happy new week and almost august...

Hoi Familie! 

Transfers yesterday, and suprise, suprise, I am staying in Den Haag, together with my greenie Elder Van Komen, and the other two hoodlums.. pretty sweet, I like this apartment a lot, and it's cool that we'll all stay the same for my last transfer!  I've made it number 16!  I'm going to stay District Leader, finish in leadership.. didn't really expect to, to be honest, but it happened and i'll do my best!  Crazy.. I was looking at the mission, and I figured out that I have been a missionary the longest over everyone in my mission.. more so even then my mission president!  And all the senior couples.. But I feel good.. Not feeling trunkie at all, no worries there.. hard to be trunkie when I see miracles left and right every day!! 

Ama Kusi.. our ghanian wonder here in Den Haag.. she is doing really, really well.. I have almost no doubt now that she will be baptized and that I will be able to see it.. super excited for her.  She came to church.. on her own!  Huge step, second time now that she's been, and I called later that night, and she answered the phone, and said "Mohrman!  Hello!! I feel happy!!  Thank you Thank you, Thank you! " Sweet old lady.. god is really blessing her with peace and happiness even though she is going through all sorts of trials!  But she's just letting everything roll off her, and looking towards god, and has the faith and knowledge that everything will turn out alright in the end.  Had some powerful lessens this past week.. I forget sometimes when things happened, it feels like I''ve known this lady for a long ol' time but I was looking at my planner for this past transfer and I realized we had only known her for a month!  So much happens in so little time!  But if I repeat stories, I apologize, things are starting to get blurred together with her ;)  But we taught her the plan of salvation this past week.. oh man.. I can honestly say, there is not a better feeling then applying the plan of salvation to someones life.. I had the strongest feeling to shape our lessen on the plan around the fact that her two sisters are passed away.. neatest thing to be able to say to this woman that after this life, she will be with her sisters again.. that her sisters are hearing about the same message of the restoration in the spirit world, as she is now from us.. she started to tear up.. she cried.. spirit was super strong.. She is building her foundation in christ like Helaman 5:12 says.. it's interesting, the anti for african people here in Europe is two times worse than it is actually in Africa.. In ghana the church is growing at a tremendous pace.. and the people are open there to hear the missionaries out.. but the ghanian people here, and other african countries, when they leave they get blasted that much worse with Anti, and it's that much harder to find people who are willing to listen to us.. interesting to see and witness.. the other ghanians are blasting Ama with all sorts of Anti nonsense, and she stands up to them saying, "no the church is good, the church is good" Ah I love this woman!  Her and Portia, our member from Ghana who has helped out so much!  They are two of of the most amazing people I have ever met.. But had other good lessens, she is getting more and more excited, and it was capped off with her coming to church on her own.  So that's the Ama update! Other news, things that happened, tid bits that you might find interesting to read..

We have a few other positive potential investigators, really hoping this lady named Rosa goes places.. she is half spaniard and half dominican.. super cool lady, she is the cleaning lady of a member we visit often, we started talking to her, and we answered a question she had about polygamy.. and then said, if you ever want to talk, that's what we do, and she said, actually I would like that very much.. and gave us all her information without us even asking.. really sweet.. neat spirit about her.. so we'll see what happens.. other things.. I swear, we have the worst bike luck in the world, wé have seen 4 bikes break on us in the past week.. we keep borrowing from the members and then that bike falls apart!  Finally I am riding a purple girls bike, and elder Van Komen was riding a bike without a seat.. oh man, we looked silly.. but he finally got a seat, and i'm returing the purple bike tonight, life and expiriences of a missionary!  The best was last night, were visiting a member, and we hear this loud thunder outside.. we look at each other then at the member and we say, we gotta go, keep in mind we don't have jackets or anything just white shirts and tie's on these goofy looking bikes, and we start pedaling super hard, and we got blasted by the rain.. I mean absolutely blasted.. We looked like two clowns I'm sure, and we made many dutch peoples nights ha ha That happens a lot actually.. getting dumped on.. joys of this place, never know when it's going to rain, and when it's going to be blistering humid heat!  Most of the time you get both in the same day, multiple times! 

But I think I've rambled on enough, thank you all for the wonderful emails, I love you all. 
Tot de volgende week!

Your son, brother, and friend

Elder Mohrman

Hoi Familie!

Hoi familie!

Thank you for all the emails and prayers, saw some wonderful miracles this week.. oh man.. wonderful end to the week!  Are one true positive investigator, Ama.. you all know her story, all know that the previous week we had trouble meeting with her.. well we finally arranged an appointment, we went to a ghanian shop that she's working at for the moment, and when she came out and saw us, she lit up like a light bulb, and came over to us, and gave me and my companion the biggest hugs.. There is no stopping a 50+ year old ghanian lady when she wants to give you a hug =P  ha ha and we proceeded to walk to a nearby park talk to her a bit.. we had our member translator Portia there, and also Portia's friend Esther, who is an investigator for the other elders, and she's also a ghanian track star, has competed in the olympics and everything.. so that's who was all there, and the last time we had met with Ama we had asked her to read 3rd Nephi 11.. she did.. and when I asked what she got from it, or what did she understand she said something that blew me away!!  Think now for a minute about 3 Nephi 11 and what comes to your mind.. for me I think of the savior coming.. think of the destruction.. that sort of thing.. what did Ama get from it, after reading it just one time.. she says "If you accept the gospel of Jesus Christ, you need to be baptized.." I have never heard that before on my mission.. someone getting that out of 3rd nephi 11.. super cool.. we were blown away, and we proceeded to ask how does she feel about that, and she asked the sincere question about how she was already baptized, we read out of 3rd nephi 11 about how Jesus Christ gave the authority to Nephi to bapize.. she accepted it, said she will and wants to be baptized, and we set a date with her for August 18th.. it's just a goal, if she feels ready for that day, and we still need to teach her a lot, and she needs to come to church a couple more times, but I have no doubt in my mind that this lady is getting baptized now.. god has touched her heart, and I'm so grateful that I was able to see it! 

It was pretty cool because during the lessen, I was dominating the speaking aspect, but I stopped and turned to Elder Van Komen and asked him if he wanted to extend the committment, so he was able to do that for the first time on his mission.   It was also pretty cool, because our member Portia and the Investigator, were both baring testimony and helping her with other concerns that she had.. super cool to see.. so we have someone on date again.. and she's really positive.. and we also have been working a lot with the members, and we are starting to see the fruits of our work with them beginning to come forth.. Cool stuff!  Mission is the greatest thing in the world!

LIfe is great, just pluggin' along, seeing things happen, making memories, and I just have a very deep feeling of gratitude for everything.. I'm so grateful for so many things, and I'm really excited for this coming week!  Love you all, wish you all a wonderful week!

Your Son, Bro, and friend

Elder Mohrman

basic week with a great companion

Hoi familie!

Too be honest, not much to report this week on the front of missionary work.. Did have a wonderful appointment with Amma at the beginning of the week, she brought her cousin along, huge blessing that she even met her, different story, but anyways brought her along, we were able to teach her the restoration, and Amma.. bless her heart, Amma bears her testimony to her cousin letting her know this is good, and that even with her situation she has felt happiness these past two weeks since she met us.. super cool.. but then since everything can't go super smoothly, we had three appointments that did not go through with her to close out the week =0  stuff happened, but she's still good, still positive, a little hiccup, that were hopefully going to solve this evening.. hopefully will also be able to set a baptismal date with her.. that would be really nice.. I would like that very much.. so were hoping now for August for her.. Keep her in your prayers, and thanks.. because I know you all have ;)

Other than that, things were SUPER slow this past week.. oh man.. but it's okay, had great visits with some members, and we have things back on track with other investigators.. and just finding the joy in the day to day journey!  Slow weeks happens, just a little annoying when you don't have too many weeks to spare! =P  But on a side note completely away from missionary work, I'm getting a lot better at soccer.. suprise suprise, got the soccer bug bad!  We play every morning with the other two missionaries in our apartment.. so far we haven't lost yet =P  Also playing some ping pong.. representing the family name well don't you worry ;)  So having fun, just need to get some more action going on the missionary front, and it will be paradise here!  Love my new companion, I don't think I've ever talked so deeply about life with anyone before.. well more listen to someone talk so deeply about life before.. he has a story for everything, good guy.. interesting.. but a good guy.. lovin' the members here.. oh man, so many cool people!  Wish I could tell you about them all!  Helped a member get on the path to get her patriarchal blessing that she lost 4 years ago.. seeing the joy on her face when she found out that she'll be able to get a copy of it again.. giving blessings.. ahh.. cool stuff! 

But thanks for all you do!  or the support, for the love,

Have a wonderful week!

Elder Mohrman

Another most excellent week...

Hoi familie! 

Another week, another day, and for sure making memories along the way!  Had a great week.. really great.. not just because we had an awesome saturday at a baseball game, but because god has blessed us so much with people.. finally we have progressing investigators, that I could really see being baptized, top of the list is Amma, our ghanian lady friend.  We had a great week with her, went to the social services place again on Tuesday, just for the final touches so we know, and she knows what she needs to do to get everything under control, and god has really been blessing this lady.. We were able to arrange meeting in a park here in Den Haag with Amma, and also a sister from ghana, same city in fact, and she served has her interpreter.. super amazing lessens, since we were able to get the legality stuff out of the way, or at least bring some comfort in knowing theres a solution, we have been able to focus on the spiritual aspect now, and she's taking off!  Espescially with Portia, the lady from ghana who is translating for us.. great questions, spirit super strong.. and the best thing is, she understands.. she understands our message... at the end of our saturday evening appointment, she asked the question, How do I know?  How do I know if this is the truth, because I was raised Pentecost, and they say there true, and so does all other churches.. we were able to teach prayer, and she lit up, she understood, and we used the book of mormon, and she knows that it's the word of god.. oh man, and then she came to church yesterday!  The member bless her heart, is really taking amma under her wing, and picked her up, and brought her to church.. amma had a great time!  Our mission president and his wife came to church in den haag yesterday, and talking with sister robinson afterwards she said wow, she was glowing.. and she was, turns out that Amma knows all the ghanian members here.. after sacrament meeting all the ghanians came up to her one by one and started talking to her.. she would turn to me and say I know him, or I know her!  super cool.. and then at the very end, the thing that really made me feel just super good and happy, she turned to me and mouthed with a big smile and her thumb up, "i'm happy.. I'm happy" Oh man!  Super cool!!  I'm excited, she can be baptized really soon, especially since she has the time, and the member has the time to meet whenever.. so in the next couple weeks, I'm fully expecting to make even bigger strides with Amma, and she will I imagine have a baptismal date for the end of this month or the very beginning of August.. and you know she'll make her date as well.. wow god has been so good to me on my mission.. I was looking back, and from about this time last year to now, I've always been blessed with at least someone who was seriously preparing for baptism.. just super neat.. I couldn't ask for a better mission then the one that I've been given!   Also this past week, which is also really, really neat, but when I was here the first time around in Den haag, more than a year and a half ago, me and my companion found this girl her name was Irene.. she was super cool, and a spiritual story how we even found her.. well I left and stuff happened so she stopped investigating, but now since I came back and this last week, Able to meet with her again, and invited her to investigate, and she said yes!  Has a big hill to climb naturally, who doesn't, but had a super good feeling about her.. not very often I think you could say you taught someone twice on your mission!  But I've been given the chance, so we'll see where it goes.. ;)  Well.. I love you all, and thank you so much for all your emails.. they are wonderful, and make my day every time!  Really happy to be getting emails from Grandma Mohrman now, she has wonderful insights and thoughts about life! 

Let's see.. trying to think about what else to write.. there's always many things I miss.. but in the moment I panic and get a stupor of thought as I write these emails!  My companion Elder Van Komen, is a wonderful guy, it's ridiculous almost how blessed I've been with companions.. just have been given some awesome guys to work with, Elder Van Komen has a story about everything let me tell ya.. our bike rides are never boring, I think we've talked about everything under the sun already, and were still finding more stuff to talk about!  He's progressing really rapidly, and it's been really fun to see him from day 1 scared, nervous not knowing how to do anything, to this point, where he has more confidence in teaching, and everything.. cool expirience!  I'm happy now that i've been given the chance to train, didn't really want to before =P 

Okay, well I think that's all your going to get out of me for this week, but i love you all, thank you all for everything, And I'll talk to ya in a week! 

Your son, bro, and friend,

Elder Mohrman

July 2, 2012

Hoi Familie! 

First week of the transfer, gedaan!  Time just flies, I feel like I was just here sitting at this turks internet cafe emailing you all, letting you know how things were.. But another week, another week full of memories and stories.. and what an absolutely crazy week we had.. geesh.. had one of the most stressful most intense expiriences I've had so far in my mission.. Let me explain.. I won't do it justice in writing, my companion is a better story teller than me, but I'll do my best!  Earlier in the week I was thinking to myself, what we needed to do as a companionship, what we could do to find more people to teach, since we really didn't have anyone making progression.. and I got this feeling that when we look people up, instead of just biking from one house to the other, to just walk.. it's extremely awkward at least for me, to be riding a bike then stop in front of someone and contact them about the gospel, other missionaries do it very well, me, never got the hang of it.. so got the feeling to just walk then, less awkward, a lot easier to stop people on the street, so I told my companion, and we said we were going to implement it!  Next day we have a great appointment with a girl from the phillipines. she's a member just moved here, and were meeting her in the centrum, and on the way we get off our bikes and start walking, literally in a couple of minutes, this dutch man, walking the other way, shouts "You guys the mormons??" and a big smile on his face, and you know it's not everyday that someone stops us.. so we are about ready to talk about the gospel with this guy, and out of nowhere Folly.. a member here in Den Haag, a crazy intense african member comes up behind us and starts preachin' to this guy.. totally ruins the contact, the opportunity with the man, scared him off.. were just like oh man.. start talking to folly a little bit, but then folly starts talking to this random african man, and before we know it, they were having this gospel discussion, african style, and the two of them were joined by a couple other africans all praising the lord, and talking about christ and there belief in him.. which was different from each other.. when africans go at it, it's crazy.. but at the end of all this, we get 3 potential investigators, so folly came through in the end.. Anyways, so we go to our appointment meet up with this girl, she buys us lunch, it's great wonderful, we then have someone to look up, and so we start walking again, and the second person we have an opportunity to stop, is this african woman, and her face lights up when she sees us.. recognizing her look of recognition we go over there start trying to talk to us, she says she knows us, she's seen us before in Ghana.. we try turning it into the gospel, but randomely she pulls out this piece of paper and asks for directions to the salvation army.. I offer to help her find it, so we type into our phone, find the route and start walking with this woman, who's name is Amma, to this place, we continue starting to talk about the gospel introduced the book of mormon, she loved it, said she was going to read it, and we promised we would get her one in twi, the ghanian language.  We get to the salvation army, we say here it is, going to depart ways, but she asks if we can come in with her.. come to find out, she just got here to Holland on monday, after being in ghana for a year, and when she came back someone had moved all the stuff in her home and changed the locks, so she is without a home.. and so she has been directed to this place because she is "homeless".. she doesn't speak any dutch, and she speaks broken english, so it's even difficult for us to talk with her.. but as were talking to this guy at salvation army, it became very apparent that this lady would not stand a chance in finding out what happened because of the communication barrier, and both sides were not understanding each other, so I served as the mediator, and we found out that she couldn't sleep there, but we had to go to social services and get a pass for her to sleep somewhere else.. so knowing this lady couldn't go alone and do it by herself, we go with her to the social services place, had to talk to these people, about her situation, learned all sorts of more crazy things, and to cut this story short, we then had to go to one bank, then go to another bank, back to another homeless shelter, carrying her luggage all over Den haag, but eventually we got things pretty sorted out, got her a pass to sleep at the place and also a meeting with social services where they'll be able to talk about her situation, and we got sucked into that meeting as well.. but man.. the most hectic two days of my life.. spent 6 1/2 hours with this woman, trying to figure out her life and what happened.. but it was all made worth it in a minute and a half, we set up an appointment with stephen and victoria, stephen is the recent convert from ghana, and they were able to explain to her in Twi all that had happened and what her situation was now.. but as we were ending our meeting with them, I felt like we should share a scripture with this lady, so I shared Alma 7: 11-12 Stephen translated it into twi, and I was able to tell her that everything would be okay, and that Christ knew what she was going through.. pretty powerful, spirit was strong, she was crying, she cried a lot those two days, but these were different tears, these were tears from feeling the spirit.. so we'll see what happens with her.. I know though for a fact, that we were led to this lady to help her through these couple of days.. amazing..

Also have some potential investigators for this coming week, some cool stories, that I wish I had time to share, but things are going well.. the work is slowly, but starting to pick up, and I'm really excited for the next coming of weeks.. I know good things will be happening soon ;) 

Ramone if anyone is wondering, cannot accept what has happened to him, and is in denial of the fact that he can't do things like he did before.. really sad to see, if only he could look at the positives in life, if only he could recognize gods blessings in his life.. but he's struggling, and he's becoming crazy from it.. and we've actually lost contact with him for the past little bit, but we haven't given up on him, we'll see what happens..

Thanks for all your support and love,

Love you all so much!

Elder Mohrman