We consider you as family through the gospel

Thank you for the birthday wishes and you uplifting thoughts. This week has been great. We were able to have 3 investigators at church and one of them is getting baptized on Saturday. His name is ***. He came to church after we contacted him on the street three weeks ago. He liked it and wanted to learn more, so we continued to go by him and teach him about the gospel. After the first two lessons or so he wanted to get baptized. The members are great in welcoming people to church. They made him feel right at home the very first Sunday that he came. The members here are a great example to me.

Yesterday was a great day for me. We were woken up by a phone call from Brother Ritfeld, who called to wish me a happy Birthday. I thought that was really nice of him. We went to church and people kept coming wishing me a happy birthday and all of that. One of the Ritfeld’s even wrote me poem. It was a beautiful poem. I wanted to type it up and send it to you, but I forgot the poem at home, so it will have to come next week. After church we had choir practice and we sang a few nice pieces. When we were done the choir surprised me with a few Surinamese birthday songs. It sounded great! I love the local birthday songs. You should have been there to see it.

We were invited over to the Ritfeld family for dinner, which was a lot of fun. On our way there it started to rain like crazy. We got soaked. When we got there we were so wet and my shoes were filled with water. Sister Ritfeld had prepared an amazing meal for us. They are such a great family. They really take good care of us as missionaries. Brother Ritfeld said something that really touched me yesterday. He said, "If you were at home, you would be celebrating your birthday with your family. Because you are here on mission and you are far away from home we wanted to celebrate you birthday with you, because we consider you as family through the gospel. Through the Gospel we have become family." I would really want you to meet them. They are an amazing family. They then sang a bunch of birthday songs and one other song (I cannot remember the title of the other song right now) for me. When you come to pick me up, we will need to go visit them. They are preparing to go to the temple and it seems like they are doing everything to reach their goal.

Love,

Jeff