Elder Andrew

Elder Andrew

Monday, June 8, 2015

Eli Mail 6/8/15 (Deventer, Netherlands) Letter 42

Hello everyone! Another week has concluded here in Deventer as we roll into another action packed week. We had a pretty solid week, we got a lot of work done and had a number of very cool small miracles.
 
One of these miracles happened this past Tuesday. We had a late dinner that evening and when we left the apartment we only had about an hour to work, not including biking time. We did some look-ups and then started biking around the area for a bit. Upon seeing a young teenage looking kid I stopped my bike quickly and carefuly, as to not alarm the boy, and started the contact. We were all smiles with this 20 year old kid, and introduced ourselves as "2 volunteers out of America" because the teenagers here love and are totally perplexed seeing Americans here. As the conversation progressed, we discovered that he was not only religious, but participated in studies and other church activities. For whatever reason, I started explaining and expounding upon Christ's early church when he asked about us, and about the need for a Restoration. After a little bit of explanation, he looked up at the sky, then back down at us, deep in thought. I was a little nervous about the sudden silence and almost opened my mouth to begin babbling again but I just decided to wait for him. After another moment or so, he looked in my eyes and said, "Thank you". Whatever I said about the need of a restoration left a sounding and surprisingly strong resolve that we could see in his eyes. Earlier in the conversation, we attempted to get information out of him to try to share our message but he wasn't too enthusiastic about it. But after this moment he quickly pulled out a sheet of scratch paper and starting writting something down, and asked us if we could stay in contact with eachother. We will see what happens with this guy but it was cool to see the Spirit just make things "click" in his brain, I think that's one of the great gifts of the Spirit, enlightenment.
 
On a bit of the other side of things, we had a little unfortunate event happen this week, and yes, it involves bikes. For those of you who don't know, on one of my first days with Elder Tolman I had a very unfortunate accident. We were just doing our normal ride back home when all of the sudden I hear an loud "pop", I looked around me in an attempt to find the source of the shotgun blast when I noticed that it was my tire. I knew my bike was in bad repair, but I still continued on, just biking at a very slow pace, when the entire bike wheel gave out! I finally gave in because I knew repairing the bike would be nearly 100 Euros so the next day I went searching for a new bike, and found a pretty decently used one for a very resonable price. But as luck would have it, we rolled out of our apartment this morning and I discovered that I have another flat tire! It's a very unfortunate turn events, and I'm sad to admit that I'm currently on my 3rd bike now! It's not so bad afterall, but I just wanted to mention it because of how memorable the tire exploding sound was, it was awesome!
 
Things are going great here in Deventer, we didn't have a lesson with our baptismal date, Kenny, but hopefully we can make some ground with him this week. We are also doing a lot of street contacting, which I love. It's super funny and interesting seeing how people react to us on the streets. Elder Tolman is doing great too, his Chinese is coming along just dandy.
 
Love,
 
Elder Andrew

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