Be the Lord's Friend

Nikki's email from March 30th!

"we went on a ferris wheel right by centraal station"

"from the ferris wheel!"

"from the ferris wheel!"

"on the ferris wheel"

"everyone taking pictures"

"pretty belgian houses"

"spring!"

"I went to Gent on exchanges! Beautiful sunset"

"Me with Sister Begazo"

"Gent!"

Hey everybody!

This past week was really great--and it's finally starting to look like spring!

This week was a bit busy--we went on two exchanges and also had Zone Training this past week--but everything went really well! Zone training was really special--the Spirit was very strong throughout the whole meeting. We started off the meeting by presenting our "zone vision" which is "receive the Holy Ghost" with three underlying topics: Effective Prayer, Becoming the Lord's Friend, and Experiencing a Change of Heart. The Zone leaders did a great job on their talks, Elder Lyman talked about Effective Prayer and compared it to scuba diving (he talked about how scuba divers communicate with eachother and the safety rules of scuba diving) and Elder Childs talked about having a change of heart--he compared physical changes of the heart with spiritual. And I talked about Becoming the Lord's Friend. I am really grateful that I got to study and prepare to talk about becoming the Lord's friend. 

I used the story in the New Testament when Christ asks Peter three times "do you love me?'' and talked about how being His friend means being His disciple. I then used the following quote and focused on it for the rest of my talk:

I testify that as you love Him, trust Him, believe Him, and follow Him, you will feel His love and approval. As you ask, “What thinks Christ of me?” you will know that you are His disciple; you are His friend. 

-Elder Neil L. Andersen

I went through each point (love Him, trust Him, believe Him, follow Him and ask yourself 'what thinks Christ of me?') and talked about how we can strengthen our relationship with Christ. After that we had lunch and the District Leaders taught lessons about different sections in Chapter 4 of Preach My Gospel on the Spirit. We then showed "The Voice of the Spirit" and had a few missionaries share their testimonies along with President and Sister Robinson followed by the Zone Leaders and myself. The Spirit was very strong, and at the end we gave everyone about 5 minutes to ponder and reflect on what they learned and felt during training. It was very powerful. 

We also had a very special lesson with Agnes this past week--she was baptized last transfer and has a beautiful testimony. She shared with us her strong desire to share the gospel with others, because she wants to share the happiness the gospel has brought her with others. She is going to come and work with us one day this week and we are so excited.

I am so excited for General Conference this week! What a blessing it is. On my mission I have come to love and appreciate the words of the prophets even more--which reminds me, I highly recommend reading the Ensign for April--there is an article about the difference between weaknesses and sin that is amazing.

I love you all and am so grateful for each one of you. I am so grateful that Easter is this week--what a miracle it is that Christ lives. I know that He lives and that He knows us each individually and loves us each unconditionally and perfectly. 

VEEL Liefs,

Zuster Thomas