Skip to main content

Lobitjes

No email from Emily on March 2, but here’s the one from the week before with lots of pics:

Hey guys! here are some pictures. This week was great. We were really really bold....so by the end of the week, we had dropped half of our investigators. Br. Mateda isn't getting baptized anymore. We had a scary experience with that, but we are all good now. Suriname is whack sometimes I'll just tell ya that. We found 6 new investigators and a really cool less-active family that's been to the temple and makes really good Roti. A mom tried to sell me to her son for marriage (there's a better way to say that in English but I don't remember how to). Here's a couple cool experiences:
We were heading out to do what we call "talk to everyone you see until you get to your destination" which is a fun game we like to play when we have some time before a lesson. So we were biking when we saw a lady smoking outside. We stopped to talk to her and learned she was a visitor from the Netherlands here for vakantie. I felt strongly the whole time to explain the Book of Mormon. When we did, she goes, "Wow, I don't know if this is weird to say, but I feel something very special about this. I have goosebumps!" We gave her a book and she gave us her number to give to the missionaries in the Netherlands. It was a little miracle and made me happy to know in a couple months some discouraged missionaries in the Netherlands will get a very cool referral. I know God led us to her
We were late to our lesson with a new investigator and biking like the wind when we passed this lady wearing all blue and we both felt so strongly we needed to stop. We yelled back at her "WAIT CAN WE GIVE YOU A BOOK" a classic Suriname missionary line. She stopped and talked to us and we learned she'd lost 3 close people in her family lately (surinamers wear blue as the last phase of mourning when you lose a loved one) and was losing faith in God. We testified strongly about Jesus Christ and as we did, I just felt the Holy Ghost fill my heart. When we asked her if we could come over again, she goes, "YES! Nobody visits me anymore" We are going to go see her tonight, so I am so excited. 

The gospel is true. Lobitjes. 
Zr. Mergenthaler













Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Back To School Meanies

 Letter From the Nest August 15, 2025 https://open.substack.com/pub/lettersfromthenest/p/back-to-school?r=48qui&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web One August, more than twenty years ago, at an evening book club discussion, my “older” friends (now I look back and know those women were the age I am now), were discussing the woes and triumphs of back-to-school season. One woman was anticipating her youngest child’s senior year of high school. She said, “For more than two decades, our lives have revolved around the school district’s academic calendar. I don’t know how I will plan my life without knowing about school breaks or holidays.” I remember her bittersweet tone as she anticipated freedom from school schedule constraints but also mourned how those constraints guided her choices. What would she do? Other women joined the discussion, wondering if their kids would have good teachers, if they’d be able to balance volunteering in the classroom, how to streamline school supply pu...

My Legacy Stinks

 Letters from the Nest https://lettersfromthenest.substack.com/p/my-legacy-stinks Lately, I have been asking you, “What will you do to make Sunday special?” This is me encouraging you in your worship without giving you a prescribed list of things to do. One thing I do differently on Sundays is that I read a Sunday book that’s “different” than the fiction I read during the week. Usually, it’s a religious book, but sometimes it’s an inspiring biography or narrative nonfiction with an uplifting theme. My Sunday book for the past few months has been “Both Things Are True,” by Kate Holbrook. This collection of essays explores a range of topics, including faith, forgiveness, women’s roles, trials, history, and more. Each chapter contains a dichotomy that fuels the discussion. For example, the chapter on forgiveness explores both the concepts of forgetting and remembering. Last Sunday, I began reading the chapter entitled "The Weight of Legacy," in which she discusses the dichotomy ...

Lyme Disease??

Let me just preface this by saying that I am soooo grateful for good health insurance. I have been to the Dr. for the kids lately so often, that I am embarrassed that they recognize our family when we walk in the door. So, here's Ricky's story. A couple of weeks ago he was extremely sick. He had a fever for over a week, complained that he couldn't move his legs, and ended up with an awful looking rash all over his body. We went to the Dr. 2 times for this. The first time, she said, it was a virus and it should run its course. When Ricky was getting worse, instead of better, we took him back in to a quick clinic where the nurse diagnosed him with strep (even though the short test was negative). Well, after a priesthood blessing and antibiotics (which we discovered later that he didn't even need to take--and in fact they may have made him feel worse), he got better. Then, last week, I discovered a new, crazy rash on his legs which continued to grow, turn purple on the in...