3/11/12

Dear Family,

Hello! Thanks for the e-mails this week. It was great hearing from all of you once again. We had a good week and are excited for the following week. It'll be a busy one!  This preparation day will also be a busy one. I'm so far behind on letters to write. We have had so much going on the past couple of P-days that it's been difficult to write. Now I have some major catching up to do.

 

Things are going very well here in Apeldoorn. We had a wonderful week.  Lu Wen "Sissi" was baptized this past Sunday. She will be receiving the gift of the holy Ghost next Sunday. It was a very special experience. She asked me to baptize her and I was able to do it in Mandarin. Such a special experience for everyone there. She was super excited, the Spirit was present and very strong, just everything about it was great. She had a very good friend there to see the baptism and now she is interested in learning more. We have an appointment next week and she will also be back at church. Her friend is really cool. Her name is Juana and she is fluent in Spanish. Never thought I would meet a chinese student who was fluent in spanish.  Just kind of took me back at first.  The young adult center has been booming for the past couple of weeks now. We have had 15+ investigators/non-members attending every monday and friday for the past 3 weeks. 3 of them so far have committed to working towards baptism.  Before coming here, I never thought i would be so interested in Asian cultures.  I find them fascinating! Interesting where life directs you.  The members here are so wonderful. They are so willing to help us in our work. The student center president, Matthias Heinrichs, is such a cool guy. I love working with him and the other "JoVos". Jovo's is the nickname for young adults here.  As the weeks go by, we here more and more about Mitt Romney and about Big Love and about South Park's Book of Mormon show. Whether it's good publicity or bad publicity it's giving us a chance to explain and teach a lot of people. Media is powerful. 

Sorry that I haven't sent any pictures yet. Over the last 7 or 8 weeks, we have just been so busy that i maybe have 7 or 8 new photos. I'll try harder to work on that and also I'll find a card reader one of these days.  Apeldoorn reminds me a lot of Bloomington with canals and windmills. It's super pretty here.

Mom, I'm really happy here. I've never experienced so much happiness and sometimes so much frustration being out here. But i think that's what makes this such a great experience. I''ve learned so much and still have sooo much more to learn. I'm working my hardest; I only have 24 minutes left of this football game. I'll be fighting for inches until the end.

Hope you all have a great week! I can't think of anything in particular except for what i mentioned in my email 2 weeks ago. Thanks for all the support and all that you do!

Love,

Elder Schulte