October in Emmen

This week was interviews week. If you want to know about President Bunnell, he is awesome. He will be here the whole time that I am here. He was a PA and comes from Utah. He is really focused on everybody in the mission getting a solid testimony of the restoration. That is why we have the Book of Mormon challenge right now to finish the Book before the end of the year highlighting all references to Christ and the Atonement. We also write the names given to Christ in the back of the book. Going good.

We had a 3 good lessons with our Surninaamse investigator this week. All went good. He is doing well and we went over the Plan of Salvation with him. It really opens the perspective of life and makes it a lot more comfortable to see more than just what happens on this earth. I read something somewhere this last week that other  than us, there is really only one kind of religion or something that has a clear belief in a premortal existance. Another thing I like explaining is based on  a talk that an apostle gave. Ballard I think. He said that life is a 3 act play, and since we are in the middle, this is where everything goes wrong. It annoys me when people say that there can be no God with all the bad things happening in the world, because he would stop it. But if we did not have to worry about consequences of bad decisions, then we would not really make much progress. It would be much easier for people to feel entitled to a good life and success around every corner, when as King Benjamin says, we are not even better than the dust of the earth because God made the dust and it is obedient to him and we are not.

We also met with a couple crazy people this week.

We went on 2 exchanges, with Zwolle and Assen. I was with Elder Enger from Zwolle. He is on his 2nd transfer and is awesome. A lot of progress in a little amount of time. He is really solid and focused on what he is here to do. I was also with Elder Penman from Assen. He is a hockey player and UFC fighter from Alaska. He speaks really good dutch and is only 1 transfer behind me. We went to Frisland to do a little knocking. They actually speak Frisian there and it is acutally another language than dutch. Kind of in the middle of Dutch and English. They also speak dutch naturally though so it was fine. 

We also got an investigator to church this week because I gave a talk and she promised to come support. She was going to come late and leave early because she is a pretty shy. But she love it so much that she stayed all three hours and for a potluck afterward. She was so impressed by the whole thing. We thought she would find the lessons kind of weird because she did not know the terms or doctrine, but she kept on whispering "prachtig". After the 2nd hour, we asked her how she felt about it, and she was saying that it was so special because of the atmosphere of love and honesty and that everybody was willing to come forward with their weaknesses and be able to be helped and supported by each other. She started to cry a little bit because it made here so happy. The branch was super friendly without being overbearing. It was a great miracle of church attendance because we were thinking of dropping her this last week.