What Does The Voss Say?: Our Eternal Potential

This week was wonderful! It started out with an adventure in GENT, a beautiful city in West Vlaanderen where we went on p-day. Kimberly, aka the very recently returned missionary Sister Verdegem who was my sister training leader for three transfers, is a Belgian native and was able to give us some insider tips and a special guided tour through the city. We visited an incredible medieval castle, walked amongst some gorgeous cathedrals and through streets that are as bustling now as they were during the renaissance. Crazy feeling. It was so fun, and I did my best to appreciate the city's rich heritage of architecture, culture and history!

Belgium is breathtaking!

The rest of the week went really well as well. we have been focusing on the language this transfer - making the mission language our own. Zone conference was kind of a wake up call for me, because I think I was starting to plateau. I generally don't have any problems expressing myself in Dutch now, so it was pretty easy to sit back and be satisfied. But honestly, I still have so far to go in language mastery! So Sister Goodman and I have been working on speaking it more to each other, and to members and investigators who speak Dutch natively but sometimes insist on speaking English with the missionaries. As a result of our focus on the language, we had an incredible lesson with a recent convert where he heard the message of the restoration for the first time in his own language, and the Spirit in the room was so strong! And Sister Goodman and I both learned a lot about Dutch, as well!

This view is crazy!

Me with the incredible city of gent

On Wednesday we had interviews with the Bunnells and district meeting. It was fantastic! I love President and Sister Bunnell and know they are supposed to be here! They are prepared to meet our needs and guide the missionary work here in Belgium and the Netherlands. They are awesome!

Elder Johnson, our fearless district leader and Elder Thornock stayed and came on a sister support day with us as well. It's always fun for me to learn how other missionaries work, and they found us a really cool potential who immediately scheduled an appointment with us when we went back a few days later!

With Sister Faa and Elder Clukey

Tuesday was Belgium's birthday, when the country as it presently exists came into being on July 21st 1830. So we celebrated by buying hardcore traditional Belgian Friets! With mayonnaise, of course.

Our Happy Birthday Belgium friets! (fries)

Lekker!

On Friday I was on exchanges with Sister Faasavalu in Antwerpen! That was exciting and fun. It's a big, beautiful city and I enjoyed working with her there. We went jogging in the morning to see a funny baseball field that says "Antwerp till we die." excellent. Then we ate Belgian waffles together! So it was a lot of fun.

Fun exchange and waffles with sister faasavalu in Antwerpen!

We had some rainy days this week and got completely soaked a couple times, but no worries! I prefer it to a sweltering hot July!

Church and our entire Sunday were awesome. We had a couple of investigators there and taught the Sunday School lesson to the youth, which went really well (we also brought chocolate chip cookies, maybe that helped). Then later in the evening we had a fantastic member present lesson - a family in our ward has children exactly the ages of the children of the family we are teaching, so they all came, and it was incredible- everyone had a friend, everyone was focused and participated, it was just a fabulous lesson! We felt like missionaries from The District. Picture perfect.

I have adorable investigators in every city!

Belgium isn't sketchy/dangerous at all...

This past week I read an amazing talk entitled "The Weight of Glory" by my favorite Christian author, CS Lewis. I recommend it to everyone. But basically, we have a lot of potential as travelers on the path leading to God. We have the potential to be glorious. We shouldn't focus on that too much for our own salvation- but it is critical to recognize that in the context of others. "The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of potential gods and goddesses....There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."

He says it so perfectly! It is indeed a serious thing. We were walking along later in the day after I read that and I watched someone approaching and almost let him pass by. but then I thought, "no! what about his glory? he is no mere mortal and deserves the chance to hear about the gospel!" so I stopped him, gave him a card and just had a short conversation. The point is, we can all help each other reach our eternal potential and glory. Never forget that Christ Himself lies within you! Moses 1:13 |Who art thou Satan? I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten!"

We are all children of God with unimaginable potential. Have a great week, everybody. I love you!

Liefs, Zuster Voss