We're working right now with an awesome investigator, and he is just doing really well. We just had a lesson with him a few hours ago about the plan of salvation and he just gets it! He's so awesome and it's such a joy to be able to teach him. He was going to come to church on Sunday, but when he didn't come we were really sad. We called him last night to see what had happened and he said that he had gotten called in to work, but he thought we had an evening service (we had a fireside a week ago, so he was confused) and had showed up to the church at 6 thinking he'd still be fine. We felt so bad! But baby steps, right? First he gets to the building and next week he'll know right where it is.
Zr Maughan is such a great companion and we're learning a lot from each other. We both love to sing, so yesterday we sang again in church. The members have started asking us to sing a hymn with them as part of their talks :) It's so funny. We're also singing at zone training tomorrow (Ye Elders of Israel) and we're just so excited. Our voices pass really well by each other, and it's just so fun to sing with her. Music is truly a way to open people's hearts to feel the spirit.
Talking about that, Saturday was the Singing Elder's concert and we saw some really cool things because of it. We had a special training before on how to ask effectively for referrals from the people attending, and afterward we all met and talked about some cool miracles that we'd seen from the night. First of all, the spirit was so strong throughout the program, and at one point they invited a young girl to sing "A child's prayer" with them, and her child's voice combined with theirs was just sooo SO powerful! Tears were definitely shed.
There is a less active man here in Arnhem who we visited with the elders a few weeks ago when they came to work with us, and he promised he would come. He is a super funny guy so it was really cool when he told us that he was really touched by the program. He even told us that he thought of his brother, and that he wanted us to visit him. One of the singing elders, Elder Conatti, said, "well, you've got two sisters in Arnhem who love to sing, so use that!" haha he totally threw us under the bus! just kidding, we're glad to do it, but it was just so cool! We're excited for that for sure.
Went to Germany again this week! haha we have members in our ward that live just over the border, and they invited us over for dinner. I was on exchanges with Zr Fredrickson (from Kaysville, she knew Alex!) They have 4 sons and it was super cool to meet them all and we had a great discussion about goals and doing good. They're a really sweet family. The wife took us to a grocery store really quickly afterwards because everything is cheaper in Germany, and we found these GIANT kinder surprise eggs! It was so cool! :)
We've got our mission-wide Sister's conference coming up on Saturday, and I can hardly contain how excited I am for it! It's going to be so good.
I've been studying a lot in the past weeks about using the scriptures for my presentation tomorrow, and one thing that I loved from PMG was the section about marking our scriptures. I had to laugh at the section that said something along the lines of "be careful about over-marking, because then the benefit is lost if you can't understand your markings since you've made too many notes., lines and colors" because my scriptures I got when I was 8 are just sooo overmarked! But I've really seen on my mission the power of the scriptures. They are so essential to what we learn and understand about the gospel. I was reminded of the time Zr Ramirez said "when we first met Heavenly Father, it was through the scriptures." If we want to get to know him better, then, we need to turn repeatedly back to the scriptures!
I love you guys so much and hope you know it!
Zr Watts