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| Elders Jones, Bean, Paur and Muller on transfer day! |
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| Transfer Day! |
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| Elder Bean waiting to board train to the airport! He is going home! |
Transfers, three baptisms, all this and more coming up this week in my email.
So Elder Paur is now in Genk Belgium, and I am with Elder Kyle Weinheimer Hills. And it´s great, I love it.
Transfer day was long, as they always are. It was really sad to say goodbye to all the missionaries dying (going home). By the way, with the pictures... You will see what happens when Elder Shelton gets a hold of your camera! (Elder Shelton was another companion Elder Muller had in Antwerpen. Lots of unusual pictures this week! Not many I can post...too blurry or just of random objects!)
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| A sample of Elder Shelton's pictures! |
I asked Elder Bean for his last piece of advice to get me through my mission. 'I don't know.... I guess you will just have to figure it out yourself.' He is so wise.
Elder Hills and I are doing awesome. We have hit the ground running. We found and taught two new investigators. One of them was a referral from Koningsdag, (The Kings Day which was celebrated a few weeks ago) and the other was a man we found on the street this week. We also set up two more appointments with people we found. It's shaping up to be a busy transfer.
So this weekend has been pretty crazy. There were three baptisms. Two were on Saturday. One was our investigator, V---, then there was another little girl baptized that evening. On Sunday the Zusters te Dordrecht (Sister Missionaries from Dordrecht) had a baptism, and we had to be there because it's our building... So we pretty much lived at the church this weekend.
Here is a link explaining the ordinance of baptism and why it is so important.
V--- baptism was really good. It was very spiritual, and just a good baptism. I was also privileged to be in the circle when we gave her the Gift of the Holy Ghost. That was really special for me. Probably one of the most powerful experiences I have had so far. Something else cool, I was able to play a duet with Brother and Sister Gruppman. Sister Gruppman is a first chair violinist, and Brother Gruppman is the Conductor of the Orchestra at Temple Square. He is part of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, which is why he lives here. That was pretty cool! He and I accompanied his wife (playing violin) on the piano together.
Here is a link explaining the Gift of the Holy Ghost:
The second baptism on Saturday was pretty crazy. They are a Spanish family, and it was a Spanish baptism... It was a feestje (a small party)! They had a full meal, music, and dancing after the service. It was great!
Saturday night we had an interesting experience. We were out contacting, and two people walked up and asked us if we were talking about 'geloof' (belief or faith). We responded yes, and began to have a conversation. Turns out they are Born Again Christians, and they pretty much tried to convert us haha. It is always funny when people try to do that. It always helps us learn as missionaries though. We learn from the good ways that people approach you, and the bad... like this time.
The best thing to do when contacting, and it is something that we are always told to do, is to just share our testimony. Missionary work doesn't work if you try to convince people you are right. As missionaries, we invite others to come unto Christ. We avoid arguing or trying to 'prove' that we are right, as these people attempted to do.
They quoted scripture and tried to show us how we were wrong, and how we had not received the Holy Ghost yet. It was actually pretty funny. They invited us to their church service and told us that we needed to 'be humble and accept that maybe we didn't know everything, and maybe we were wrong, God still loved us, and he would manifest Himself to us.' (rough translation) We accepted the invitation to attend their church one evening, and when we in turn pulled out the Book of Mormon, shared Moroni's promise, and invited them to read it, they refused. 'They didn't believe in our church or our prophet, so why should they read the book?' Funny how being humble, and seeing if you could learn something only went one way....
Here is a link to Moroni's promise. Moroni is a prophet found in the Book of Mormon. I read this promise and did as it ask, and I gained a testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. I hope you will take a moment to read this, so you can better understand what Elder Muller is talking about.
Like I said, I learned a lot from that situation. They were people who were strong in their faith, and I admire them for that, but sadly they just didn't understand how missionary work goes. We will still probably try to go to one of their services on a week night, just so we aren't, ourselves, hypocrites. Would not want that!
Well that is about all I have for this week. Hope it wasn't too weird of an email. It has been a weird week.
Salut! (Good bye!)
Elder Müller
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| Rotterdam |
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| Elder Shelton with Elder Muller's camera! |
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| Rotterdam |
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