Monday 27 February 2012

My dome feels so tiny right now.

So.  Yep.
Another week gone by.  We've had a big change in our mission too.  President Brubaker announced we're going to be following a new form of finding.  Before, with time left over between appointments, we'd have a "consecrated hour", that is, an hour dedicated purely to finding.  Now, we're instructed to select a name (of members, less-active members, former investigators or even current investigators) for every hour then search up that person.  The idea is that we share a lesson with that person, get in contact or whatever, but also try contacting the immediate area around said person's hour.  For example, if the person is not home, you knock two doors to either side of their house.  It makes talking to those people a bit easier, because you can just ask them if they know the neighbour you were there to contact.  Make sense?  And if that fails, you just proselyte in the immediate area.  So.  Pick names, visit names, contact people in the area.  Hmm.  It's a bit too earlier to say right now, but it seems like a great idea.
A crazy thing happened yesterday!  We were at the train station to catch...a train--psh, what else--and some guy looked over at me...  "Hey!  Hey, you!"
Uh...  What?  Do I know you?
"You're a pastor, right?"
"Kind of.  We're missionaries for our church."
"Perfect!"
Guy just comes out of nowhere, super stoked to talk with us.  He even said at one point "So, you share a message about Jesus Christ, right?"  Certainly do!  Just...flew out of nowhere, gave us his cell number and kinda flew back off.  Said he lives in Amstelveen or something, which is still technically in our area.  His mom lives in Leiden as well.  But wham.  That was pretty strange.  First time anybody has ever contacted us.  We'll see how it turns out though.  Guy seemed a bit off.
Learning more about Elder Mortenson.  Strange coinciiasndifence...  His first name is Brett.  Whoa.  I've decided that he's a lot like Brett too.  Except he doesn't rap.
OH YEAH.  We've got a car now too.  BOOYAH.  Elder Mortenson doesn't enjoy biking as much as Elder Frahm did, so he decided to work something out with the Office Elders.  Since they don't use the car during the day, we get it until 5:30 now.  It makes getting around a lot more convenient--especially if we have business out in Wassenaar.  We get the car every Wednesday and Saturday night too, which works out great because we almost always have a dinner appointment Saturday night.  Now we don't have to catch a train or take a bus to all those crazy-far away places.
Still, I was very fond of biking...
It did work out--having the car--though.  My bike got another flat.  Dang it.  I'm proud to say though, I fixed it.  All by my lonesome.  Be proud.
As far as our investigators go, we're making good progress.  Khalid is doing swell--the things that kept him back from being baptised are a thing of the past now.  I'm confident he'll make the goal date of March 10 that we set for him.  I'm really excited for him.  He's got such strong faith.
Also, we set days to meet with Nana, who lives about half an hour away in Nieuw Vennep.  We were able to set a time during the day, so now that we have the car, it works out perfectly.  Nana also has huge faith.  He has some issues with re-baptism, but I'm praying that he'll find his answer.  Our biggest push right now, I think, is to get him to read the book of Mormon.  President Brubaker really stressed that at Zone training.  That getting investigators to read the Book of Mormon is the best thing we can do to strengthen and build their testimony.
We also met Steven again.  He had a kidney removed some while back, so he wasn't up to meeting with us, but he's doing better now.  He too was a difficult one to get in contact with, but we manage to set days that we'll come over with him, so things should be smoother from here on out.
Hmm.  I don't really have much to report this week.  Nothing terribly exciting happened I guess.  I got my haircut--Elder Klippel, the new office Elder, did it for me.  It's really short.  My dome feels so tiny right now.
We went to Amsterdam again.  Elder Mortenson wanted to.  I'm a fan of little old Leiden, I'll just say that much.  Amsterdam is huge.  You know how I feel about big cities.
I really love it here in the Wassenaar branch, but I'm pretty sure it's doing essentially nothing for my Dutch.  I realized the other day that just going to a church meeting--3 hours of straight Dutch speaking--is probably a huge benefit as far as understanding goes.  Most of the time, I catch words here and there.  Most of the time, I know the gist of what they're saying.  Still...  Oh well, it'll come eventually.  I'm blessed to be in such an awesome place.  Every member in our branch is just so awesome.
I played Soccer on Saturday.  I...didn't do all too bad actually.  Surprise surprise.  After not playing for what, over 10 years?  It was lots of fun too.  Not nearly as fun as volleyball, psh.  But a good work out nevertheless.
And thanks for all your letters too!  It's awesome to hear snippets of what's going on back home.  Good to know I'm still remembered!  Let's keep it that way.  Uh, I mean...
Love you guys a billion!  Keep writing.
Tot volgende keer,
Elder Burgess

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