Another great week in Rotterdam! The weather'sgetting awfully brisk now - it's a lekker 13 degrees celsius and yesterdaywas definitely the coldest birthday of my life, but it's kind of fun tobreak out the sweaters. I feel very much the European sister missionarywardrobe wise. Being a missionary in the Netherlands is such a crazy experience,especially as far as finding goes. Just this last week we met a wonderfulwoman named Tamia from Sierra Leone, recently divorced and living with her 2year old daughter, who welcomed us in at the mere mention of Jesus Christand missionary work. We're excited to return again and continue teachingher. Then there's Jacou, a young white South African who let us come up anddoesn't really care much about religion specifically, but is doing aninternship here in the Netherlands and is pretty rusty with his Dutch andprobably quite excited to make new friends. So we'll get some joint teachaction going on and introduce him to the gospel. Some people here are justso incredibly KIND. Like the Muslim man who talked Sufism with us for a fewminutes (oh how I miss Wikipedia!) and then returned unexpectedly 5 minuteslater from his flat with a book of poems by Rumi, his gift to us.Incredible! Or the Surinaams couple who welcomed us in and fed us dates andshrimp while we shared the Book of Mormon with them. The longer I'm here themore convinced I am that people are inherently good. As far as fun things go, we had dinner with the Neto's, a youngcouple with a 4 year old daughter a newborn son. He's from Portugual andserved in Spain, she's from Spain and served a mission in Portugual, andwith us they spoke English. When he heard I played the guitar he was superexcited, so after dinner we jammed out to... Come Come Ye Saints. And Iimprovised a little Come Thou Fount. It was pretty funny, and good to see Ihaven't lost all my skills. The work is going beautifully. Irene is still preparing for her baptismon the 27th and very excited. Her curiosity and excitement when we taughtthe Restoration of the Priesthood was just hilarious to see - we weren'teven out the door before she was on lds.org looking stuff up. I adore thatwoman. Andre, the Surinaams man who has been intirely changed by the Book ofMormon, is doing really well too. We retaught him the restoration of thechurch through Joseph Smith, and it all made sense to him. And then hestarted telling us how he wanted to learn the "huis regels" (house rules) ofthe church he's coming to now. So he agreed to meeting with us 3 times aweek for 30 minutes (a new emphasis in missionary work across the world) andis so excited to continue making change in prep for baptism. Monik, tehRwandan 33 year old, came to church again. I learned her mom was killed inthe war years ago. I remember watching Hotel Rwanda as a teenager - I neverthought I'd be teaching the gospel in Holland to someone directly affectedby the war depicted in that film. And then yesterday was my birthday! Someone leaked the news to theRelief Society, who announced it. And then the entire room of womanserenaded me with the very long, very robust Dutch birthday song. Hilarious!Everyone should turn 22 in the Netherlands. On a Sunday, no less. Church wasgreat, and after another hour of finding we went to Helen's house (therecent convert from Surinaam) for a lekker birthday dinner. She made mesauto soup (which is a lot like gumbo, actually) and deep fried bakedbananas, my companion made dirt cake (oreos and vla), and we all had anentirely enjoyable evening. It really was almost the best birthday of mylife (only almost because I wasn't with family, but Helen did a fabulous jobof seeing I had a day full of love). I am so crazy thankful to be here, andthis ward is fabulous. So have a wonderful week everyone. Love, Zr. Baxter