Another busy fun week! We had exchanges this week in Amsterdam - all the sisters from the mission went there for the day, and we blitzed the city (the district leaders and their comps from the Den Haag zone also came - it was a fun day). It was a pretty short exchange - mostly just an afternoon together, due to travelling time for the companionships that live far away - but still really awesome. I got to work with Zr Hamblin, who's from Utah and has been here only one transfer. She's an incredibly positive person and going finding in the centrum of Amsterdam was definitely a change for her - she's been in a tiny town in north Holland so far. =) I absolutely love contacting on busy city streets. We had a super awesome conversation with a Surinamer young mom about the plan of salvation and stuff, and found a new investigator for the A'Dam sisters when we stopped a Dutch lady named Truce on the street and talked more about God's plan for us. Then we met an Armanian Orthodox guy in his 20's who was not up for a return appointment but definitely curious about the Book of Mormon and gladly took one.
> The best part was that the A'Dam sisters sent me to go teach Didi, the Bulgarian woman sister Fowler and I found here in Haarlem who's temporarily living in A'Dam. It was so great to see her again!!! We had a wonderful lesson on the Plan of Salvation - she had a lot of questions about the fall, so we worked that out via 2 Nephi 2. That is one of my favorite chapters ever. It was so so so cool to see Did again. I hope I stay in Haarlem so I can continue teaching her when she moves back in a month or so.
> We found some new investigators in the form of gracious older Dutch women who probably just find us cute American girls who like talking about God - but it's always fun to share what you can with who you can. We also were ending a consecrated hour of finding when a mailman on his bike stopped (he'd ridden by as we were praying) and said he had something for us. He pulled out his wallet and gave us both a printed piece of paper with a scripture from Lucas on it about accepting Christ into your heart and being saved. We traded numbers and I am so excited to see him when we can make more contact and set up an appointment. His name was Sebastian. I love being in the right place at the right time - God is good.
> We had such a cool miracle at church this week. We were initially pretty bummed because Magalie wasn't feeling well and didn't come, and Ade and Catherine (Azelea's mother and daughter) didn't make it either, and Engelien is now in Amsterdam on the weekends. Then 5 minutes into Relief Society, Sjaak tapped on the door to say there was someone there for the missionaries. We went to the foyer to see a young women I'd never met. Turns out it was [well, I'll call her] Sarah, who's been inactive and who is an old acquaintance of Fabio, the Columbian dad we started teaching. I'd given a note to Sarah's father to give her, saying we'd begun teaching Fabio and would she ever like to come along on joint teach? She misinterpreted it to mean that Fabio would be at church, so she came to see him... unfortunately he's now in Columbia on vacation until August. I explained the mix up and invited her to come to Relief Society anyway - she tentatively accepted it. When she walked in that door, the sisters of the ward were so excited to see her again! As I was conducting the closing hymn ("Love at Home") she started tearing up a little bit. After the closing prayer she was literally thronged by older women who were SO excited to see her in church again. She came to Sunday School with the young single adults, and I wanted to get her number after sacrament meeting, but 30 minutes after church was over people were still talking with her enthusiastically. It was amazing to see her so well received and with so much love. Wijk Haarlem has a lot of love and I adore working with these people. So it's fun to see how the Lord could use my bad Dutch to help someone come back to church. She was so friendly and I'm excited to get to know her better.
> My lovely companion Zr Robbins pretty rocked the ward's socks off by playing an incredible rendition of A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief on her violin in Sacrament Meeting. She hadn't realized that last Sunday in correlation she'd agreed to play until I asked her on Tuesday what she was going to perform. Oh, language barriers! =) But she was more than equal to the task and made lots of old Dutch people cry. Good times. I love training!
> And things are going pretty great with Magalie. We taught her at Stella's, the Nigerian member, and later this week with Frank and Linda at his house - they're two young single adults in the ward who just got engaged. Magalie wants to get baptized and we set a date, but! She might go on vacation for TWO MONTHS in New York! Ah! Ridiculous! So.... maybe she'll get baptized on September 12th, and maybe not until October or November. But she's so open to the spirit and really has had her prayers answered about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon; it's clear Heavenly Father has a plan for her.
> Things are going well overall. We're halfway through the transfer. I still love Haarlem. And I love all of you. Thanks for your prayers and good thoughts - they mean the world.
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> Veel Liefs,
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> Zr. Baxter