What a week. It was the longest week and the shortest week ever. We stayed extremely busy, so it was a success in my book! First things first, We just received the Halloween package a few days ago from you. Thanks so much! My companion was pumped that you threw in a second one for him! Next, I did receive Grandma's packages. They were awesome and I'm so happy that she sent them! I have also received some awesome letters from her.
I love it here in Belgium. Absolutely love it! Gent is such a cool city. There is a lot of cool history behind it and there are cobblestone streets everywhere. At night, it reminds me of Harry Potter with the street lights, cobblestones, the castle and old buildings. Just a neat experience. We also have Brugge in our area. We technically serve in Gent and Brugge. Brugge is considered the Venice of Belgium. If you get a chance, look up Brugge online. Such a pretty place. Antwerpen is where the zone leaders live. It's about 40 minutes on the train to Antwerpen. Halloween is a huge holiday here and the Day of the Dead celebration is also huge. Belgium is still very Catholic so the Catholic holidays are huge. We had a good conversation with a Catholic priest about that yesterday haha! The work here is picking up. We are very excited at how well everything has gone. The weather has been great. People have been very responsive. Our investigators are progressing and we are working our tails off. Werner Lefever has basically been teaching himself. He has a baptismal date for December 3rd. We have had a few appointments with him and every time we return he always has pages of notes over what we assigned him to read in the Book of Mormon. He says he knows it's true and is super excited about his baptism. We had a big miracle this past week that I'm super excited to tell you about. The Geens family! So let me just start off by saying that on Friday night, President Brubaker was joining us for our nightly planning session. During our nightly planning session we talk about our day, what we could've done better and then go over what we are doing the next day, make goals, plan for investigators, etc... Friday the beginning of the day started off super slow and we were going to the Halloween party at the church that evening. A couple appointments fell through and not a whole lot of people were particularly interested in talking about religion with us. It came to the point where we were ready to go to the party and it was looking like not many of our investigators were planning on coming. I was concerned about if we were even supposed to stay at the party or if we should go out and work more. We decided that it was better to stay. The party started off very slow but things picked up. Later on this family walks in. They are friends of a family in the ward. We started talking to the dad and he turned and asked us, "Ok Elders, what do I need to do to join the church? My wife and I have been investigating on our own for the past year and we know it's true and are ready to join." This just about blew me off my feet. David and Isabelle Geens now have a baptismal date of 19th November. They have their sights set past baptism and want to go to the temple to be sealed to their two children. We are super excited for them.
This last Sunday was a blast. I played the piano in Sacrament meeting and did well enough haha! Grandma Linda would have been proud. And my companion wasn't feeling well so I had to wing a 10 minute talk in Dutch during the meeting. It went well and hopefully the ward is beginning to trust me! I love this branch. I'm so excited to be here in Gent. I will try to send pictures soon.
Things for Christmas... please no sweets. I've decided to follow the word of wisdom better. I do however desperately need 180's ear covers, long sleeve white shirts, and G2 pens. Not the ink but the pens, Black and Blue. My glasses would be nice as well haha! Please send them! I'm going to try and get a package off for you today. I'm not exactly sure what to put in it so I'll do my best! I was thinking about you guys a lot yesterday. We have such an awesome family. I'm a little biased of course but Í'm so happy to be a part of this family. I love you guys and I pray for you everyday. Talk to you next week!
Love,
Elder Schulte
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