"If there's something that's keeping you from feeling the Spirit: let. it. go." Brother Lewis

We got to hear from Nikki twice this week since she is leaving the MTC on Monday for the Netherlands! Here is her first letter and the pictures she sent! Just a reminder that you can no longer send her letters on DearElder.com because she is leaving the MTC tomorrow! It costs about a dollar for each letter you sent to the mission in the Netherlands through DearElder that you are more than welcome to do, I will let you know that information to send to as soon as possible!

"studying!"

"our hallway in our classroom building--lots of brick walls here"

"our classroom!"

"Sister Bush and Sister Watts!"

"a picture we took through the peephole in the door--we thought it would be awesome and it turned out creepy"

"Dutch scriptures!"

Hallo familie! Hoe gaat het? 

Thank you all for your dearelders and emails this week! I am so so grateful for all of you! Thank you for the dearelder package!!! It was so perfect, I've missed those kinds of snacks so much. I'm really ready to start eating real food again.

This week has been great! We got our travel plans on Friday--we (all 12 of the missionaries going to the Netherlands/Belgium mission) have a flight on Monday at 11:05 from SLC to Detroit Metro, MI (we'll get there 4:34 pm) then we leave Detroit at 6:16 pm for Amsterdam! We'll get there around 8 in the morning Netherlands time on Tuesday. I will probably call between the time we get to the SLC airport and when we leave and/or during our layover in Detroit--I think we get 3 phone calls, so I will do the best I can! I'm so excited to talk to you!!!

This past week has been full of a ton of different experiences. We've been learning a lot about teaching skills, Dutch, the Dutch culture, etc. This week has been long, short, and really fun too--our District has gotten to know each other really well, and it's really fun. One of the Elders in our District--Elder DeWitt--is hilarious. I think I laughed harder yesterday than I have in a long time. We were playing Catch Phrase with Dutch words and we could only speak Dutch. Sister Robbins spent like 5 minutes trying to get her team to guess the word "klinken" which means "to sound", and their team just had no idea what the word was, then all of a sudden he went "Oh, klinken" really nonchalantly. It was a lot funnier in person probably, but we spend a good couple of minutes laughing. 

One great lesson I learned this week came from the quote I put as the subject. Broeder Lewis taught us about stress, and how if being stressed or anything else keeps us from feeling the Spirit--from feeling close to God--that we need to just let it go. I think that's a really valuable lesson for everyone to learn in their lives. For me, I often get frustrated with myself or with my situation, when what I really need to do is let is go, move forward and trust God.

I am SO grateful for all of you. In one of our lessons this week, we taught about eternal families, and I brought a picture of all of us to show our investigator. It was such a cool lesson and I just love you all so so much. I am so grateful for the knowledge that I get to be with all of you forever.

Liefs,

Zuster Thomas

Also, I don't know if I told you all this, but our first Sunday here my companion got called up to the pulpit at the devotional and told her conversion story (it was crazy the following week, we got stopped every 2 minutes)...and this past Sunday she got called up again but they had me come and sit on the stand too--she spoke a little, it was fun!

Also we skyped with a woman from Breda, Netherlands--it was so fun! We all skyped with different people from the Netherlands and gave them a mini lesson. It was awesome

You can email Nikki at nicole.thomas@myldsmail.net where she will read and respond on Wednesdays.