Happiness in Helping

March 30, 2015

Hey Everyone!

I'm praying for every one in the family and let them all know that I'm thinking about them. I'm really happy that you got to go see The Hobbit at Edmond Town Hall and go to Pepe's after! Those were always really fun nights. It's great that Dad and Caleb got to go give Grandma the sacrament and that Dad gave her a blessing. Do you know Grandma's E-mail? You sent it to me once but it was really long and funny looking. It's good to hear that KC is doing well. Elder Price and I are going to a castle in Gent today and I'll take pictures :)

This week was quite rustig (quiet). Elder Price was sick in bed all week and I wasn't feeling too good either. We are feeling better now and should be getting back to our normal schedule this week. We got to help out a member in the ward this week with yard work and he was really happy. He's an older guy who's awesome and we had a great time helping him move tree stumps and planting new trees. One of the things I've learned is that when I’m helping other is when I feel my best. It brings true happiness and I really recognize that and try to look for opportunities to help people. We also had zone training in Antwerpen this week and it was really good. President and Sister Robinson will be leaving in  two transfers and these will be the last few zone activities we will have with them. They're such good people and I know they're inspired to help the people and their missionaries here in Belgium and the Netherlands. At the end of zone conference a few missionaries were called to go up and bare their testimonies about how the Spirit plays a roll in their mission and in their life. I was called and it was a good experience. I talked about how the Spirit guides and directs us in all that we do even when we're not entirely sure what we should do. As we go forward in faith, God will be at our side and the Spirit will teach and inspire those we talk to. I shared 2 Nephi 32:2-3 about how through the Holy Ghost, we can speak with the tongue of angels and speak about Christ.

Temple Conference is next week and we get to go to Keukenhof after! I can't wait. I love going to the temple and going to Keukenhof is going to be so beautiful! I'll take tons of pictures. Love you guys so much! I hope you have a great week!

Love, Elder DeWitt

Peace in Living the Gospel

Mar 23, 2015

Hey everyone!

I'm happy it's starting to warm up in the northeast! You guys should start looking for a house down south and move there this year! That would be sweet. Happy birthday Dad! How old are you? Almost 50? haha grapje (joking). I hope you have a great year and I'm so happy you're my dad and for all the great times we've had. Love you Dad. I remember going to the movies and then going to Pepe's after! How was the third Hobbit? Kaylee is coming home so soon! That's crazy. Does it seem like she's been out for a long time? It's going to be so cool for you guys to see Kaylee come home! And Cierra is going to Italy in a few weeks! She's going to love it. Make sure she speaks a lot of Italian and tell her to say, “Hi” to missionaries if she sees them there. I met some missionaries in the MTC who were going to Italy. She's going to want to bring enough clothes because she's probably not going to wash any there. The hotels aren't like American hotels. They are not as modern. I guess it depends on where you go. She'll probably want an adapter and she'll be good. Does she have a passport? Make sure she has it with her all the time and if police stop her tell her to play the American card and to make sure she gets her passport back after they scan it. She's going to love it. Italy is beautiful and let her know that she doesn't have to take too many pictures but to enjoy it while she's there. I'm really excited for her. I want to visit after my mission.

Elder Price and I had a really good week and we found a lot of new people. We taught a good amount of lessons this week and I asked someone if they would be baptized after they found out if these things were true or not and they said, “Yes!” It was such a cool experience. I know the peace that comes from living the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I love sharing it with others. We have district meeting once a week on Tuesdays and have weekly planning usually on Fridays. We were too busy this week for weekly planning so we'll probably do it today. Weekly planning takes about three hours for us. I love you guys so much and I hope you have a good week! Make sure you guys are good missionaries too. Try to find people for the missionaries to teach and ask if they need joint teaches. Missionaries love that. I'm really excited for Cierra. She's going to have such a good time in Italy.

Love Elder DeWitt

Easter Referrals

March 17, 2015

Hey Everyone!

Just got back from district meeting in Gent and the weather is so nice today! The sun is out and district meeting was great. We talked about recognizing the Spirit and how it is so important in the work we do. Kortrijk is a pretty big city and our area also covers a big area. Our area covers West Flanderen all the way to Popperinge. We don't go to the western half a lot because it takes so much travel time on the train but we have been getting out there lately for Easter referrals from Facebook. You guys should definitely move to South Carolina or Georgia. That would be sick! Do you know when Erik leaves for his mission? I e-mailed Dalton from university and Eric. Dalton is in Sao Paolo Brazil and Eric is in Mexico. They're both doing really well and it's really good to hear from them. Elder Price and I have been talking to a lot of people this week on the street and knocking a lot of doors. It's hard to get in and teach a lesson but we're trying to find people. We have faith :) The Easter referrals are nice because some of them are interested in Christ and God. For the Easter referral campaign on Facebook, people order the Finding Faith in Christ DVD and then we go deliver it to them and talk about Jesus Christ with them and testify of Him. Then we make a return appointment (hopefully) so we can teach them about the restoration and so forth. This week has been great and we have been working with a lot of the members lately. The Kortrijk Branch is full of really good people. Our ward mission leader is the a really cool guy who used to be a professional cyclist and he won a really big race years ago and raced in the Tour de Flanderen ook (also) competed in the Tour de France. Love you guys! Beste wensen (Best wishes).

Love,

Elder DeWitt  

p.s. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Learning from King Benjamin

March 9, 2015

Hey Everyone!!!

I'm so happy that Ci got into BYUI!!! That's so awesome!!! I love you guys so much and thanks for the e-mail! Will I be home for spring track? I finish July 20th next year. Sounds like there's a lot of snow on the East Coast :) Cierra got to go on her final ski trip! Did you guys go? Thanks for the bit from Kaylee. She's a great missionary and she gets it. She really understands the work and loves the people. Haha we make jokes all the time how sister missionaries are way better than elders. They're awesome and they bring something that elders don't have. They're awesome. The patats are delicious and that’s a really big dish here. Friets are sometimes just eaten as a dish here and that could be an entire meal. It's kind of funny how people make fun of Americans and cheeseburgers when all they eat here are just a bunch of fries. People also get offended if you call them French fries because they take pride in their friets.

This week has been full of a lot of exciting things. I said good bye to Elder Lindstrom, and exchanges were on Wednesday. We exchanged in Antwerpen Central which is a beautiful place. You guys should look it up on the internet. We did a lot of contacting this week and it almost got to 60°! The weather is starting to get warmer and it's so nice. I think I want to live in a tropical place in a few years on the ocean. We have 6 new potential investigators, and we have afspraken (appointments) with them next week. We've been giving a lot of Book van Mormons away and we're seeing so many of the blessings that the Lord promises to us while we are on a mission. Elder Price is a great missionary and is a really hard worker. He only has one more transfer after this one and his Dutch is great. It's still pretty difficult to completely understand people when they are talking but I can say pretty much all of the things I want to say. Something I've learned this past transfer is to have faith and trust in the lord. If we do this, everything will go well and He will turn us into something we could never become on our own. He wants us to have happiness and joy in this life and He will help us. I love you guys so much and I hope you have a great week!!! Love you all and I'll keep doing my best to serve the Lord. I really like Mosiah 2 when King Benjamin speaks to his people. You should read it for family home evening! It's brought me a lot of comfort on my mission and has helped me to turn outward instead of inward. I love you all so much and I hope you have great week! 

Speaking From the Heart

March 2, 2015

Thanks for the e-mail! Cierra's a potato!!! She’s going to BYUI! Guess we're going to university together! We had a really good week and transfers are this Wednesday. Elder Lindstrom is leaving and Elder Price is coming here to Kortrijk. Haha we're going get lost a bunch, I have no idea where anything is here in Kortrijk. We had a really good week and the baptism was great. I gave the baptism talk and I was all ready to read it off the paper, but then I got the feeling that I should just speak to the woman who was baptized and not read the talk I had prepared. I was a little nervous, but I ended up using what I had written down as more of a guideline. I know Heavenly Father was helping me out and the Spirit spoke to her. I hope. Haha she was really grateful for the talk and Lindstrom conferred upon her the Holy Ghost which was really good. She cried a lot and she was so happy. We had dinner at her house on Sunday and we made American burgers for her and her son. 

We just got back from Ieper and it was so cool. It was really historical and there were so many things from the war there. There was so much information and it was really interesting. There was a huge grave site that honored all of the fallen soldiers in World War I. There were a lot of soldiers from Europe, England, South Africa, Canada, and New Zealand. There was also some information about Tolkien and I think he wrote The Hobbit while he was a lieutenant fighting in Ieper. Here are some pictures!

  

His Hand is Always Outstretched

February 23, 2015

Hallo Iedereen!

Thanks for the E-mail! I'm happy to hear that KC is doing well and that you're having the missionaries over so much! I'm sure they love all the dinner appointments. Tell them I say, “Hi” and thank them for the time they're taking to serve the Lord. It sounds really cold back home. It's been getting pretty warm here and I hope it stays this nice. Today Elder Lindstrom and I will be going to Brugge for our p-day. I'm really excited to finally see the history and beautiful architecture there. I'll take lots of pictures and eat lots of delicious food while I'm there :) Transfers are coming up and I think Elder Lindstrom will be leaving because this is already his third Transfer in Kortrijk. We will be getting calls this coming Zondag and we'll see where everyone ends up getting called to. Next week the branch president said he would take us to Ieper which is going be really cool. There is a ton of history there. Battles in the Middle Ages were fought there, trench warfare in the first World War were fought there, and a other historical things happened there, as well. 

The member who is getting baptized this week asked me to give the talk before her baptism, and it will be an honor. We have been teaching her the lessons and it's been really cool to see how ready she is to be baptized. Her testimony is so strong it's really inspiring. She has such a good understanding of Christ and of the Atonement, and the amount of love Christ has for all of us. His hand is always outstretched and He is always there, we just have to decide to take His hand and He will lift us up. The Atonement is good enough for everything and everyone. It will make everything that is not fair in this life right. When we have nothing left, it’s the power of the Atonement that we run on. God's plan is perfect and we can always rely on Christ and put our faith in God. If we put God first, all other priorities will work themselves out, and some might even go away. Heavenly Father knows us better than anyone, and he wants us to have joy and success in this life and the next.

Zone p-day was a lot of fun and there are a few European missionaries in the mission. Most of them are from Nederland or Belgie. They're not really better at soccer just because they're from Europe, they're just normal people haha. There were some young members there, who are about my age, who played with us as well. A lot of members in the church here go on missions. It's a little different here because there are not as many members, so they all go on missions at the same time and it's actually really cool. I know this is the true Church of Jesus Christ restored on the earth and I know it through the feelings I get everyday from the Holy Spirit. I heard from Eric that he got his mission call!!!! I'm so happy for him and he's pumped to get out there and serve. I love you guys and try not to freeze! Love you all have a great week!

Groetjes, Elder DeWitt  

Looking Forward to the Sun

February 16, 2015

Hello Everyone!!!

We had zone p-day and played voetball for a long time so that’s why this message is so late. I might send more tomorrow because the library closes kind of soon. That’s so awesome that Eric is going to Chicago Illinois!!!! He’s going to be an awesome missionary. We had a pretty busy week this week. We're teaching a new member the after baptism lessons, which are the same lessons we teach before baptism, just after baptism. We are meeting with a lady who wrote herself out of the church because her husband made her when she got married. She is now divorced and sent papers to the Church to be baptized again and she got the papers back!!!!! We're so excited for her and she will get baptized in two weeks. We are teaching her the lessons and she's a really cool person. She's so sorry for writing herself out and she's so spiritual. Our lessons with her are so good and she pretty much teaches us. She cries every lesson and has so much love for Christ. She's really amazing and has such a strong testimony and reminds me how simple the Gospel is.

It's been really warm here and I love it. I can't wait for the warm weather and the sun to come. I love the sun so much. During the winter it's rainy and foggy. The spring and summer are going to be so nice. It's pretty hard to do the work here in the winter because things wear you down faster but now that the sun is out more it should be better. There was a pot luck meal after church this week and a ton of people from other wards came. The church was so packed and it was awesome. I can understand Flams a lot better now and I'm so grateful for the gift of tongues. I can understand what people say to me now for the most part and can say pretty much whatever I need to in Dutch, at least enough to get my point across. Alles komt goed wanneer goed is met ons :) I love you guys and I hope you have a great week!!!!

-Love Jeremy