15th letter from Leuven, Belgium --- Week 21

Elder Glen Steenblik and Sister Jayne Steenblik, and Elder Benjamin Steenblik  (Thursday, November 13, 2014)

The delicious meal that Elder Glen Steenblik and Sister Jayne Steenblik fixed for Ben and his companion, Elder Ryan Cockbain

Bikes, bikes and more bikes

Hey,

This last week has been freaking awesome! We kept really busy and stomped the yard.

We had 6 dinner appointments! We average 2.  Last Sunday, I just decided I was going to go up to people and straight up ask them when they had time that week that we could come over for a visit.  And it worked! It wasn’t pushy or anything, and they loved having us over, so it was okay.  On Sunday, when we were leaving church, one of the families came up and asked us if we wanted to come over for lunch. We went and had a huge awesome lunch with them and then 3 hours later, we had dinner with the bishop.  I haven’t eaten that much food in I don’t know how long.  I felt like I was going to blow up! One of our dinner appointments this week was with Elder Glen and Sister Jayne Steenblik! They are a senior couple serving in the Paris mission and live in Brussels.  We are somehow related! We had an awesome time with them and had super good food.

Yesterday, was an awesome Sunday.  We had our ward primary program and it was just adorable.  There was also a TON of people at church too.  A lot of the less active members came for the primary program and it’s the most people I have seen at church since I have been here.

During church yesterday, we had an interview with a guy from a TV network.  We gonna be on TV! On Thursday, he and a camera crew are going to come film us and interview us.  Luckily in English!  It is a TV show about foreign people who come to Belgium and why they came and they thought it would be cool to get some missionaries.  He started the filming yesterday and just asked a bunch of questions about everything.  What the process is of coming on a mission, why we came on a mission, rules that we have to follow, how the people react to us, etc.  The meeting was during church, so he even came to sacrament meeting with us.  It was super cool! We were about to leave and he had one more question that he was personally wondering.  He said, "I read something on the internet that you guys believe about Kolob and the planets?" Haha. Greeeat! Every missionary loves answering questions about something someone read on the internet, so that was a good time. 

Want to hear a cool story? We have an old investigator named Nelson.  We decided to give him a call, but we have 2 people named Nelson in our phone and we accidentally called the wrong one.  We still made an appointment with this other person in our phone, who we didn't even know and had an appointment with them on Saturday.  They are a family who baptized and even married in the temple forever ago, but they haven’t been to church in like 40 years.  We went and got to know them and made a follow up appointment for next week.  They are really interested in coming back to church and loved having us over. They still pray every day and have faith.  They just kind of fell away from the church and never thought about going back.  Hopefully we can get them coming back to church!

We have looked up a ton of old investigators this past week and made a few appointments.  One of the guys we made an appointment with is named William.  He is a black brotha from Africa and was taught by the missionaries a long time ago and for whatever reason, the contact was lost.  We went to his house and made an appointment and when we met with him, he told us that he still prays every day and reads out of the Book of Mormon once a week.  That just goes to show you that a missionary can never measure their success.  Whoever taught William probably thought nothing came of it, but they taught him how to pray and how important scripture study is and he has remembered that for all these years.

The Zone Leaders came on splits with us this week.  I went with Elder Lyman for the day.  We only had one lesson scheduled and it fell through, so we had a whole stinkin’ day to find.  We looked a couple of people up, but then the GPS died, so we ended up contacting all day.  Contacting can be fun, but not for 6 straight hours.  We decided we were going to talk with everyone that we saw and I mean everyone.  Haha.  We met some very interesting people! We talked to people in the centrum, on the streets, knocked on doors, flagged down bikers and even tried knocking on a parked car door.

This past week has for sure been one of the most solid weeks of my mission.  We worked super hard, but we also had a ton of fun.      Doei.

                                                      -Elder Steenblik