3rd letter from Geel, Belgium -- Week 92

Elder Steenblik at a castle in Ghent  03-21-16

Elder Steenblik and Elder Waters in Ghent 03-21-16

Elder Steenblik taking a selfie  03-21-16

Ghent  03-21-16

Happy Easter Everybody!

I hope that you all had a lovely Easter weekend.  As I am sure you all have heard, it has been an absolutely crazy week in Belgium.  On Tuesday one of the terrorist attacks was at the airport in Brussels. All 4 of the missionaries that were injured are from the Paris mission.  My prayers go out to them and their families as well as everyone who was affected by this attack.

Because of the attack, we were not allowed to ride public transportation this week.  We had managed to schedule a couple of appointments this week but we had to cancel them because we had no way of getting to them which was a real bummer.  We hope that we will be able to reschedule them this week. We are allowed to take buses now, but still no trains.

We spent the whole week in Geel and we found some cool potential investigators.  My bike is still in the Netherlands and Elder Waters doesn’t have a bike yet, so we did lots and lots of walking this week.  Boy were my legs feelin it by the end of the week.  At least they are getting swoll right before I come home!

This week we did have an appointment with an investigator named Jennifer and she is from the Dominican Republic.  She committed to come to church on Sunday, and she did.  The best part is, she brought her 2 kids and her husband! There are a ton of Spanish speaking members in the ward who did some beast fellowshipping.  We were really happy that she made the step to come to church and it seemed like her whole family had a great time.

Also, this week our shower went AWOL.  We woke up and the drain had exploded with tons of nasty hairy sludge.  We cleaned it all up and when we came back, it did it again! Except this time there was toilet paper.  Now, how in the heck did toilet paper get in there? I will tell you how.  The whole pipe got clogged, so anytime you would flush the toilet, it came out of the shower drain! I have terrible images and smells burned into my brain now.  Luckily a plumber came to fix it the next day.  Let’s just hope that never happens again.

I am grateful during these difficult times for our Savior Jesus Christ who gives us hope.  I thought of a scripture this week in the Book of Mormon.  These are the words of Mormon to his son Moroni.

"My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever." Moroni 9:25

May Christ lift us up through these times of trial.

               -Elder Steenblik