Amsterdam is een beetje gek!

From e-mail dated 13 July, 2009.

Hoi hoi!
I'm glad to hear that you all survived Havasupai. It sounds like things are definitely changed there-- hmmm-- Hopefully I'll get to go another time in the future.
Oh, before I forget (I've been meaning to ask this question for a month or something)--what day of the week was I born? In Ghana everyone is named for the day of the week they are born, and since we teach so many Ghanaians in Amsterdam, I'd like to know my Ghanaian name :)
So, last week on P-day we went to a pirate ship with the Elders from Almere and Lelystad. It was fun. It was basically a museum, but with 19-21 year old boys, things are always a good time. Sadly, my batteries died-- so I didn't get a lot of pictures of the good times, but Zr. Miller got some and the Elders all did, so I'll have some good pictures in a couple of weeks from Zr. Miller and then the rest I'll get to see in a year or more...
Tuesday we got to meet the new mission president and his wife--President and Sister Brubaker. They are really great. I'm excited to get to work with them. I'm not sure what kind of changes will be coming-- but it will be interesting to see how things are different. I'm not sure if the Pankratz's are here yet--we don't meet with the whole mission basically ever, so they probably are and I just haven't been in a meeting with them yet...
Anyway-- what else has happened this week in Amsterdam? There are just so many people here, it's pretty crazy. We went to the Markt in the Bijlmer a couple of weeks ago on p-day(a street market) and met a guy from India who basically dropped all of his customers to talk to us because he saw the name Jezus Christus on our name tags. We ran into him again and he invited us to come over for dinner this week and wants to give us free clothing from India. I'm not gonna lie, ever since coming to the Netherlands I've wanted clothing from India and an African dress-- so I'm pretty stoked about it :)
Also on Tuesday we went to visit Familie Todorovic (the family from Yugoslavia) and Familie Zorko came with (the family that goes to the ward in Haarlem). It was so funny because we would say one sentence and Brother Zorko would translate-- but he would say about 2 paragraphs--and then tell us that he explained basically the whole lesson. It was a good time. The family is really excited to learn more about the gospel. We taught them again Saturday, but Familie Zorko couldn't come because they are on vacation-- so it was a little rough to break through the language barrier, but hopefully things will continue progressing.
Frank, our baptismal date, is ROCKING! He is making so many friends at church and absolutely loves everything he is learning. Keep praying for him!
Yesterday we had a bit of a miracle. Remember Didi, the woman from Bulgaria? Well, we had an appointment with her-- but she wasn't answering her phone to confirm-- we decided to make the 50 minute bike ride anyway because we felt like we needed to go. We biked out there, but couldn't find her and she still wasn't answering her phone. We were going to just bike back, but felt like we should stay, so we just started knocking doors. A half an hour later we rang a doorbell and a woman walked up behind us--Zr. Miller turned and asked her if she lived where we had rung, I turned around and it was Didi! She had accidentally left her phone at home and had gone to Haarlem for the weekend, she was on her way back to the center where she and her son are staying and saw us (by this time we were on a completely different street). It was absolutely amazing how Heavenly Father placed us in each other's paths. I know that He is guiding this work through things like that...
Saturday we had a bunch of appointments cancel at the last minute, so we decided to do a couple of lookups. One of the lookups was a referral we had received a couple of weeks ago and we had tried going by a number of times, but felt like we should try one last time. We rang the bell and the people were actually home! And they were SUPER excited to see us! Turns out that the couple that answered the door doesn't REALLY live there, but it is the home from her father and he is on vacation. Anyway, turns out that they are less active members and they had actually talked about going to church this week, but us coming by really let them know that they should come! They came to church, and it was great! We have a lesson with them this week. Anyway, just another small thing that shows how much God is involved in our lives, and especially in missionary work. Gotta run.

Veel liefs,
Zuster Fowler