Goedemiddag! Een andere wek, een stap dichter tot Christus. Wow. I learned a buttload this week. It was probably one of the hardest weeks of the mission thus far, but God definitely knew I needed some fire to help me grow! Some stuff that happened....
--Ronny took his baptismal interview and PASSED. He's getting baptized next week as long as we can get him safely to the beach in his current health state, so that's awesome!
--I got lost on the way to an appointment...and here's the story. We invited this AWESOME member to come with us to a fairly new investigator. I was pretty confident when we left the house that I could find his house, but when it came time to get there from our last appointment I got more and more unsure. And I forgot the map. I was praying and praying that Heavenly Father would help us get there, but we just kept biking and biking...and biking...finally we were already 10 minutes late so I called the member, hoping she was late too so we would have time to find his house. She was already there. She offered to meet us somewhere and lead us to his house, so we agreed to meet at the field. The only problem was we went to the wrong field. We waited a long time and finally called her. She explained where she was at. At this point, I just wanted to cry. We biked around for another half an hour trying to find her before calling her and telling her to just go home. Now it was dark, but we were not going to give up. Heavenly Father had led us to the middle of Bonaire-nowhere for a reason! So we started klopping houses. Nobody came out until the end of a street, where an entire Peruvian family was waiting. Without us saying more than our names, they invited us in, gave us juice, and asked us what we had to share. Hermana Almonte explained the restoration in beautiful spanish. She was glowing! It was such a cool experience. Heavenly Father showed us he uses really imperfect missionaries with navigation issues to do his work :)
--We had a lesson with Omar on Father's day. In his prayer, he goes, "bless all the fathers out there" but he said it like a DJ calling out at a party. It was so funny. I love that guy!
--Met a Dominican guy who REALLY wanted a wife. I made the mistake of telling him he could find one at the church....he thought I was talking about myself and promptly proposed. I told him I was married, but I don't think it was convincing because he goes, "mentirosa! (lier!)" so Hermana A, being the homie that she is, patches my mistake by saying I had bad spanish and meant boyfriends. He looked pretty sad, so we gave him a pamphlet. It was hilarious.
Thank you so much for all your emails and love! It makes my Mondays. I hope you all have a great week. Remember how much Heavenly Father is aware of things. He loves you and so do I! His grand purpose is to bring us lasting and true happiness, for the which sometimes we have to experience sorrow. But we never have to experience anything alone! Prayer has become a very sacred thing to me. I know it is a literal conversation with God. He listens. He answers. I know it!
Love,
Zuster Mergenthaler
Pic 1: Once an Iowa girl, always an Iowa girl!
Pic 2: Adorable girls from Curacao that want to marry my little brother (ricky, watch out! ahaha)
Pic 3: This was on the plane back to Bonaire, but I was right up with the pilots and it was so cool.
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