Monday, December 1, 2014

17th letter from Leuven, Belgium -- Week 23

Elder Benjamin Steenblik and Elder Ryan Cockbain
Here is my lovely Thanksgiving feast.  I was actually super pumped to have Burger King.  They only have them in the Netherlands.

Belgium at night


Goedendag Dames en Heren

Happy Thanksgiving folks! I hope you all had a wonderful turkey meal while watching some American football last week.

Things here are coming along and we have had a pretty successful week.  We had a really good lesson with a new investigator named Serrè.  We taught her about the Restoration and it went really well.  She read Alma 32 and then we challenged her to pray about it.  She said that she will be baptized when she gets an answer that it is true.  She is super positive about the gospel and has been looking for the truth.  About a month ago, she was going through her books at her house and she saw one about prophets.  She pulled it out because she was really interested in learning about prophets and Christ.  Then, we came knocking on her door! Want to hear a spooky story? After finding that book, she changed her computer password to prophet363, for whatever reason.  Then, we go to her house and are teaching her about prophets and guess what page number we assigned her to read? 363.  Bam!!!! Now, there's a sign that we are legit.

We had a Zone Conference in the Netherlands on Thursday.  We spent the night in the Netherlands with Elder Parr, my MTC companion.  His comp is Asian, so of course we made him make some delicious Asian food for us.  They don't have any extra beds in their apartment and only 1 couch, so I literally slept on the hard wood floor with a bed sheet as my blanket.  It was the worst! Luckily, as missionaries you are always tired, so I was at least able to get some sleep.

Elder Moriera from the 70 was there.  He is from Portugal and he is the boss! He is super hilarious! President and Sister Robinson also spoke.  They spoke about how when we increase our obedience, we also increase our faith and our love for those we teach and for the word.  They also talked a lot about working with the ward members.  It was a super fun conference and I got to see a lot missionaries that used to be in my zone and catch up.  I always love Zone Conferences! On the way back home, we were on a train with all of the other Belgian missionaries, so it wasn't too bad.  We quoted movies the whole ride home and it made it go a lot faster.  It was Thanksgiving, so I had a good feast in the train station.  Double Whopper wif fries! Boo Yaah!!!

On Friday, we finished dinner and didn't have anything planned and I got a feeling that we should go look up a woman named Grace.  I haven't seen Grace since my 1st week here.  The contact was lost and we could never find her home.  We rode down to her house and she was actually home. She lost her phone and got a new number, so that's why we couldn't get a hold of her.  She is a super Christlike woman.  She is from Ghana and is one of them "Praise Jesus" Christians, haha and I love it!! We had a good little meeting with her, shared a scripture and gave her a new Book of Mormon.  She invited us back tonight for her daughter's birthday partaaay.  I am super excited that we have gotten contact back with Grace.  At the end of our lesson, she asked us with a very concerned look on her face, "Wait, do Mormons celebrate Christmas?" I was just like, heck yeah we  do! And she just let out a big sigh of relief.

I finished the Book of Mormon for the 8th time this past week.  I challenge people every single day to read and pray about this book, so I figured that I would do the same when I finished.  I already know that it is true, but when I finished, I took on Moroni's promise and prayed to know if it was true. And let me tell ya, it is! So, this week, I challenge all of you reading this email to do the same.  Even if you are 90 years old and have been a member since you were 8, pray and ask Heavenly Father if it is true! That is my challenge for you all this week.

Break the wrist, walk away.

Love you all,
                                             -Elder Steenblik

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