King's Day and Covenant Keeping

Hey fam!

 The best part of this week is knowing that I get to go to the temple on Wednesday haha :) I'm beyond excited!

 So Vlissingen is slow right now to be honest. The branch is amazing but we just contact all day and then when someone has interest they let us teach the first lesson (if that) but then don't want us to come back. They think its cool but they have their own religion and they hold to that. But its going a lot better!

 So Saturday was Koning Dag here in the Netherlands. Its nuts! We all went to Breda and they have a huge park and literally its a huge yard sale there! haha it was so crazy!
 Orange Everywhere!!!

 But we got a lot of potentials for the sister missionaries in Breda which is super awesome.

 Sunday night we taught a man and he was mostly interested in the knowledge. He ,like most people , are very impressed that we give up two years of everything to come here. He said they let you chase girls around though right? No not even that.  hahaha :)
 He wasn't going to take a Book of Mormon he said that he would read it but nothing more. And I said well we just want people to read it! and so he took it and said come back in a few weeks and we can have another chat. Even though waiting a couple weeks for a missionary is eternity we can wait :)

 I had a talk yesterday and I spoke about baptism and about the covenant with baptism. So I was thinking about it all week and Wes and Collin came into my mind when I tore my ACL and got home that day and Collin just came up to me crying and gave me a hug and Wes was crying too (so was I) but they were comforting me. Just like mosiah 18:9 "mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort". Wes and Collin probably have no idea that that was keeping their baptismal covenant. But it gave me strength that I had them with me. That's how important our baptismal covenant is. It changes peoples lives if we keep it- just like Wes and Coll changed mine. It helped me realize that I need to think of others. It changes people and I know I don't think about it as much but it's so important!!!

 I love you all so much! I can't wait to Skype in two weeks!

 I love you!

 

Love Elder Bosco

 

They rode their bikes home from a service day in the rain- hence the two toned jeans and sweatshirt

Koning Dag [King's Day]

 

Kind emails and pictures from the Netherlands

Hey fam!

 We had a pretty great week this week! They started a campaign for Easter giving away Finding Faith in Christ DVD's! We got 6 referrals from it!!! Not all of them want more contact but it was still awesome. The whole mission got about 350 referrals just in one week of using Facebook.

 I went on exchanges with my district leader and we found 4 potentials and it was super fun to work with him. He is a huge BYU fan :)

We taught a lesson on Saturday to Taher. He is Muslim but reads the bible. He asks the weirdest questions even... So sometimes it get frustrating but it went pretty well.

 Sunday we went up to Zierikzee and that takes forever... we have two referrals up there and we didn't have a map and I guess were to excited to think of getting a map before hand so we couldn't find anything and they had no maps there it was so weird!

 

 I had a super good week! The sacrament was very special this week and I am so thankful for it! The Savior lives and loves us :) Happy Easter yesterday :)

 I love you so much :)

Love Elder Bosco

[ Here was a Special Easter treat :
  We received an email from the Netherlands. Thank you van Eijzeren family]

Dear Bosco family,

Hi! How are you? We hope everything is fine.

We are the Van Eijzeren´s and we live in Vlissingen.

We just want to let you know that we are very grateful that your son, Elder Bosco, is serving in our small branch and for everything he is doing for all of us.

It is always so nice to have Elder Bosco and Elder England over for dinner at our place, they bring a special Spirit to our home.

Yesterday (Friday) evening we had 4 Elders for dinner: Elder Bosco and his colleague Elder England and Elder Ipson and Elder Pimentel.

Elder Ipson started his mission in Vlissingen in October 2012 and he is the zone or district leader now.

We had a great time together!

We send you some pictures (Elder Bosco got to drive in a car with Elder Ipson yesterday).

We are so grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ and His love and example for us.

We hope you will have a wonderful Easter weekend!

Lots of Love,

lieve groetjes,

Sjac, Birgitta, Melissa en Bjorn van Eijzeren.

[and another note from them that we received last night] :)

Tonight we will see Elder Bosco and Elder England again. They always bring us a list of investigators on Sunday evening, then we send an e-mail with those names to all of the members of our branch so they can pray for those investigators by name (and the Elders of course) during the week.

And tomorrow they will have dinner with us again. In The Netherlands we have not only 2 Christmas days, but also 2 days for Easter and 2 days for Pentecost.

We wish you a great Sunday,

love from Vlissingen,

the Van Eijzeren´s. 

Elders England, Bosco, Ipson, and Pimintel

Elder Ipson driving Elder Bosco

Sjac, Birgitta, Melissa en Bjorn van Eijzeren.

Hallo from Vlissingen

Fam!

 We are emailing early today cause we are going to do service for a guy in our ward.

 Vlissingen in awesome! It is beautiful and the ward is awesome! its a really small branch of about 25 people if that many. But they are all willing to do missionary work! Elder England is awesome he is from Wyoming and we were in the same MTC group which is pretty cool cause we didn't really know each other in the MTC cause we were in different Districts.

I didn't get to see Joni and Gary helaas [unfortunately]. I will probably get the package on the 30th when we have temple conference! I am so excited to go to the temple!!!!

 I don't know how they celebrate pass [Easter] here or of any traditions.

 

So here in Vlissingen the work is kinda slow and basically when I got here there wasn't much. So we contacted a ton this week and the work paid off. We found about 6 potential investigators and we got a referral. 6 doesn't sound like that many but its definitely a miracle to me. Some of them cant meet for a while which is a bummer but its coming along.

 We also had a guy tell us we were brainwashed this week... I will leave it at that.

 We also got another referral that lived in Biervliet... haha its in the middle of nowhere and he wasn't even interested cause he just ordered a finding faith in Christ DVD so we went to ask if he wanted to learn more.

 

We met a girl from Finland that was a member of the church! she was here for a choir thing and she comes up to us in the train station and just sticks out her hand to me and says I didn't know they had elders here I'm a Mormon also! haha it was super cool!

 I have been reading in the Book of Mormon and also the Bible and I have really been focusing on Faith. Ether 12 is all about Faith and its awesome! Recently I have been reading about the life of Christ and who he is and just trying to learn how he lives then do that. Its not easy but I really want to get to know my Saviour. He lives though and he preformed all of those miracles. The Atonement is real. Go watch the new Mormon message. The Atonement saves us all.

 

I love you all :)

 

Love Elder Bosco

Finally, neighbors again

Fam!

 I saw sister Nelson this week! it was so weird! We are now in the same Zone! So we will have temple conference together! I didn't know what to do when I saw her!!

 This was kinda a crazy week with transfers and everything. We didn't teach a lot of lessons but we did a lot of contacting and found a guy that was super excited to see us and let us in and we talked to him and he wants to come to church before we teach him. I think he watched conference too which if he did it was perfect! haha

 Conference was amazing! It makes me miss all of you but I got a lot of prayers answered from this conference! Its so great that we were able to watch almost all of the sessions and all of them in English :) haha

 I cant believe Coll is a priest! that's so weird!! and Happy Birthday yesterday Ka! Definitely a special day in a lot of ways :)

 I love this gospel. It brings real happiness. Its hard being out here away from all of you but I will see you all again :) And others get to experience this gospel while I'm out here. Get ready Wes! its amazing being a missionary and you're going to be one of the greatest!

 I love you all!!

 

 Love Elder Bosco

Elder Bosco and Elder Muse

Elder Bosco and Sister Nelson- Finally!

Elder Carter and Elder Bosco

Vlissingen

Vlissingen