Week 32 - Turnhout

Hoi Familie Riley! 

Let me begin with a miracle that happened on Thursday. Zuster Jones came to work with me in Turnhout for a few hours because both of our new missionary companions had to go to Brussels for legality (turns out they were there during the protest against the new government- 100,000 people.. pretty crazy and kinda scary), and we were looking up potentials from months ago. We met Atiele, a German 21-year-old business marketing student who also speaks perfect English (he studied at private English schools in Spain growing up) and Vlaams.. he'd been given a BoM but misplaced it, but was curious, so we taught him a doorstep lesson explaining the BoM and covering some points of the Restoration and prayed with him and set up another appt. A few days later we had a really cool Restoration lesson, he'd read Alma 32 and is really open and curious to believing in a God, and he said his first prayer. He's a good guy and says he doesn't drink/ smoke and has a lot of similar ideas as us. I'm really excited for our next lesson with him.

We also had a really cool miracle on the bus coming back from Leuven.. Zuster H was sitting in the row in front of me, and passed me a note asking if this was a good sentence to ask/ was the Dutch right to start a conversation with the man next to her etc., but then the man next to her got off, and the man next to me started laughing- he watched the whole thing. We ended up talking to the man next to me, Raphael, for almost 2 hours.. he's on his 7th week of no alcohol, he has 2 young kids, is very spiritually minded (he backpacked to Italy when he was 16 to have some time to himself to answer some deep questions) and has a lot of similar ideas about the PoS.

We had a good lesson with Greet and Emilie V, the sweet laurel in our ward, but I still get the feeling that Greet likes our company more than our message and commitments. We didn't set up another appt. with Herman, a Catholic Surinamer, because he straight up told us he would never ever get rebaptized/ meets with us to preach the Law of Moses. Abdel is still hilarious and smart but crazy.. he danced aerobics to Brit pop for us yesterday..

Isaac, a sweet Nigerian, came to church for the first time in 25 years because he said I was so persistent.. but assured me that if I was annoying he wouldn't have come. I really like him, his Belgian wife died when she was 40 from breast cancer and he has 4 really successful kids and he works making food for the elderly and his concerns with organized religion are very understandable.. we had a really cool lesson with him. Zuster H had her first real dinner appointment at sweet Familie Nwafor, who'd been fasting for missionary work that day and come on joint teach. Great week, I love you all! Know that I am having the time of my life and doing my best to make the most of every moment of the Lord's time, it's the best thing I could be doing and I love teaching the gospel as a full-time job.

Zuster Riley (: 

Antwerpen (Photo credit: Sister Heilner)