A baptism

While we spent a lot of time planning this week, it was well worth it because Angkea got baptized. She is awesome. She grew up here but is originally from Thailand. She grew up Buddhist. She does not have a very good Christian background. She has 1 daughter. She was prepared to hear our message.

Angkea was a member referral a couple years ago, but after the first lesson, she decided to stop investigating. The missionaries had just made contact with her again when I got here. I did not know that because she was so spiritually receptive. She really does not know too much about Chrisitanity, but what she does have, is a relationship with God and Jesus Christ. She gets names, people, times and terms mixed up sometimes, but she never gets truthful principles mixed up because she experiences them for herself. She has a strong testimony, and is willing to keep any commandment because she knows that it is true. What sets her apart from a lot of investigators is that she has a natural tendency to learn of things from the Spirit because she needs that kind of knowledge. While others know about Christianity and study gospel principles to see the logic in them, she concentrates on the blessings and feelings that she gets from learning and living the principles and commandments of the gospel. Her baptism was awesome and we got a lot of member support. She makes everybody happy.

There is a cool video about blessings on the church website right now that we have been sharing with people. It is a talk by Uchtdorf about blessings from keeping the commandments are showered on us like rain. When we do not pay attention to the abundance of blessings poured on us, we lose satisfaction in keeping the commandments. In reality, if you always keep focus on our blessings, we will always be happy.

This coming week is Temple conference and we will be able to go to the temple and also take pictures at Keukenhof, which is the place with all of the tulips, so be prepared for some cool pictures.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From Elder Packard's trainer: We biked a lot in the rain today. The sun is coming out. It´s spring. We can finally wear our short sleeve white shirts, except I don´t have any short sleeve white shirts. I never thought I would wear them, because they look so ridiculous, but it´s a bucketlist item now. I´ve got my eyes out for one. My companion/son as mission lingo goes between trainer/father and trainee/greenie/son, we´re doing some awesome work. Elder Packard is super hilarious, and an amazingly competent missionary. He´s learning so much faster than I had learned when I first came. His Dutch is very good, too. 

I see the sun

Today it started raining HARD after our impromptu Law of Chastity lesson, and we were screaming and wailing and roaring and laughing all the way back to the apartment. It´s okay, though. No one was outside, because it´s Second Easter! They have Second Easter here. Yep. Anyways, after rip-roaring our way across the city, trying to drift our bikes on the wet bike paths, we hung up our clothes to dry (We don´t have dryers here in Nederland/Belgie) and Elder Packard was just cruising around the apartment in his Kimono.