Week 41: Burned

HEY FAMILY(: Oh how I love you guys. You are amazing! Thanks for all of the emails that just brighten up my day!

Everything is going really well here! :) The reason that my email is title "burned"is because I think I burned my hands 4 times this week on different things..haha I just thought is was funny. my hands are going to have scars everywhere by the time I get back ;0 ha (They really aren't that bad so don't worry)

This week was full of service projects and it was SO much fun! On Tuesday we got a call from a member asking us to go help with another member move. So that is exactly what we did the whole day. They had to be out of the house by the next morning :( and we got there around 2pm and they didn't have anything started. So we got down to work and spent the day packing and moving and loading. Ah it was crazy. haha (Read handwritten letter for more details;)) But it was cool to be able to help out this family. They didn't even know where they were going to sleep the next day.

Wednesday was the funeral of Sister Van Vliet. It was a great service. Totally perfect for her and the way she lived her life. There was some craziness that happened with Bizu during it so I took her out and took care of her for almost the whole thing. It is a really good story but probably not good for putting it online. Which is fine. I'll write more about it. We then helped with the food and the cleaning up! By that time it was 3:45pm so we ran to our lesson with Cassandra which went pretty well. We asked her to be baptized but she said she isn't ready to think about baptism. So pray for her!! 

We were totally blessed with 2 new investigators this week! Pretty fun stories actually! One of them was that lady (Margarita) who asked us to come to a BBQ the first time we talked to her on the street. She doesn't speak the best Dutch so it was hard to communicate. Luckily Chaya was there so she could understand more..haha Her son and her asked us how old we were and when we told them they were all surprised! They sayed we were "big". UH WHAT? Am I really that fat? I know I gained weight but I can still fit into all of my clothes perfectly. Whatever. haha It was pretty funny. We will hopefully be meeting with her this week. And the second new investigator is Sonja! We were giving a lesson to Christiana outside on some benches and Sonja came up and asked if she could join us. So we ended up teaching her the last little bit of our lesson! She goes to two other churches now but she said she will come to our next lesson! So we exchanged information! WHAT??? THE LORD JUST PUTS PEOPLE IN OUR LESSONS? How can that be?? He is wonderful and loving and amazing.

Heidi, Iris, and Chaya

Saturday was so awesome! We did a little bliz with the elders in this one area and we ended up getting 3 potentials! And also a service project:) haha This cute lady from Spain was doing her yard work and we asked her if we could help and she said that we could come back next week. She also said we should help with her neighbors because he is widowed and old. So We are excited for that! (: We then had dinner with Zr. Walle! She is amazing...AS USUAL. Last week we had asked her to pray about sharing the gospel with someone and guess what? Someone came to her mind and now she is planning a way to get her introduced to us! WOOOHOOO.

Sister Walle said something profound to us (which is also very normal for her) she said: "People always worry about their jobs. Getting to meetings on time and making sure that projects are done but they never worry about giving their children time or making time with for their spouse. Before I joined the church, I was like this. Only focused on work, but after joining the church I realized how important familys are. No longer do I put my children aside to focus on work. I will now put my work aside to focus on them."  - The Prophet is such a good example of this. I am reading last years March or so ensign and there is a Seventy who talked about "Follow the Prophet" Read it! It is soo good. 

We also talked a lot about the "desire to forgive". I don't have time to write more but I will tell you when I get home! It's sooo important that we FORGIVE OTHERS. D&C 64:9-11

Let us focus on the important things in life: FAMILY, FRIENDS AND THE LORD. It will make us soo much better people. I know that I also need to work on that too! 

I love you guys sooo much! If there is anything that I learned on my mission it's that the Lord loves us and that the family is SO IMPORTANT to eternal happiness! I am so blessed to have an amazing family like you. :) Thank you for all that you do! I hope that I can raise children strong in the gospel just like you did, mom and dad! 

I love you sooo much! :) BE SAFE! 

Love, Zuster Colie Kohlert