June 27

The polish people gave this tank to the Breda people after they liberated them in World war II

This week was better than the last, we got let in several times. We are encouraged tracting more now because 50% of our converts come from knocking doors. We had zone conference this week, and that was one of the things that was emphasized. The focus this time was to find through family history. It works. People are a lot more open if you are not just there to tell them about Jesus Christ. Usually they will ask, "What are you leading into? What is the point of you coming here?" But then you tell them that as a church we believe that families are really important and that through coming to know more about where you come from, you can be closer to your family. They can not disagree, because then they deny their love for their family. 

One cool thing that happened this week was that we looked up lady that we met on the door because she said she would be willing to come to church but she hasnt. So we went along, and she invited us in, and we began to talk to her boyfriend because she was busy cooking dinner and taking care of her kids. After a bit, we decided that she was busy, and offered to come back in an hour after dinner. But her boyfriend kept on trying to convince here that they were not interested in our message because they had heard it all before and they were not going to do anything with the message. But we took off our rain jackets and told him that we would just share our message right then and there in 10 minutes. He could not say anything after we sat down. Instead of talking to her, we ended up giving him the lesson. He changed from defensive and resentful to sincerely interested. After 15 minutes, we had to remind him that we had overstayed and that we needed to leave. He said that honestly, he does not even know if God exists, but he believes that church is a good thing because it brings the community together. We told him it was important to know, and that while preachers, communities and churches could lie, the feelings he would get from reading the Book of Mormon would not lie. We offered him a Book and he accepted. He had not response for us, but hopefully it will go farther.

Graduating here is a huge deal, so if you pass your final tests, you hang your backpack up with a flag outside your house

We also got let in with 2 people from Eritrea. There are a lot of Africans here. We might start teaching a Dutch class here for the several immigrants that we have met in our neighborhood that can not speak Dutch too well but want too. That would be hard though because one is from China, one from Iran, two from Eritrea, and one form Romania. 

We looked up the Italian lady for the last time this week. She was mad at God for taking her mother in a painful way. We gave her a Book of Mormon, but this week she told us that she wants to give it back because it is too much about Christ and she does not care if Christ and God exist, she wants nothing to do with them anymore. Heel erg jammer, but at least she gets the whole point of the Book of Mormon. Not a whole lot of people do.

We eat wierd sandwiches now. Bread, mayo, mustard, turkey, cucumber, red kale.

 

Also this week, we got let in by a crazy guy named Nic. He is super funny and talked to us for a couple hours about love and how that is the essence of religion. He pulled his guitar out and started to play "Home on the Range". Elder Knaupp actually plays the guitar, and when he asked to give it a try, Nic flipped out and got really excited. His brother was throwing a BBQ in an hour and he called his brother and tried to casually invite us. He said "Hey, I´ve got these two Americans at my house and one of them plays guitar...let them come to your party and they can play guitar for us!" He didn´t tell his brother that we were missionaries, but there were too many people going already, so he asked us for our number so that he can throw a BBQ and bring us along in the future. So in the future we will be teaching the restoration to a whole load of party-goers. People here in the Netherlands have a holiday every other weekend, and find an excuse the party on the other weekends.