Maastricht'in it up:)

Dearest Readers,  I have the liberty of informing you that on Wednesday I toured the entire of Nederland; that's right, I woke up in Assen and spent approximately 5 hours on the train in total and ended up in Maastricht. Shows how big the Netherlands actually is *cough not very *cough*.

Anyway, I had a lovely/insane last day in Assen, saying goodbye to the good ship lollipop and all the wonderful people on it:)  I will forever be grateful for the things that I learned in Assen and more importantly, the special people who I met there.  Assen power:)

Sister Manning is my new companion - super funny because she was Sister Jensen's companion just 6 weeks ago!  I had heard a lot of great things about her and they are all true:) She's great and awesome and we're both excited to get down to business.  

So, whilst on the train to Maastricht, Sister Manning (my nieuwe collega) and I met this Syrian refugee man who loves to speak in statistics. (He is always saying, "it's about 30%, believe me...many people do this about 45%, believe me, lol).  He is most definitely Muslim and I'm pretty sure he wants us to be too...speaking of statistics, he told us that if we would read the Koran, we would be Muslim, 100%.  

And we were thinking, "If you read THIS book *slowly inching The Book of Mormon towards him* you will become Mormon, 100%".  We didn't really say it it, but we met up with him again just to see if he had any questions about what he read in the BOM, and he most certainly did.  He also came to the conclusion that the BOM isn't true because Laman and Lemuel still don't believe, even after seeing an angel...way to go Laman and Lemuel...

Beautiful Maastricht

Or Zuster Dobler and Zuster Manning :)

Things are definitely different here - Maastricht is a student city (there are several universities here and so there are people from all over the world studying here - you will hear every sort of language when you walk down the street).

Bike riding so far is going good-Here in Limburg, they have hills...Drenthe is as flat as you can get, so my legs are working hard getting used to biking up hills and what not:)

Anyway, we also went to an amazing Indonesian birthday party for a member in our ward (that's right - a ward) and ate delicious food and talked to approximately 5,000 people there.  We're in the Heerlen Military Ward and so there are mostly young American military families here...culture shock. It's crazy speaking English to people-several investigators are also in English and that is so weird.  I can barely pray in English anymore - gah!

Saturday we had Stake Conference in Antwerp, Belgium and our Bishop - who's from Orem...drove us with some members.  After a wonderful Conference and a mini-missionary reunion with most of the people in my MTC group (we're all down south apparently), we took a train to Turnhout (got a waffle whilst waiting, 'tuurlijk (naturally), where we spent the night.

Beloved Belgium Waffels!

Antwerp

Sunday we did a little street contacting in Belgium and then the next session of conference was in Brussels...the French part of Belgium (and not even our part of the mission boundaries, I might add), so that was quite an adventure getting there.

Brussels

Had a few reminiscing moments of bowl haircuts, corduroy Winnie-the-Pooh overalls and no front teeth and came to the conclusion that the early 2000's was a hard transition...Dark ages happened even in the 21st century, people.

Anyway, I read an amazing talk by Elder Holland on the train this week, "An High Priest of Good Things to Come".  What an amazing reminder that despite setbacks and feelings of inadequacy and being passed by, that blessings do come, that they are all around us and that though it may be dark, there is always a constant, powerful little light burning in the distance that is Jesus Christ. He lights the darkest of ways and allows us to see enough, but still gives us that opportunity to take those steps of faith in the dark.

"Where seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us; Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."  Hebrews 12:12

Jesus Christ is not only the author of our faith, but the finisher; he makes everything possible and lovingly endured the cross and the persecutions that came in His mortal ministry because He knew He was doing it for us.  He loves us and wants nothing more than for us to come unto Him. 

Be kind to others and be HAPPY:) That is His greatest joy.

It makes me think of "It's a Wonderful Life", where George Bailey asks Mary, "You want the moon?  I'll give you the moon. I'll throw a rope up there and lasso it down for you".

Jesus Christ wants to and will give us everything, if we let Him.  I love you all.  Have a sunshine-y week:)  Fun quote for funnsies: "The roof is not my son, but I will raise it"
Liefs, Zuster Dobler