Week 27: Alle Mannke This week was crazy!!

Hey family!!! So I am just so blessed to be out here. And you have a wonderful family like you! I miss you dearly and pray for you everyday. You guys are the craziest, coolest and funniest people I know. Thank you for being you. I am so going to miss sharing Christmas together but don't fret, I will be home next Christmas soo no bigs. haha!

This week was totally nuts and dont have time to tell you everything that went on.. it would just take forever.

First Off HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! I will be sending a letter to you this week! I hope you all do something great and that you just get to relax for once. I love you. You are the best mom in the world.

Let me just skip to one of the best parts of the week. Tuesday. WOOT. So I can't remember if I told you but this lady in our ward works for the Public Affairs in Belgium with the church and so she was invited to this women gathering thing to tell them about Mormons and how we celebrate Christmas. They invited 8 religion (including ours) to come present to about 80 women. So she decided it would be a great idea to bring us along. She didnt think it would be that big of deal to have us come because she though she would have a table and then the women would come to her..boy was it different. We walk in and its SUPER FANCY. There are 8 tables set up with about 10 chairs on each table and the people are dressed up all fancy. The women in charge comes up and is like..Who are these people? We dont have enough seats for them to be at the table...The lady from our ward was like.. OOOPPSS. So they figured something out where one of us would go around to the tables with her and the other would be sitting by the door with a display table. Very last minute the lady who is in charge gets a call from the Islamic person and they say that they cant make it. SO they were one presenter short. Of course we were there for the resuce and took over the other table. That night we ended up teaching the first lesson to 8 different tables with 8-10 people sitting at the table. SUPER COOL HUH? They were really interested also and LOVED US. So shocked that we would come out here for a year and a half just to spread our religion. They also asked soo many times why we were so happy. THey also couldnt get over how good our Dutch was. Anyways. Long story short, the LORD IS AWESOME. He totally makes things work out so that His will and word can reach every person. He inspires and influences people to help them out. Totally awesome. All of our BOMs were gone along with our Joy to the worlds and A lot of our pass along cards. Totally cool.

Eugeen is still on track for Baptism!! So excited for him. I think he really enjoyed church yesterday. Dirk is doing better. Still working with him. Love him to death though.

Thursday we had our Christmas Conference in Amsterdam.

Zuster Aldous and I

Friday night we had dinner with the Schiltz and it was great. Totally got us in the Christmas mood. We were waiting at the tram halte when we just started humming Silent Night and doing some really good harmonizing when a guy next to us said 'You have got the right season for that' We ended up just having a good convo with him. We were rushed to get on the tram so we didnt get to give him a passalong card or BOM but then we realized that he was on the tram with us. As we got off Zuster Aldous goes up to him and says 'since it is the christmas season, we would like to give you this gife' and hands him the BOM and we walk away. It was a really cool experience..I know it doesnt seem like it over email but it was. I love the Chritmas season. Such a great time to serve others.

Sister Aldous and I Decorating Schlitz's Christmas Tree

I hope that we can all remember the reason behind Christmas and turn outwards and serve others. I was sitting in sacrament meeting during sacrament..And I was thinking about Christ up on the cross..and the pain that he had to have felt was enourmous. I could almost feel it as I was sitting there. He loves us soooo much. It is amazing that he would do all of those things for us just so we can return to live with our Heavenly Father again. I am truely grateful for the Atonement in my life and that I can become better everyday through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

LOVE YOU GUYS SOOO MUCH!!! Cant wait to skype with you at 6 pm (my time) on Christmas!! LOVE YOUUUUUUU
MISSS YOU

Zuster Kohlert