Thursday 27 February 2014

Transfer Calls!

This past saturday we got the first transfer calls! Transfer calls happen every 6 weeks and they tell you if you are getting a new companion, staying in the same place or if you are moving to a different area in the mission.  Elder Brown, my trainer, and I are both staying here which is good because we are starting a few good things such as teaching lessons in Family Home Evenings. 
(This means that we also get fed on Mondays now since we didn't before :) ) We just started the sign up sheet for that, us going to FHE's, and we already have the next month filled out for that. We are getting fed a bunch!!
 
On Monday after emails, we had a district activity! We went to a pizza place and a random member shows up out of nowhere and paid for us! It was fun being able to hang out with the district members. We then went to Cold Stone Ice Cream and we got a super massive discount! It was a lot of fun.
 
Once this week I nearly crashed :( ! I was on my bike and I was busy thinking about something else. I was turning left and I looked behind me, seeing that there were cars behind me I started to cycle faster turning towards the left when all of a suden my bike changed direction by itself. I wondered why and I then saw a really fast car zoom past me and it would have hit me if my bike did not turn direction. It builds my testimony that I am out here for the right reasons and that I still have work to do.
 
We did some service on Saturday when the sun was strong. We went on the Iron Horse Trail and handed out water to people. A few people stopped and we were able to talk to them about the Gospel and also why we were giving out free water. One man stopped and offered us $10 and we told him that we don't accept donations, but it was nice to see.
 
We talked to a total of 71 people this week, which is our record as a companionship. I start most (about 85%) of the conversations and I find it fun talking to people. A lot of people here are Christian or Muslim, so we have had to come up with some good open ended questions to talk more. Our goal is to talk to 10 people each per day.
 
We decided to go to a Youth Standards night (Sunday evening) last night so that we could talk to less actives, but when we arrived at the stake center we both felt that we shouldn't be there and so we left to go back. Instead of being there, be talked to a few more people.
 Does anyone from Holland know Martijn Scherk ? He's on a mission in SLC East mission with my friend Emily. 
 
This past Sunday we also tried a few new things including sitting next to members so that we can gain more trust and build better relationships. It is important to build relationships with the members so that they can trust you with their referrals. So far we have had a lot of referrals from the youth. We welcome people to church and also gave out the sacrament meeting programmes last Sunday. One more thing that we tried out while in church was to see all the late comers and the new faces (those who sit in sacrament meeting and then disappear). I saw a few new faces at the back and went over to them as soon as I could. It was a man and his daughter. He was from Russia and he told us that he knows about his church, but his daughter does not and he wanted to introduce the church to her. They seem very nice and it seemed like they will be back next week :-)  
 
Well here comes another week! It is really starting to get hot over here! Though it is supposed to rain a lot starting Wed. Hope everyone is doing well.
 
I know that this is the true church, that Heavenly Father really does look out for us and that He loves each of us super much.
 
Elder Kloosterboer