Ard Van Winden 9 June, 2012
Amersfoort
Elder Ombach, Elder Bjork, Ard and
Elder Benson
Ard is the husband of a member here in Amersfoort. About a
year ago, his wife started to meet with the missionaries to help her come back
to activity in the church and Ard was willing for her to do that; but he
didn't want to have anything to do with it himself. Whenever the
missionaries would come, he would try to find a way to avoid the meeting. After
awhile, he started going to the church to support his wife and this happened
for about a year until the point when we came in. When Elder Ombach, and I were
here for only a couple of days after opening Amersfoort, Sister Van Winden
(Ard's wife) called us and invited us over for dinner. There we learned
of what was going on and how long Ard was learning about the church.
After one of the first appointments, we wanted to do a look up of another
less active member that also lived in the area and Ard agreed to go take us so
we didn't have to take the bus. When we got there, I thought he was just going
to drop us off and go; but he decided to go with us up to the door. So we
contacted the member and afterwards it was about 8 p.m. Ard offered to take us
home but I knew that that would get us home early with nothing to do and I felt
that we needed to knock a few doors in the area. I expressed my concern and Ard
said "Well, I'll come with you". I must say that for not ever going
door to door in his life and not even being a member of the church, he did
pretty well on door contacts. After that as the weeks went on, we tried to
figure out what we could possibly teach to Ard to help him make steps towards
baptism but nothing seemed to be working. Then we got the idea to take him on a
joint teach to Endurance. Ard was more than willing and jumped at the chance to
come. We continued to meet with Ard and his wife and would take him on joint
teaches every once in a while.The process was going well. Then we
came to the week that Endurance was asked to
be baptized the coming Saturday. We were able to get Ard on
a joint teach and I think Ard was a bit surprised about Endurance and his
willingness to be baptized so quickly. As we were preparing for the Baptismal
service, the spirit whispered to us that we needed to ask Ard to give a talk on
baptism. Ard accepted the challenge and spent a
good amount of time studying baptism and became the first non- member
I know to give a talk on baptism. He did a great job and a lot of the other
ward members were pretty stunned about how good his talk was. The next day at
Endurance's confirmation, I noticed that Ard and President Brubaker, along with
their wives, went into a separate room. I knew something was going on; but I
didn't quite know what. A few minutes later, President Brubaker came out and
told us that we were going to have another baptism the following Saturday. When
I found out it was Ard, I about died. President Brubaker gave him his baptismal
interview and after he passed, we were all set up for Saturday. The Baptism
went flawless and Ard looked so happy I would be hard pressed for words to try
to describe it. He was confirmed a member of the church of Jesus Christ of
latter day saints on the 17th of June 2012.
It was such a blessing to work with Ard and I look forward
to seeing his successes in the future as a Husband, Father, and Priesthood
holder.
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