HELLO ALL!
I'm glad to hear you had such a good time partying without me. Also that sounds like a lot of stress. But yay for love and eternal marriage! Haha. Speaking of which, I wrote a song about that this week as I was meandering down a big long empty road. I'll have to sing it for you sometime, you'll be really impressed. Ps, tell Brianne I'm SO EXCITED FOR HER! And that I'm super excited to meet her man, I'm sure he's awesome. Even though he didn't even wait for my approval before marrying her. BIG mistake, buddy. JK, forgiven. Mostly. I wish I could be there.
So, as mention above, this was a week of crazy miracles!! I will just try to share a few. So, remember how a couple weeks ago Sister Judd and I had a companionship fast that prepared people would be led to us? Well... fasting works! Haha, you knew that already though. So this week we were walking down the road, looking for a street, and we walked past these two guys in uniform. After we walked past they called after us, wanting to know what church we worked for, and we started talking and ended up giving them the whole first lesson right there on the sidewalk and they were so excited. We talked about apostasy and Albert was like, OH! That makes so much sense now! (THANK YOU for NOTICING, of course it does. Because everything God does makes sense eventually.) Anyway, turns out they both have cute little families of four just waiting to be taught more about how to be together forever, and we will be seeing them both tomorrow! Yay! Also I'm just super stoked that the husbands are already excited because convincing husbands is always the hardest part.
Speaking of husbands, I think in my other email I talked about the desires of my heart and faith that the Lord can help us accomplish them. So one of the desires of my heart is that Mireille and her husband will both accept the gospel and be baptized. Mireille is the sweetest, funniest, lady and is my little African momma--she makes sure we wear sunscreen and gives us recipes and gave me the sweater off her back the other day when she decided I looked cold. But then there's her husband, who is Belge, and who slammed the doors in our faces the first time we came to the door and I've been scared of him ever since. Well, nothing's too hard for the Lord, even the heart of an atheist Belge man. We went to see her last week and he was home sick, so he was in the room when we gave the lesson. And she said the other day he was looking at the TV schedule and noticed there was a report on the Mormons and suggested they watch it together, and they both really liked it and were impressed with everything the pioneers went through for their faith. (Also we've had a couple people mention this report to us and not a peep about polygamy so far, yay!) And apparently the report also mentioned tithing and they talked about it and he said when she joins the church if she wants to pay tithing she can go right ahead, he just wanted to know what it was for. I just had a grin cemented on my face from that lesson all day long. That man is going down. Or up. However you want to look at it :)
Two more cool stories. So we had a baptism Friday night, three people got baptized and it was wonderful. Tears were shed, the spirit was felt, songs were sung, souls were saved. But on the way to the baptism I met Ambrose, who sat down next to me and immediately asked me about the Book of Mormon and what church I was representing. He was also I think the first person I've ever met who seemed to realize the importance of the fact that our church is the Church of Jesus Christ. Most people glaze over the name and go, so what are you? Catholic? Protestant? Nope, just the only true and living church on the face of the earth, thanks for asking.
Anyway, he was super cool. Also he thought I was Belge, so flattery points for him. And then we invited him to the baptism, and then HE CAME. And he loved it. And the members were super welcoming and we talked afterwards for a long time, he's super funny and said he was going to stay up all night reading the Book of Mormon! He was so excited on the way from the baptisms, he kept flipping pages and reading a couple lines at a time, like he couldn't get enough and just wanted to inhale the whole book.
Also I called Dominique, our future bishop, to invite him to the baptism and he seemed a little confused. He said, "no, not tomorrow night, that's too soon. I think I should probably get baptized in July. You'll still be here in July, right?" He set his own baptismal date! Haha. That works too. Also we had a lesson with him last night that was AMAZING. He's a genius. He loves to see how the Bible and the Book of Mormon work together, and it's amazing to see how the mysteries of the kingdom really are unfolded to those who search. He'd had a question at the previous lesson about infant baptism, he was confused about it being bad, since so many churches do it. He thought the Bible and the Book of Mormon were at odds on the subject. We'd tried to explain about the atonement redeeming us from the fall but that just didn't work. So we challenged him to find where in the Bible it said it was ok to baptize little children.
He came to the lesson last night and said we were right, even in the Bible you could see that it is definitely not ok to baptize infants. But you want to know the example he used to figure it out? He talked about in the temple in the Bible they kept the ark of the covenant behind a veil, and the place where it was was so holy that only the high priest could enter and even then only after he'd sacrificed a lamb and been forgiven of his sins, because no one else was clean. But at the moment of Christ's death on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn in two, so anyone could go into the place of the ark of the covenant, because in dying the Lord had redeemed men from the fall and they were no longer automatically sinners. So we were right, the Lord redeemed men from the fall and little children are alive in Christ.
He was explaining all of this to me and I was just sitting there going, I don't think that ever even occured to me....
So yeah. You learn new things every day. Are these stories boring for you guys? They make me giddy, but that's cuz I know these people and I was there. I feel like for you they probably aren't as exciting. Sorry! I just don't have anything more exciting than my amis to talk about. But it was a super exciting week, I'm pretty sure every journal entry this week starts with "Today was the BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!" Oh that reminds me, last story. So we set a goal a little while ago to give away a box of copies of the Book of Mormon every week. Yesterday we left the apartment after lunch with just a few left to give away to reach our goal, and we prayed specifically that the Lord would help us do it. We walked out of our apartment building and there was a man just standing there, watching us like he was waiting for us. We walked up and started talking, he took a Book of Mormon, and set an appointment. He's our next door neighbor, and lives with five other people who he also said would be interested. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Prepared people are just coming down like rain here in Brussels!
Speaking of rain...weather in Brussels is nuts, I love it. The other day I think I got rained on about 50 times, for about 2 minutes at a time. And it's always cloudy and depressing-looking! My favorite! Except today it actually looks and feels like summer for the first time, which is wierd. I forgot that it was summer. And it's almost the 4th of July! We're going to BBQ with an American family in our ward so it'll almost be like being at home :)
Alright well, that's my week. Hope you guys have a good one, and enjoy recovering from all that partying :)
LOVE you all to bits and pieces!!!
Love,
Your favorite sister missionary
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