. It was definitely worth it this time though. We got to the address and knocked on the door. A woman, probably in her 40's, answered and seemed a little confused until we told her that Vincent had asked for a Book of Mormon. She called for Vincent and he ended up being her 12-year-old son! It was so cool and we were able to give him the Book of Mormon and a card with our number. We may never see the outcome of giving Vincent the Book of Mormon but hopefully someday he will have the desired to learn more. Maybe his mom too. It gives me hope that people are still searching for religion and turning to God in this world. It was great.

Thank you everybody and I love you all. Have a great week!

Elder Wright