Tuesday, September 7, 2010

September is in full swing! Happy Labor Day

Monday, September 6,2010
Hello Family! How was your Labor Day weekend?! I have been thinking about you over the past couple of days and am very anxious to read your letters and hear all about the wonderful times that you've had! Thanks so much for still e-mailing, Mom, Dad, and Brooke! I don't know how you were able to send them out all of the way up there but I really appreciate it!
Where to begin!? This week was full of a lot of adventures...not all that we had planned on! On Monday night I received a call from President and he invited me to attend a Leadership Conference with the 8 Zone Leaders in the mission and Zuster Harrington in Brussels. I was so excited that I was asked to attend! So on Thursday morning, at about 6:00 am, Zuster Pierson and I headed to Rotterdam where we switched companions and Zuster Harrington and I hopped in the car with the Zone Leaders and had a little road trip down to Brussels. The Conference was wonderful! It was held in the Mission Home and it was so cool to be back there again. It was crazy to think that it was almost a year ago since I was there the last time! We had training about finding and exchanges and then an open discussion. It was so awesome to be in such a small group with the Zone Leaders and President and Zuster Brubaker to discuss the needs of the mission. The Spirit was extremely strong and I learned so much! At about 3:00 that afternoon we made the trip back here to Den Haag!
On Friday we had interviews in Leiden and that was another uplifting day. Having two days, back-to-back of training from President is always amazing! President reported that the mission is at an all-time high with baptismal dates...a whopping total of 69! They didn't even have that much before the mission split! It is really cool to feel the excitement and see so many wonderful things happening.
On Saturday night, after attending the baptism of one of the elder’s investigators here in Den Haag, I received a phone call from the Elders in Groningen. Elder Robert asked me if I could remember who Maggie was. I said, "Yeah, she was a young woman me and Zuster Harrington had met on the street a couple of months ago. Why?" He told me that she had been baptized that night! I was so stoked! I knew that the elders were teaching her a month or so ago but I didn't know that she had progressed so much to being baptized. That was such a tender mercy of the Lord to see the fruits of something so small we had done a few weeks earlier!
We had 6 dinner appointments this week with the members! We are making great progress at working with them and really getting them involved in the work. We are starting to implement a referral calendar to begin teaching friends and family of the members and we hope that it will be a big success.
Natali and Esra are still progressing! Esra came to church and the baptism this week and brought two other little friends with her. She's quite the little missionary! We are hoping that through all of these children we will find some families to teach!
Vitalis and Vandelenda are both progressing as well. We have appointments with them this week! Thanks for your prayers in their behalf!
Kimberly was progressing so well and even came to church yesterday! But at the end of church she said that she didn't want to have anymore contact with us or the church. We just couldn't figure out what went wrong. We hope that over time she opens back up to find the joy of the gospel!
The gospel is so wonderful! The Lord loves us all so much and wants us to be happy. This week will be really special as we are in the presence of an apostle of the Lord. He will be speaking to us on Wednesday in Brussels.
I love you so much! Thanks for your prayers and support! Have a great week! Keep up the awesome Book of Mormon reading! Love ya! Zuster Sharp