Happy P-Day!

Dear amazing familie,Its back to a european keyboard so bear with me. So much to say!!! First off we had zone conference yesterday whiich was incredible. We watched a clip from the end of Indiana Jones and the Lqst Crusade that re,inded me of you, dad! :) It was all about how faith and sacrifice are necessary to bring about the Second Harvest. My greatest area of focus lately has been keeping my thoughts thoughout the day focused on the work and not drifting back to friends and familie at home in a distracting way. Its so a,azing to see people here who have truly become missionaries, and arent just young people doing missionary things. This is really the first week when Ive begun really enjoying this work and being truly happy and grqteful to be here. For whatever reqson that came a lot faster in the MTC; I think a lot of that is the language and such. But really, I a, so blessed to be here. I was really luxcky to last week to see 2 of the elders from my MTC distrikt often. Last pday we aent to Brugges, an especially beauitful Belge town full of old buildings and beauitful waterways. Even better, I got to see Elder DeMass, the first elder I taught with in the MTC. It was SO GOOD to vent with someone and laugh over how crazy Flemmish is, how intense the adjustment to the field is, and yet how great it can be. That helped me a lot in getting over the last bits of the anxiety that popped up my first few weeks here. I no longer wake up dreading going out and finding. Which really is a miracle - this mission has taught me if we plead and work for it, Christ can truly change out hearts, which is one of the greatest mirqcles ever. Anyway, at ZC they gave us so,e further guidelines on mail - we can only e-mail directly our parents and we can only recieve e-mail from our parents. No siblings. So I couldnt open the e-mails from Alisa and Katie (tho I did read the one forwarded from Mom, Alisa - and the other one didnt shoa up from her. I guess this system is still okay if your e-mail only contains Moms exact message.) But I must thank you all for all the amazing mail lately! Youre all such wonderful correspondants. As for news here, there are so many miracles. Last week we had a week of sacrifice where out distrikt worked on individual goals, all prqyed as co,pqnionships for eachother at seven AM, and extra prayerfully set our goals and strived to fulfill them. I love the way the Lord blesses us - the first hqlf of the week was a little sketchy by the last few days were amazing. We tqught this incredible Afrikan woman named Toki about the second hqrvest and then asked for referrals; She WALKED US to her neighbor (who turns out to be gone on vacation, but still! In three weeks well meet her!) and then her 14 year old son walked us to the house of his friend and introduced us to his dad. The sheer faith showed by this incredible family just was amazing. The next day, Saturday, we were having a hard time reaching our joint teaches goal. Then a faithful elderly temple worker in oru ward, Zr; Van Loven, called us out of the blue asking if we needed any joint teaches. INCREDIBLE! SO she came with us to teach an Afrikan man the the most loving Albanian woman Ive ever met named Lola. Later that day we had a lesson with a Chilean man and his mother-in-law and it just clicked with him. I think he will sincerely read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. I love seeing South American people learn about the BoM - the whole plates of gold thing totally doesnt phase them. Its crazy cool; Friday we got to eat dinner with some other older members, a married couple and the wifes bachelor brother. I could understand almost all of his conversion story when I qsked hi, about it. I si,ply adore these old, tried and true faithful members who accepted teh gospel from Americqn missionaries on their door 20 or 30 years ago. They are such beautiful people. Plus the meal was a rice and shrimp affair that totally re,inded me of seafood cajun dishes, so that was positive. :) Monday was more miracles. We stopped by an old contact, a woman Zr. Barkume had visited a few times and tqlked to qbout the gospel. The woman said it was a bad time but then it started raining (I love Heavenly Father) so she let us in, and then suddenly there was her bathrobe wearing, cigar toting husband, whod heard about us and began philosophizing about ,orality and the difficulty of believing in a God that lets babies die every 60 seconds in Afrika. So my fabulous trainer popped out the Plan of Salvation on them. It was INCREDIBLE to see a theoretical intellectual Flemmish man in a bathrobe, with British accented English phrqses thrown in no less, learn about the Plan of Salvation and ask real questions, mark the BoM passages we shared, and say we should com back and talk more. SO GOOD!