hello hello!

Hallo iedereen! So this week was pretty crazy but great. Monday was spent
packing up Zr Fowler's stuff and visiting members and saying goodbye (for
her side of things). She is an amaaaaaaaaazing missionary and made such an
impact on people here - it was cool being able to visit people with her and
seeing that. It also made me super grateful to be able to stay in Haarlem.
It's a blessed place.
On Tuesday after district meeting we stayed in Alkmaar and chalked out
the plan of salvation with the elders. I seemed to get sucked into weird
drawn out conversation with old Dutch men, but managed to get a couple phone
numbers from younger people walking by that I talked with, and it helped the
elders get a lot of appointments, so that was pretty cool. I was so stinking
proud of Zr Fowler just talking with people on her own - her Dutch is
amazing. I miss serving with her, but she's in the right spot.
That afternoon back in Haarlem, we were tracting and had kind of a
weird experience - the street we'd prayed about turned out to be a shopping
area, and not a particularly busy one at that - pretty much no one to talk
to. We ended up going to a street nearby to try and contact someone who'd
left a somewhat-indecipherable message on our phone who said he lived
nearby, but he also was impossible to find. We ended up knocking doors on
that street. Zr Fowler at one point said [in Dutch], "Heavenly Father, I
just want to find one more person on my last day in Haarlem..." While we
were waitng to see if someone would come to the door, the Spirit said, "Just
go on to the next one." We walked back out to the street to see an African
man walking towards us. We stopped him, and when he realized who we are, he
said, "I have your black book." We whipped out the Book of Mormon, and he
confirmed it was the same one. "I got it from two friends of mine from your
organization - I don't have time today but I have many questions I want to
ask you about it." Turns out he lives in Amsterdam, right in the same part
of the city where the sisters there live. He also is usually only in Haarlem
on Mondays and Wednesdays for work, but coincidentally got called in that
day (a Tuesday), so it was totally chance (or not, as the case usually is
when you have a nametag and a mid-calf length skirt) that we met him when we
did. It was such a cool miracle and a neat confirmation that Zr Fowler is
going where she needs to. So now that she's in A'Dam she'll be able to look
him up. Sweet!
Later we visited Didi, the woman who'd met with Elders in Bulgaria when
she was a teen. She was thrilled (!!) at the idea of meeting with Zr Fowler
and Zr Miller in A'Dam when she moves there for 6 weeks. We have another
appointment with her this week, and then she'll move there next week. As we
answered her questions about the Book of Mormon, we had her read the last
two paragraphs of the intro. "That makes sense," she said.'"I'm going to do
that." "
"You mean read and pray about it?" I asked her.
"Yes!" she said. Unfortunately she still didn't make it to church on Sunday,
but I'm so excited to meet with her again tonight. The Lord has a plan for
her.

So I got Zr Robbins, my lovely new companion, in Den Haag on Wednesday.
She's a violen performance major from BYU (who got to bring her instrument
with her - sweet muffins!) and pretty much amazing. I'm much more chill this
time around with training - partly because I feel like I actually have an
idea of what's going on, and partly because she's super funny, down to
earth, and pretty comfortable. Despite the normal barriers of only 2 months
of MTC Dutch, she's not at all afraid to open her mouth and talk to people,
which is awesome. We have a pretty fun time together, and life is good.

On wednesday as we were taking the bus back to the station to buy her a bike
(after we dropped off luggage at our flat) we started talking to a woman and
had a super cool conversation. She was totally open to having us come over
and talk more about God's plan - when she gave us her address I told her we
were teaching someone else in her neighborhood. When she got our card and
saw Mormon on it, she said she thinks her daughter, who lives during the
week in A'Dam and on the weekends with her in Haarlem, is also meeting with
us. Turns out she's totally the mom of Sherida, a girl we've taught about
twice. Miracle!!! So we're going to visit Reina, the mom, tomorrow. So
positive.
We've had a few other really cool finding experiences. Azelea is
getting closer to being completely done with smoking. Our other
investigators are really struggling with the commandments, tho. Please keep
them in your prayers.
I got asked on Thursday to give a talk on Sunday. I can't tell you how
cool it is to be able to give a talk in Dutch without having to read it off
the paper word for word. I loooooove being able to really talk to people -
it'll never be perfect, but it's enough. The gift of tongues is totally real
and amazing. I really love Haarlem... the ward is just amazing.
And I love you people! Have a great week and know that the Lord really
is there to help.


Veel liefs,

Zr Christa Baxter

Hallo! What a crazy blessed week! To start off, we had our last Zone Conference on Tuesday with President and Zuster Woodland. I will really, really miss them a lot. There were also a junkload of departing missionaries who I've been with most of my mission - Zr Kabenda, Zr Higham (never comps but we've had almost all our comps in common), my first district leader, other leaders... it makes me feel really old. It was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful day. We learned a lot about how we can better use the Book of Mormon. Since then we've seen so much more success in finding with the Book of Mormon, including meeting the most theologically open man ever, whose cousin converted and immigrated to Utah back in the 50s or 60s. Interesting. =) Not open for an appointment but was excited to read the Book of Mormon and wants us to stop by another time for another chat.
> Azelea is moving this week to her new house and hopefully her mom will arrive from Ethiopia to help watch Catherine once school is out for the summer. I'm really, really hoping we can start teaching Azelea's mom too, and that once things calm down we can get her coming to church more regularly. Engelien (pronounced angle-een) is still struggling with the Word of Wisdom and quitting smoking - your prayers would be appreciated. Milene just got back from her vacation and we have dinner with her Wednesday, so that'll be great to get back into teaching her and letting her choose a new baptisimal date. Thank you for your prayers for these wonderful people.
> We had a fun conversation with Emmy - she's not super super willing to go to another church but wants to come by sometime. It's really hard to teach older Dutch woman - it's a very strange social dynamic, what with trying not to just get relegated to those cute American girls with bad Dutch who like to talk about God. ;)
> One awesome miracle this week was having an appointment with Didi. She's the woman from Bulgaria we met op straat about a month ago who'd met with Elders in Bulgaria when she was a teenager and got teary as she mentioned they were her "biggest friends." (I really, really, really will miss the awkward eloquence of english as a second language. We encounter it so much here!) We'd run into her last Saturday at the station and were suprised to find she wasn't in Amsterdam as she told us she'd be, and were so so happy to go meet her. We mostly got to know her background - she came her to work with the flowers and married a Portuguese man. She'd met with the Elders because they lived in her same building, and she and her brother had gone to church there. I'm still not sure why it didn't go further - as she said she remembered something about a certain Joseph Smith, we pulled out a Bulgarian Book of Mormon and asked if she recognized it. The look of shock and joy on her face was incredible. She even suggested to her Father-in-law that they all come to church. They didn't (yet) but it'll come. She's going to A'dam next or week or the week after for a month and a half, but it'll come with her... what a miracle.
> We continue to be crazy busy in Haarlem. We are super blessed here. Li, our chinese investigator, is beginning to seriously pray on her own, and about baptism as well. She also goes on vacation to China for more than a month this week, but when she comes back I'll be excited to see her again. I just really love these people.
> The biggest surprise of this week is transfers.... I'm staying in Haarlem, and Zr Fowler is going to Amsterdam with myold comp Zr Miller! I'm honestly very torn about this, because I stinkin' love Zr. Fowler and we've been blessed to see so many miracles and people literally popping out of nowhere to teach. But I'm excited for her to be able to learn from a new city and new companion. I'm also training again, which was a bit of a surprise (at least on my part), so I don't know who my new comp will be. But Haarlem could always use the greenie miracles, so I'm excited. =)
> I love you all. I love this work, and I love my Heavenly Father and Savior. There's no end to miracles, and no end to His help. Have a wonderful week.
>
> Veel liefs,
>
> Zr Christa Baxter
>

wat een druk druk leven!

Crazy busy week! We had interviews on Tuesday in Den Haag - the last
time I'll be able to have a one on one talk with President Woodland. I love
our mission president. I've learned a lot from him. At our training we
learned a lot more about working with the Ward with joint teaches... wow,
that must sound so boring to you people. Anyway, it was great fun, and I got
a letter from Lenneke, a Dutch girl in her 20s who got baptised in Rotterdam
after I transferred to Gouda. She is doing INCREDIBLE - she's the YSA rep
for the ward, has been to the temple several times, and just loves the
gospel so much. She has amazing people there too to fellowship her. I hear
she's coming to the next zone conference this week, so that'll be so good to
see her. It really is the most rewarding thing in the world when someone you
taught the gospel can see all the beautiful changes in her life because of
it. I love it so much.
We had some cool miracles in finding. We went back to Emmy, the super
chatty amazingly cool older Dutch lady who let us in last week. She has a
granddaughter with major emotional / behavioral problems whom she often
helps take of. Emmy's husband passed away a few years ago, but this
granddaughter still feels like she receives messages from her granddad.
Anyway, Emmy said her granddaughter was doing MUCH better this week, and
said her granddad had told her she needed to be making better choices and
living a better life. I didn't quite follow Emmy's Dutch perfectly, but she
really attributed it in a way to our visit, or at least didn't see it as
coincidental - "I didn't tell her that two girls from a church had been by,
but you know..." And we managed to teach her about the Restoration and she
is genuinely interested in letting us come back and teach her more. So good!
So this week we'll go back again.
The elders in our district came up to Haarlem last Saturday to do
some creative finding... we chalked out the Plan of Salvation and had a
super fun time talking with people about it. But the coolest miracle
happened just before that - while waiting at the station, we saw Didi again!
She's the woman from Bulgaria who'd met with elders (and teared up when she
told us they were here best friends) years ago. We thought she'd been in
Amsterdam all this time, but she's actually leaving int wo weeks - and let
us make an appointment to meet with her this week before she goes! Wahoo!
I'm so excited to get to know her better.
Engelien just learned about chastity and is still working on quitting
smoking - but the Relief Society has just taken her in so well. During our
lesson on forgiveness Engelien got a little emotional - she's had some hard
problems with her parents' divorce and other family issues - and it was
amazing to just see Dutch women wrap their arms around her and kiss her on
the cheek. Gosh I love this ward so much! And Azelea came to church for the
second time!!!! Oh I adore her. She is my Ethiopian sister. I'm totally
taking a picture ofher Book fo Mormon - she has scriptures marked up and
down that whole thing.
Wehad exchanges this week and I got to go to Amsterdam! I tried
meeting up with Amy Robinson but it just didn't work out schedule wise, and
that was a shame - but it was super fun working with Zr. Stapleton, a new
sister from St. Martins. It was also super fun tracting briefly in the
Bijmer (in south east A'Dam). I really miss tracting in the ghetto
sometimes. It's so crazy random - you never know who you'll see. But it was
really fun to come back to Haarlem. This place has become home. And the way
president talked about how it ought to've become home for me, I'm pretty
sure I'll just be staying here until the end of my mission... which is fine
by me!
I really love you all and am so grateful for you. I know this
gospel is real, and I know it changes lives. Thank you for your letters and
prayers.

Love,

Zr. baxter

Hallo iedereen! So this week brought some great progress with people we're
teaching. We taught Azelea about Tithing, and it seemed pretty reasonable to
her. Although that may be because she doesn't have a baptisimal date yet. ;)
But on Saturday we taught her with Sjaak, a convert of 18 months or so who
just got his mission call to South Africa. We had Sjaak teach the majority
of the first lesson again to her, under the pretext that he needs the
practice teaching, and Azelea acted like she was a completely new
investigator. So we had to hide her beautifully tabbed and marked copy of
the Book of Mormon she's been highlighting like nobody's business the past 6
months. =) It was amazing. It felt we were in the MTC again teaching a
member who was giving answers too good to be true. Finally Zuster Fowler
said, "Okay Azelea, all pretending aside, you talk like you've been a member
for years. Do you really know that Joseph Smith was a prophet? And that the
Book of Mormon was true?" And Azelea thought about it all and said, "Well,
yeah! I do know it's true!" She loves the Book of Mormon but she'd never
expressed that kind of surety about Joseph Smith. So then Zr Fowler invited
her to be baptised with Mosiah 18:8-10 - Azelea responded, "Wow, you haven't
shown me this scripture before." And then said she wants to be baptised, but
things are just too hectic and crazy in her life right now. I stinking love
this woman so much! Her biggest obstacle is coming to church, but things are
getting more flexible at her workplace, so she's trying to come again in a
couple weeks. Please please please pray for her to be able to come to church
regularly and get baptised. She's such a wonderful person and has such a
beautiful growing testimony.
Milene is doing well, but got sick so she couldn't come to church or
the baptisimal service in Den Haag we wanted to bring her too. Bummer! We're
hoping to introduce her to more of the older members who joined the church
when they were young adults around her age - most of the Young Single Adults
in the ward have grown up in the church, and the standards can seem to be a
pretty big change at times. We're hoping to help her see she really can do
this. =)
And Engelien is great. The ward takes so much care of her! But she's
just learning about the Word of Wisdom, and she smokes a lot and drinks
occasionally. So there's that - we just go forward in faith and dilligence
and do our thing. It'll come good.
Um, I don't know what else to say. I really just adore Haarlem. The
ward is amazing and we're teaching a lot of truly amazing, dedicated,
serious people. And just Sunday, Heather (a Canadian au pair) brought her
Dutch boyfriend to church again - he wants to take the missionary lessons
again and see if he really can believe in God and accept this church.
Reminds me of some high school experiences, but maybe she'll succeed where I
failed. ;) I really just love being a missionary right now.
And on Friday we took another trip to the mission home in Belgium for
legality - and I found out I get the stay a 12th transfer!!!!! Meaning I
will be released on October 28th. Wahoo!!! I was pretty surprised, but I
really love being a missionary, and the language is no longer so great a
problem, so I'm happy to stay even longer and experience one more European
Fall. I love you all and I love this work. I know Heavenly Father is taking
care of us all, in His time and His way. I know he answers prayers.

Veel Liefs,


Zr Baxter