Leaving Breda

Thanks for the Bday wishes. They are really weird and i almost decided not to watch them. 

 the cat that lives by the train station. She is one of my best friends here in Breda. When I call her, she literally runs and jumps on my knee and sometimes tries to give me a hug. Much better than Daisy

Anyway, the news is that I am getting transferred to Emmen. Emmen was Elder Deardens first and previous city, and his previous companion is there right now, so my new companion will be Elder DeBloois. Elder Dearden freaked out when he heard I was going there. And I already know Elder DeBloois so that will be good. Emmen is small and right up next to the German border, and some of the branch members live in Germany, so I will be having dinner in Germany every now and then. There are supposed to be a lot of Jehovahs Witnesses in Emmen as well, so I will have to brush up on my biblical scriptures as will. I can not wait to go but leaving Breda is pretty sad. I have been here just about 6 months and it has really become home. I know all of the streets and the fastest routes, where every store is and all of the members so it will be wierd not knowing where everything is. One of the ward members mother lives in the area, but is not a member, so he told me to look her up. The best zoo in the Netherlands is also in Emmen and it was just remodeled to I may take a trip to the zoo. Two other things in the area that I have been told to look up are Giethoorn, a historic little town, and Feenpark. I am not really sure what is so special about these places but I will soon find out.

Just a really cool house here in Breda

We really had a good week here in Breda. We had two more lessons with the African guy in the park and he came to church. We taught Milena again, and we were able to teach a couple more lessons of potential investigators that we looked up. One of these potentials was a man from Sri Lanka that told us to come back in 2 weeks because he was getting married. We went back and he gave us his address because we had been going to his parents house. He married a christian woman and had just converted to christianity. We went to the address a couple more times, but no answer at the call button. But on our third attempt to look him up, we ound out that we had just not been pressing the button hard enough. We were let in and told the full restoration right there to his wife and him and challenged them to baptism. They said they were already baptized, but did not know about authority. It got them thinking. His wife was afraid that we were not followers of Christ, but after the prayer, which we said in Jesus' name, she had a smile on her face and think that she will have a look at the book of Mormon. I have not doubt that Elder Knaupp will be able to do great things with that family. We also taught a previously Muslim lady from Iran. She had a friend also from Iran over who also had been muslim. They dont really have a denomination but the one claims to be protestant. They had some questions about feeling the Holy Ghost, and we were able to teach them a little then, but hopefully we can teach them more this week, and they will become 2 new investigators. 

We had quite a drought these past few weeks with teaching, but things have really been picking up here and I am glad that I can leave Breda with developing potential. There have been some really cool experiences here in Breda, and I have learned a ton here. I used to think that I had not changed at all here, but now that I am leaving, I really feel that I have a grasp of what to do.

Yesterday, we went into the park to do some contacting. This is a tactic that we have been using a lot recently and it has really been working. If we go on the door, usually everybody is too busy to talk but nobody can say that in the park. A lot of people go to the park to smoke weed too, so they are more relaxed. Also, the people smoking think that we would not talk to them, but they are usually so surprised that we do that they will let us teach them our message. They all know that we dont smoke or drink and know that they should not either, so it is a double win because it encourages them not to smoke. The first couple weeks I think people may have been annoyed that we were there talking to people about religion, but they warmed up to us this week because they realized that we were not there to condemn them or make them feel bad, but there to share an uplifting message. We met a grou yesterday that initially shunned us, but I started playing soccer with a couple of them, and Elder Knaupp started a conversation with one of them, and within minutes all of them were talking to us and treating us like best friends. One of them, after hearing that we share a message about Jesus Christ, sat in and said that he was agnostic, but wanted to hear what we believe. He took a Book of Mormon and seemed really happy about what we had told him. There was also another guy that I felt impressed to talk to and it turned out that he was former investigator that thought the Book of Mormon was the Book of Mammon and did not want to worship money. But I cleared that up with him and shared 2 Nephi 33:10 and he said he would take another look at it. It was really cool to just be able to connect with people while still upholding our standards and actually get a ton of work done.