January 4, 2009: HAPPY NEW YEAR! (part 2)

Happy New Year! I hope that you have already had a great start to 2010...can you believe it! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Expect a card in the mail over the next few days! Thank you so much for your letters, Dad, Mom, Brooke, Carli, and Corbin! Sorry that my e-mail is coming so late today! I was planning on having a preparation day to just write letters all day especially because I was sick in bed the whole p-day last week, but we got a call from the Zone Leaders last night and they asked us if we would be willing to host a Zone p-day here in Zwolle. We spent the whole day at the church playing games and eating with about 20 missionaries in our Zone and we had a blast but I really just want to write to you all!!! I hope that through my e-mail you can feel my love and know that next p-day there will be a lot of letters sent from Zwolle in the direction of West Jordan, Utah! Will you also tell Kris I appreciate her card and the money and Brett and Barb that I received there package and I am so thankful! I will be sending something out to them too! Thank you so much for all of your prayers. I am feeling so much better! I now have a little bit of a cold but I have been loading up on the vitamin C and I can tell that it is getting better and better! It has snowed like crazy here in Zwolle over the past couple of days and the temperature has dropped quite a bit but the work is going great! On Saturday night we were at the church setting up some shelves so that missionary pamphlets are accessible for the members and we looked outside at about 7:30 and there was about 6 inches of snow withing an hour and a half. We couldn't ride our bikes home so we took the bus. That night someone tried to still my bike and broke the lock but luckily didn't succeed. We are going to have to carry my bike over to a member's home tomorrow to have them saw it off and I'll have to buy a new lock but that is definitely better than a whole bike! Maybe it is just a blessing in disguise...Heavenly Father doesn't want me to fall in the snow once more! Due to the snow we only had one hour of church on Sunday and we had a small group of members, but Willeke still ended up coming and we had one of the most powerful testimony meetings I have ever been in! Zwolle is changing and all of the members talked about starting a new year of missionary work in their testimonies. We worked a lot with the members this past week to set goals for the New Year and we are all so excited! Zwolle will be getting an actual church building this year and is hoping to turn into a ward rather than a branch so I know that the Lord has some big plans. New Year's Eve we had to be inside by 5:00 because of the danger of fireworks...fireworks in the Netherlands are crazy!!! People are shooting them off non-stop for the whole week before New Year's and they even throw them at bikers. Luckily we didn't have any bad experiences but we had a wonderful night inside setting goals for the New Year. I am so excited for 2010 to become better and to dedicate a whole year to serving the Lord. The Spirit helped me to set goals that will help me accomplish the work that the Savior wants me to accomplish...SO GREAT! We have totally lost contact with Kevin but we are doing all we can to make contact with him again. Willeke is doing great and we are meeting with Kevin again tonight. Ilse is our new investigator. I actually met her in the centrum back in September, knocked on her door in October, and then met with her a couple of times over the past couple of weeks. She has called us a couple of times and we were actually able to give her a copy of the Book of Mormon on Friday. We are going back with a member this week and we feel really good about the appointment. Everything seems to be falling into place with her! The work is so good!!! I love you so much and keep you in my prayers. I know that the Savior lives and that he loves each one of us. I hope that you had a wonderful time with the New Year's party, blessing, birthday, etc.! HAve a great week!Love,Zuster Sharp