It's so great to be home! My second home that is. I said goodbye to Almere and all the wonderful people there on Wednesday and came back home, at least it felt like. It was kind of the same feeling as when I went into Leuven the first time in Belgium, crazy stuff.
I am loving it here in Brugge though. It is such a beautiful city. Apart from that there are some amazing members here that I have already met. Truly strong testimonies of the gospel and of the truthfulness and importance of the restoration. It is a small branch here, not very many members at all, maybe 20 that attended sacrament (20 that live here, probably 10 that were visiting), if that, but they are wonderful. A lot of the attendance each week is from visiting LDS tourists, who are always fun to meet. We have been stopped about once a day by tourists so far who end up being LDS and from somewhere in the states. That's been fun. For church though, with Elder Groesbeck being a greenie, the role of translation has fallen on me. I've done it once or twice before and I'm ok at it, but it looks like I'll be doing it a lot more in this branch. It'll be a great chance to expand my talents!
As far as the work goes, I've fallen into a good place. They had 2 solid investigators before I got here who are on date to be baptized in the next couple weeks. One is Sxxx, he is from Ghana and living here for now. The other is Kxxx, he is from Sri Lanka. Both are super cool and seem to have growing testimonies about the gospel and the peace that Christ can bring into their lives. We had to push Kxxx's date back this week though, with so many of the lessons still needing to be taught and just not enough time to get them in. But it would be awesome for this branch to see a couple baptisms. They haven't seen one in quite a while. So that will be good to both have some opportunity to teach and go out and find to fill out our teaching pool. It's been funny to see the character of all my areas. So far here in Brugge, nearly everyone we talk to is Catholic, but also seems to blame a lot of the problems of the world on religion and don't really know if they believe in God or not. (Everyone that isn't a tourist that is, we contact soooo many tourists here) But at least they have some knowledge of Christ, and that's definitely a plus.
We've had some fun experiences so far finding more people to teach. We were able to give a restoration lesson on the door to an older gentlemen who was very intrigued about the Book of Mormon. I also got a hug from a guy who we gave a Book of Mormon to the other day. We were walking down the street, about ready to go home for dinner and I felt like we should talk to this guy, so I asked him if we could give him a card. Then we had a conversation about religon in general and a little about the church. We ended up splitting ways and I just had such a strong feeling I needed to give him a Book of Mormon, so I called back to him and told him I wanted to give him a copy of a book that has brought me a lot of peace in this life. After a short testimony and explanation, I handed it over to him and he took it and said 'Serieus?' which is like him saying 'really?' Then he thanked us, gave us a hug, and promised us he would read it. Cool experience; hopefully something comes of it. If we follow the spirit, I know we'll have more experiences and chances to teach, testify and invite/lead others unto Christ.
Love you all!
Through the Grace of God, we can do all things!
-Elder Lott
Question of the Week: What is a favorite thing about your new companion?
Answer: Elder Groesbeck is great; our personalities really clique. He is still greeny, but if he keeps things going, he's going to be a great missionary - he already is! Both of us love sports, and he's willing to work and improve, so what more can you really ask for? ;) He knows when it's time to work and when it's time to be more light hearted, and he cares about the members and those we work with. Those are some of my favorite things about him so far. We're still getting to know each other, it's been like 5 days. Although we've had enough cool experiences to feel like it's longer.
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| Den Haag Zone in June 2015, last meeting with President and Sister Robinson Elder Lott is on back row, slightly right from center behind Sister in the coral top and white skirt. Picture from Robinson blog: robisonsbelgiumnetherlandsmission.blogspot.com |
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