Week 34: FASTING WORKS!

February 3, 2014

Geliefde Familie: 

Heerlen Castle

This week has been pretty good. I started off by getting boots. They are pretty cute and I thought they were 60 Euro but they ended up being only 45! Woo! I love after Christmas sales that are STILL going on. 

Note to future self: there are a lot of things in life that don't need to be worn on your sleeve. 

Mom, do you know Allison and James Knob? They live in Dallas and used to live in Slovakia and they know Andrea! Andrea is the wonderful woman that comes on joint teaches with us all the time, and basically our best friend. We love Andrea. She's from Slovakia and she speaks like 6 languages which is really handy and she used to be a missionary here. 

So this week we did a "blitz" in Den Bosch, which means that a lot of missionaries did a lot of work in one city. But we invited the members to do it with us. Since we had Dutch people there, we couldn't call it a “blitz" because of the negative connotation linked to it from the war. Kinda funny. All week we were like, "so when does the blitz--I mean service project--start again?" Weird that it's still such a big thing. I mean, it makes sense, but wow.

So fast Sunday happened. I was really fasting for us to be able to find the pure in heart. The people that want to change. We are teaching a lot of people that are wonderful but are not quite ready to make a change in their life. I haven't seen a baptism in a while, and it's hard when it doesn't look like you're fulfilling your purpose to bring others unto Christ. So I was fasting really hard. And then at church, the Wheatleys (the guy who called dad) invited us to come to dinner either that night or Tuesday. Even though we didn't have any set appointments for that night, I had a feeling to tell her Tuesday night. So we went around all day yesterday looking up inactive people in Heerlen with the Elders. We were four missionaries on two bikes. I was the one biking and there are SO MANY HILLS in Heerlen. I don't think the Elders underestimate my strength anymore though. Why does everyone do that?! I AM STRONG PEOPLE. Anyway. Had some cool lessons with the Elders. Then we went home to Maastricht. We had to contact a referral that we got from headquarters (that didn't call us back), so we went to this one area, and on the way there, I thought, "hey, we should go knock these doors when we are done." so we started knocking and one lady let us in. It was incredible. Her name is Deanna (shout out) and she is SO PREPARED. I wish I had more time to tell you about it, but basically, she is REALLY looking to change her life. I asked her what she knew about the Mormons and she said "they're really happy and can have more than one wife" so we quickly dispelled the polygamy beliefs and asked her if she was happy, to which she promptly said no. I asked her if she believed in coincidences and she told me that she knew we were put in her path for a reason. We asked her to be baptized by someone holding the Priesthood and she said "if I'm going to do it, I better do it right." I was so in shock that I asked her to repeat it, so she said it in English too haha. IM SO HAPPY. She NEEDS this. The gospel is her answer. More on it next week--we have a lesson on Friday with her.

I love you. I know this gospel is real and it can help us. 

Have a good week.

IK HOU VAN JULLIE!

Zr Heilner

PS I sent a letter today

 

Heerlen Castle