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.
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> Veel liefs,
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> Zr Christa Baxter
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