Conference was sick RIGHT?

Well, well... This week has been busy and a little crazy, but awesome! Sat. and Sunday were great and it was sooooo nice to hear and receive guidance and direction from the Apostles and Prophet and more importantly from the Spirit. I think that got Elder De Mass and I pumped up and also helped us in preparing for Zone Conference. It was great...and also I think that it got all the missionaries pumped as well, so that was great. On Monday we had our regular meetings and then we had an exchange with the Office Elders here and I got to go see Ines and Javier, whom I taught at the first of my mission with Elder Musters. They are such great members, but she is having some health problems, so we gave them both blessings and it was such a help for her. She just expressed all her worries and she vented to us.. and she just sat a bawled.. it was a special experience for me. I love her, she is an awesome mom and lady. After that we went to FHE with their sweet investigator Mariama who is going to be baptized this next Sunday. On Tuesday we journeyed up to the Flemish part of Belgium to Gent.. and went to a District meeting and then worked with some Dutch speaking missionaries. I worked with Elder Noonan... one of the most interesting missionaries I have ever met. We spent a lot of the day looking up our investigators who have just seemed to have fallen through the cracks... and then we saw THE FAMILY JOHNSON... with our Ward Mission Leader. It was such a great feeling for him to finally get to teach them with us because the Spirit you feel in their home is incredible.. and they are just amazing. All the girls are so smart and participate.. and.. ya I just remember how blown away I was when I first met them... I mean it is almost to good to be true... and that is what our Ward Mission leader said. He was like, "Wow, that is just the ideal family that you could ever want as an investigator." He was sooo excited for them that he ordered a big set of scriptures (high priest style) for Brother Johnson.. haha! I love Bro. Chaussee, our Ward Mission Leader. Wednesday was the crazy weird day for this week. The Lord had different plans for us that day than we had planned the week before. Two investigators who are getting baptized this week in the Netherlands needed baptismal interviews from me... because they spoke French and they needed someone who speaks French... and President Brubaker was busy all week.. so I was the next contact who spoke French. So Wednesday we drove allllllllll stinking day around the Netherlands. We left at around 10 and got home at 10. First we went up to Utrecht to drop of a new car to a missionary couple, then we took their old car over to Den Haag to the Zone Leaders there, then we drove down to Gouda outside of Rotterdam and there we interviewed a family from the Ivory Coast who is getting baptized this weekend. The kids spoke Dutch and the mom spoke mostly French... she spoke Dutch too, just not super well. The interview went great with her... she used to be Muslim, but no more. She had a great testimony. Then after that we drove down to Dordrecht to interview a guy from Guinea named Siku... he was awesome to. He also spoke Dutch pretty well, but his native language was French, so I interviewed him.. and he was sooo prepared and amazing. He used to be Muslim, then he had a dream of Jesus Christ telling him to follow him 3 times, so he converted to Christianity. He said he was baptized into a Penacostal church but said that was just his way to make the transisiton so that he could find the truth, and he said when he saw the missionaries he said he had something pushing him to talk to them so he did... and he has been coming to church since then and has just loved it and has gained a great testimony. It was a special experience. but lots of driving. It was beautiful though... I saw lots of canals, cows, and sweet windmills. Also I took a ferry... that was AWESOME.. haha.. and it was only 2 euros. Thursday was an awesome day too. We had an exchange with Zone Leaders from Apeldoorn. They came down here and we went to Rogier, a Shopping Center, and Elder De Mass played his bagpipes and we gave out Books of Mormon and like 60 flyers for the Young Single Adult Center here in Brussels. It was so fun and we found some sweet people. Well the Johnson family is doing well. We saw them last night and we finished teaching them all the commandments and told them that we had taught them enough and all they needed to know to be baptized and that they would continue learning, so we asked them if they would feel ready for the 18th and Johnson said it was too early, but.. they are so great. We are just moving it back 2 weeks to give them more time, but Johnson told us, "You know this is a very important decision... this is a whole family joining the Church, not just one person, I want all my kids to understand very well so they can grow up in the Church and so I can be very proud of them.. and don't worry.. we will be baptized. If we were questioning it, you wouldn't be here and we wouldn't be coming to church." So, it felt right and of course we respected his decision as a father. So probably November 1st is the new date. They are doing so great though.. and they loved Conference. Well, I should probably go. I love you and I sent you a letter, so you should get it soon. I'm doing great. The Lord has helped me, I haven't been as stressed as I was before ... so all is well!

Love ya.. bye.. Elder Von Simonson