On Tuesday at District meeting, Zr Ramirez talked about the Christlike Attribute of Faith, and it was absolutely KILLER. She is such a powerful teacher. Her english isn't perfect, but she is so good at expressing her ideas with the spirit. At one point she said something that really hit my heart, "When we got to know God and Jesus Christ, it was when we read the scriptures." And the truth of that just struck me. I don't know why, but it was a really cool moment. That's why the scriptures are so important. They help us to get to know our Heavenly Father and learn more about Him.
We were by our investigator friend this week. He's still struggling with stopping with smoking, but it's coming along slowly. We talked about the Priesthood, and he had some really good questions. He's really working through some deep questions about why his wife had to die--what God meant by letting that happen. When we talked about blessings of healing he really looked stuck. His wife was meeting actually with the elders at the time leading up to her death, and she was praying a lot, so he didn't understand why that faith wasn't enough to save her. We talked again about the Plan of Salvation and that God really does have a plan for each of us. Sometimes we try to make our own plans or we think our plan would be better, but His will is always done.
It was just a really cool lesson because I felt like it was the first time he had really opened up to me. Later Zr Ramirez confirmed that he seemed to be a lot more open than he had been since I came here. She said that he seems to trust me now enough to open up. So that was a miracle. Now we can hopefully help him progress! I'm so grateful for the help of Heavenly Father in our lessons to bring the love we feel for our investigators across. He truly is the teacher, not us, and if we let it be that way, He will soften their hearts so they are ready to receive the message.
Wednesday we went to some Castles! Well only two are actual Castles, the others are what they call "Herenhuisen" They're basically mansions that have extensive grounds and a canal around them. They were all beautiful and it was really fun to drive around Arnhem. We went with an older member in the ward, Br Van Drogen, and a JOVO that's our age, Rusely Thielman. The hills to the north of Arnhem were like an out-of-nederland experience, because it did NOT look like the flat spacious Nederland that I'm used to! There were huge winding hill-side roads with tons of trees! It looked a LOT like AF Canyon, just the wrong type of trees. If there were quaking aspens, then it would be a spitting image thereof. Gosh it was gorgeous!
We also baked our birthday cake, Mom! But I was dumb and didn't take any pictures... :( It's all gone already haha. I did a coconut and pecan and sugar etc topping and it was soo yummy :)
Did Exchanges with the Breda sisters this week, Zr Jaramillo is such an awesome sister. We had so much fun and it was cool to work a day with someone older than me on the mission. She's one transfer above me, and I realized that up until then I had mostly only been with people younger than me on the mission since my 2nd transfer. She is such a good teacher and her Arubian cooking is delicious! We found a cool guy in the park, (because nobody is home for summer vacation so going along the doors is pointless) and when we first started the contact he said, "Ik ben ook Christen, hallelujah." (I'm also Christian, hallelujah) and we were a little surprised, because the tone of his voice didn't match the sentence--kindof monotone--but then Zr J just kept talking with him, and as she was explaining the Book of Mormon, he said "I only hear truth in your words. Everything you're saying to me is truth" He lives in Dordrecht, so hopefully they'll be able to get ahold of him, but it was super cool. I love talking to those people! :)
Friday we went to Nijmegen to help them with the church openhouse type thing on Vier Daagse. Mom you would love this. So it's this big yearly event where people walk different kilometer distances every day for four days and it always ends in Nijmegen. Men under 50 or so have to walk 50 K, Women, 40 K, and any people that are older than 60 have to walk 30 K. And it's that distance every day. So if I did it I'd have to walk 40 K every day for 4 days. Crazy right? So the church in Nijmegen was right next to the finish line, and they had the church open with a sign outside that said "free bathroom!" So we had a ton of people come and use the bathroom and had some short conversations with people. It was pretty cool. It's a tradition to give the walkers a gladiola (I think that's how it's called in english... Gladiool in dutch) so it was fun to see everyone walking around with these big bouquets of flowers. :)
Saturday was DLC and there is this member in Eindhoven (the city where our ZLs are) who has been helping with missionary work for so many years that he has a name tag and comes to all the meetings. He is my favorite old Dutch man, named Harry van der Sande. His birthday was on Saturday, and he is now 85 years old! Still knocking doors and going on joint teach with the elders :) So we celebrated and sang him happy birthday and went to a restaurant called Vapianos for lunch. We brought a bunch of cake to share with everyone. It was cute, he ordered a pizza Scampi, and when it came he was super surprised at how big it was. His eyes got real big. He only ate two pieces and then put his plate in the middle of the table and said "okay elders, nu is dit voor jullie" haha.