Mosiah 3:19 -> "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of teh Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." 


Dear family and friends,

It's pretty hard to believe that the first month of 2017 is almost over. I don't know how it flew by, but yeah January is coming to a close. The last two weeks were pretty different. Week 86 was really slow and not a lot happened while week 87 was really really fast and quite a bit happened. 

So Elder Enger is gone and it's just been Elder Gemmell and I tearing up Almere. Things are going pretty well with all of the investigators, although we haven't had contact with one investigator (Nadia) for a couple weeks and some other investigators have been a little under the weather. Whitney is doing awesome though. She has now been to church four times in a row and texts us every once in a while with questions about gospel stuff. She is still super sassy and we still have to teach her on the door every week due to her mom not liking Mormons, but she is definitely growing in her relationship with God and I believe she is also growing in her testimony of the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ's restored gospel. She would keeps commitments and come to church every week if she didn't feel something. It was funny this past week because we talked a little bit about Joseph Smith (one area where she doubts a little bit) and gave her his story to read, then she asked two questions that she wanted to discuss the next time, "Who is Jesus' brother? and what does temple work hold in?" I thought about her first question and said, "Well you know we are all technically Jesus' brothers and sisters... but I think you mean Satan/Lucifer." She confirmed that and we talked about how Lucifer is also one of God's children (so also a brother of Jesus, like us) and how he had chosen a different plan than God's. So that wasn't too bad but we told her we'd talk about temple work next time. That should be fun.

Diana is doing great. We're just reviewing the first three lessons with her and I feel that she will be personally ready to be baptized a lot sooner than her goal (25 March) but that is up for her to decide and pray about. We only have met with Gracia and fam once in the past two weeks but we have another appoinment set up soon and we're super excited to keep making progress with all of them. They're such a good family and the gospel will really help them to be an even better family.

This past Wednesday we had an exciting world-wide broadcast for missionaries and they announced some policy changes that include new daily schedules for missionaries and new key indicators that are collected. We watched it with our district and everybody was pretty excited. It will be nice and makes it possible to get to bed earlier... so waking up at 6:30 won't be so intimidating. Thursday we joined Elder Dearden and Elder Smith, our Zone Leaders, in Amsterdam for exchanges and that was fun. They're both great and Elder Dearden is a very good friend of mine so it was fun to spend time with them for the day.

We had a cool Bible study with a member earlier in the week and we spend 1 1/2 hours on Luke 5:1-11. Haha yeah it was intense but it was super cool! Those verses talk about Jesus going to Simon again. The first time He talked with Simon He told him that he would be a "fisher of men" but this time he said he would be a "catcher of men". Jesus showed Simon that anybody could fish with a net (Jesus filled both boats with fish and he was a carpenter) but catching fish in other ways is more difficult. When He first told Simon to follow Him, Simon went back to work after a day or so. This time Simon was fully converted and left everything to follow Christ. Like this story, when sharing the Gospel we can´t just go with nets and catch all of the fish. We have to bait them with a hook and they have to make the choice for themself as to whether they want to take the bait or not. Then it is true conversion and they truly change their lives to follow Christ. The scriptures are cool. Other fun thing is that in that story Jesus goes out on the water in a boat and then talks to the people from the boat. You´d think that is a little weird. Why wouldn´t He just stay on the shore? We talked about though and sound projects better over water so He probably went out on the water so that everybody could hear Him.

I read that verse I included above, Mosiah 3:19, earlier this week and started thinking about `the natural man´, which is basically our natural tendency to be stupid...sort of. Anyway, I started thinking about what my `natural man´ is and how I can `put it off´. It´s lead to some deep self-reflection haha which kind of hurts sometimes but can really lead us to change and become better. I know that as we try our best to `put off our natural man´ we will grow closer to our Savior and to our Heavenly Father and we will be blessed with the Spirit.

Everybody have a great last couple days of January and I hope that February greets you warmly. It´ll probably be cold and rainy here. 


Hoi hoi,
Elder Wright