Hoi everybody! We had such a cool week! It started off with Mehmet, a
slightly argumentative Turkish man, calling us for an appointment when we
forgot to call him. That doesn't happen so often! We arranged to give him a
tour of the church on Saturday with one of the members, a delightfully
graceful dame named Zr Jonkman. He found the Joseph Smith story pretty
incredible and asked for a Book of Mormon before we even offered. My
inspired companion Zr Fowler thought it'd be cool to bring copies of it in
several languages, so he walked away with a Dutch copy, a Turkish copy, and
a return appointment for next week. So good!
Azelea is doing well gospel wise but got sick and couldn't come to
church. Again! But we brought Stella, a Nigerian convert, on joint teach,
and Stella pretty much invited her to church continuously during the entire
lesson. It was pretty hilarious and awesome. Azelea said she really really
wants to and is so frustrated that things keep on stopping her. When we
committed her to baptism she said, "Let me come to church first!" It's
totally coming with her. I love the light of the gospel entering people's
lives. On Sunday we were able to have Sjaak (convert of 18 months currently
waiting on his mission call) and Jan (26 year old who served in Suriname)
come and give her a priesthood blessing. It was a really beautiful
experience and she was very grateful. Please keep Azelea in your prayers,
that things will work out with her husband's job search and that she will be
able to come to church.
Milene is reading in the Book of Mormon from the beginning (always a
wonderful sign) and came to church again, but from here on out wants to come
only every other week. She's also super busy and can only meet with us once
or twice a week. So please just pray for her that things will work out for
her June 6th baptism.
We got to meet with Magalia, a girl in her 20s from the Congo whom the
elders found when they blitzed Haarlem after District Leader Council. She
was super positive, and through a series of complicated (and very fortunate)
events I happened to grab a French Book of Mormon instead of a Dutch copy
for her. We'd only talked to her on the phone in English, but since she's
from Congo, French is her native language, so it was pretty fortuitous (aka
inspired) that we had it for her. She didn't make it to church on Sunday but
she's pretty positive and I'm super excited to get to know her better.
Marc was on vacation so we visited Esther, his girlfriend, and
brought Zr Scholten. The whole appointment was such a cool miracle. We
talked more about the Plan of Salvation and the pre-existance and the role
of Christ. Zr. Scholten totally pulled a DTR (as my good former District
Leader Elder Thio pointed out, missionary parallels dating on so many levels
- I'm not even being facetious) and asked Esther if she wanted to really
believe in Christ. Esther talked about praying and compared herself to the
man in the Bible who brings his son to Christ to be healed and says, "Lord,
help thou my unbelief." The Spirit was incredible. Zr. Scholten told Esther
she thought that Esther really did want to believe it, and Esther admitted
it would be pretty amazing if we did have a Savior. So we committed her to
pray about it and read the Plan of Salvation pamphlet. I love members. They
make everything better. You don't even know how happy the missionaies in
your ward would be if you called them up right now and asked them who you
can come visit with them.
Finding miracle - we were walking through a park and began chatting with
two older ladies. They turned out to be sisters, and we had a super small
talk conversation with them about being missionaries and faith in Holland
and how they grew up Catholic. Realizing it wasn't going to get there in any
natural, subtle way, I asked them if we could share something spiritual
before we went on our way and we shared the Joseph Smith story. One sister
asked what we believed about life after death, and as I pulled out the Book
of Mormon, Els (the less open of the two) said,"Oh, you're Mormon? That's so
strange - when we were little girls, I remember two mormon missionaries
visiting. Last night I was thinking about that for the first time in years,
and now here you are." They agreed to let us come visit them next week and
talk to them more about the Plan of Salvation. Miracle!!!
And so it goes. It was kind of a weird week - we had interviews on
Wednesday, which was wonderful. And then all of Friday was wiped out by a
legality trip to Belgium. It was super great seeing Elders Berry and DeMass,
but super weird being in Belgium - Holland has just become home, and I
missed it, even being gone just a day. I absolutely love Haarlem and I love
being a missionary - I wondered if the day would ever come when I could say
that with all honesty, but there's really nothing else I'd rather be doing
right now. I love you all, and I love this gospel. God truly is our HEavenly
Father, and I know he's mindful of us.

Vele liefs,

Zr. Baxter