Tuesday, November 11, 2014

You can grow without rain

Nikki's email from this week on November 10th. She sent lots of pictures this week!  There are quite a few pictures that she sent from her last area (Almere) in Almere since she couldn't send pictures while she was there! The rest are from her new area (Zoetermeer).


"Temple conference"

"Belgium! I have a belgian waffle (two actually...one was to bring back to my companion)"
"Belgium! (sorry these are so random!)"

"from Almere-Yarina (awesome member missionary-Michelle's best friend) with the Elders and Sister Packer"
"Almere-this sweet woman taught us how to make skirts,she's awesome"

"Almere-Margreet's baptism!"
"Almere--Margreet's family--her mom is from Brazil (she was baptized there and talked about how the missionary who baptized her is in the Sao Paulo area and is inactive-I tolder her that I knew someone serving in the area and she gave me his info and I gave it to Elder Lowe! We'll see what happens!)"

"Almere-the Bishop from Almere and his family--so nice"
"Almere--Sister Van der Put--she is so wonderful"

"Almere--Chaya and Rubin--LOVE them. Chaya was so good to us"
"Almere--Vanessa!!!!!"
"Almere--the girl on the left is our mini-missionary. This was from when we went on splits with these two girls"

"Almere--matching sweaters. Awesome"
"Johan! My bike."
"Zoetermeer--this past week we went to Den Haag for a "splits avond".  We split up with a member from Den Haag and looked up inactives.  This woman is so cool!  We walked all over Den Haag and she's wonderful."

"Zoetermeer--me in Nederland!"

Hallo! 

Well, we found out what will be happening once Sister Hoff leaves! We're getting a "mini-missionary" today and she will be staying here until the end of the transfer, so she'll stay with me as my companion once Sister Hoff leaves. It's a girl named Heidi, who I knew in Almere! It'll be pretty interesting, I'm nervous but excited about the new adventure.

Well, this week was pretty hard, but totally filled with tender mercies and miracles. First off, we went to Bagels and Beans last p-day (love that place), and we had dinner at Familie Rahman Van Eeden. They are a really nice family in our ward. We were just starting dinner and Sister Rahman Van Eeden mentioned that she served in Temple Square. I asked her if she knew Sister Cheney, and she did! And it gets cooler--remember that woman I emailed a few months ago--the woman who Sister Cheney gave me the email address for? Sister Rahman Van Eeden is that same woman!!! It was so cool, she is really kind and sent a picture of us to Sister Cheney. 

Things with our investigators went pretty well this past week--they all just need to pray!!! We are hoping/thinking that Wouter will keep his baptismal date. Irek told us that he prayed about the Book of Mormon and felt really good! And he prayed for us in our lesson, which hadn't happened before. It was simple, in broken English, but it it was wonderful. 

One of our investigators, Jimmy, made us peanut soup with his wife the other day. It was so fun! I got the recipe from his wife and we talked about cooking and recipes and such, and we also got to talk with them about prayer, which was really cool. Their son came in during dinner (the missionaries haven't met with him before) and he started asking us all of these really great questions, like what the Bible means to us and why bad things happen to good people, etc. It was a really cool experience! 

We did exchanges this past week and Sister Frederickson (I met her at BYU, she wasn't in my group in the MTC though) came to Zoetermeer with me! It was so fun and so nice to work with her. 

The day after exchanges, I planned out our day with some lookups I felt like we should do. It was a miracle because all of the people were home! We made 7 appointments for this coming week and it was just wonderful.

Like I said earlier, this week was really hard--from all the I've written so far it probably doesn't seem like a hard week, but it was. I won't go into too much detail, but there have been a lot of discouraging moments. I asked the Elders in our ward for a preisthood blessing, and I am so grateful that I did. It brought comfort to me and helped strenghten me. 

The title for this week was a thought I had this morning--it's pretty appropriate for this mission area too because it rains so much...but anyways, even though this week was filled with "rain"/hard things, I saw a lot of growth in myself and I saw a lot of tender mercies from Heavenly Father, helping me know that He loves me and that I'm doing what He wants me to.

I love you all and I pray for you every day.
Liefs,
Zuster Thomas

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