March 22, 2010
Dear Family and Friends
I apologize in advance for the craziness that may happen with this email. The owner of this internet cafe is watching the news online and he is absolutely blaring the volume. It sounds like some big stuff is going on back home with the health care business. I am just glad that I am not there right now. I think I would be a little to contentious! It feels so good to be able to not have to worry about silly things like this. For the first time in my life I don't have to worry about it and I love it :) I am not trying to listen but I may not be clear in my writing because it's so loud and it's a little hard to concentrate
I hope that everything is going well back home! Has baseball season started up yet or is there still snow on the ground? Is it warming up or is it still cold and windy? It's cool down here because all of the kids have old bikes and kites. Those seem to be their hobbies. In the afternoon when we are tracting it's cool to look up into the Caribbean sky and see like 4 or 5 different kites way way up in the air! It's cool.
Anyways, as for the week . . . Elder Jacobson and I had a great week. It was fun to work in a trio for a little while but it was only for a few days because Elder Radmall's new companion came this Friday. So it was just a few days. As for the work we had some really cool experiences.
The biggest news from this week is from the Burnabella family. The very first day that I was here we talked about faith and about how we need to do all we can and the Lord would provide the way. They have really taken that principle and have applied it to their lives. For weeks they have been trying to work out someway to get married here in curacao. But because of the situation with passports and what not, it's just not going to be possible.
So what they decided to do this week is that they would fly the whole family down to Venezuela to get married. This is a huge leap of faith for them because a trip like that is not a cheap one. They are trusting so much in the Lord not only for this situation but also with the situation that they will have for the rest of their lives. Maedeline said that the only problem that they could see would be housing down there because hotels would be just too expensive. She said she was praying and something told her that the way would be through the church. We told her to get on lds.org and find out who the bishop is in Venezuela so that they could maybe stay with some members while they are down there! It was such a testimony builder to me because I have no doubt in my mind those members in Venezuela will welcome them and help them. We are all in one big church family even in two completely random countries.
Yesterday after church we had a lesson to reschedule their baptism and Clifton told us a great story. He said that he had filled out the request form for to get the two weeks off in April for the wedding. He said that his boss is a really strict Dutch guy and he wasn't sure how he was going to handle it. Clifton said that if his boss wouldn't give him the time off he was going to quit because getting married and being baptized was just too important and not doing it was not an option. He said he went in with the request and the boss ripped up the form and said "forget about two weeks, you have two months to do whatever you need to do! Just be back in two months to work for me again." We were completely shocked to see the way that God has just opened door after door for this family to allow them to be able to be baptized. I have no doubt in my mind that this covenant is the exact thing that our Heavenly Father wants for this family and we are so excited to see the future that awaits this awesome family.
We found a great new family this week. They just rock! We were toking doors one night at about 8 o'clock. We don't normally knock doors that late because, at least here in the Caribbean, most of the people are out by that time. And if they aren't out, they sure don't want to talk to some missionaries. But this family invited us right in. The mom and dad absolutely loved the gospel message we shared. It was cool! At first the dad wasn't really interested but as we talked more and more about God and the gospel, and about the pattern of prophets, he became more interested. When we asked him what he understood about prophets he taught it back to us better than I have ever been able to teach it. We were both shocked and we both took what we learned and applied it to our own teaching. It's cool how that works! Anyways, when we taught them about the apostasy they were all on edge. We left them with a cliffhanger and they want so bad to know about the restoration. We are really excited to go back and share the rest of our message with them this week.
We ate lunch this week with some members here in Punda. Punda is the big part of the city. We were in this restaurant that is like a huge cafeteria. The restaurant area is just a bunch of picnic tables all together. There are hundreds of people and there we were the missionaries and the members in this area of the restaurant. There was another another lady sitting in the area near us. I said "Hi" to the lady and she just glared at me. But after a while we started talking to her and she warmed right up. The members were so awesome with her and she fell in love with the two elderly sisters that had taken us to lunch. She told them that she wanted to come to church with them and that she was so thankful that she found two new friends. We ended up being able to teach her a first lesson and she gave us her address and told us to come by. I thought it was cool how much an effect these two sisters had on the lady. She sure wasn't willing to listen to the guys in the ties but all she really needed was the warmth of a friend and it completely changed her heart. It was an awesome experience!
Well I better get going. My time is running short on the computer today. I hope you all know how much I love you and how much your love and support means to me! Thank you for all of the letters and the love that you share. You will never know how much that means!
I hope you have a great week! I am glad BYU finally won one game in the tournament . . . finally! That was way cool! hahah Hoorah! Have fun enjoying the rest of the tournament for me!
Have a good week.
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