Week 23 Ommoord Netherlands

Christmas Pajamas!

Making my Christmas Cake!

Found Dr Pepper Cherry at a store while teaching first lesson

CHRISTMAS!

 

This week was pretty awesome!  So for Christmas Eve we went to sisters Koks house.  She is this super nice older single lady that´s never been married and it just so happens that her favorite place on earth is Bryce canyon. Haha small world, so that was really fun to see her pictures and talk to her about it.  Then for Christmas we went to the Teskes.  They cooked us an American Christmas dinner and we watched the music man and the new Disney movie frozen.  I also got to skype the fam and that was super cool.  It might have been the fastest hour of my life.  Then for the second day of Christmas (they have two of them over here) we went caroling at an old folks home.  That was a lot of fun.  Not a whole lot of missionary work got done though because we actually aren´t allowed to proselyte on those days so we mostly spent them with members.  One cool thing that happened though was with this potential investigator that we went to look up.  He was on the way to the store so we just went with him and we ended up teaching the first lesson in the store.  It was pretty awesome.  He wasn´t too interested but he took a book of Mormon and I also found out that this store we went to sales Cherry Dr. Pepper and also three different flavors of mountain dew.  It was just a little tender mercy.  So whenever we visit members we are supposed to give them a spiritual thought and lately we have been focusing them all on Christ and Christmas.  It helped me really just think about Christ and not just gifts on Christmas.  It made for an awesome Christmas.

Week 22 Ommoord Netherlands

EMERGENCY TRANSFER!!!

So Wednesday afternoon me and elder Tjong-Ayong were in Rotterdam south with one of the zone leaders and we got a call that elder Tjong-Ayong needed to be in Breda at 8 the next morning because he is getting transferred to Eindhoven to be the district leader!  So we had to cancel appointments, exchange back, and get him all packed in one night.  It was super crazy for him but I got the night off to relax while he packed. haha so I enjoyed it.  Now it's just me and elder Kettler and it's kind of fun because we both are really bad at Dutch so our conversations on the streets are a lot shorter.  

So Friday night we had our wards little Christmas musical and they had us missionaries sing in it. haha we didn't prepare so last minute we were like let’s just sing Rudolf the red nose reindeer so we did.  It was super fun.  Then last night we had the big missionary fireside and it was super cool!! Our neighbor Ellen came and she also brought two friends with her!!  That was awesome and the bishop came and introduced himself to them.  It was cool.  So the Gruppmans were the ones in charge of this thing and they are both super famous violinists so that was amazing and then they also invited a super famous organist and pianist.  It was seriously insane!!  I was sitting right behind the organist and it was crazy watching her play.  Then all of the missionaries got together and sang how great thou art.  It was just a really cool night!!  Ellen really enjoyed it too.  It is a lot of fun being a missionary during the Christmas season.

 Elder Hulet

Week 21 Ommoord Netherlands

 Elder Tjong-Ayong in a Zwarte Piet hat

My study desk with all of the christmas stuff mom sent me.  
You can see spongebob and patrick on the window behing it too.

Christmas Decorations from mom!

Christmas Decorations

Christmas tree with all of our presants and such

Letter I got that I´m pretty sure wasn´t for me...

Elder Price teaching the first lesson to 5 women on the street!!
 hahaha He´s a stud!

Kerst avond in Gouda

Cool christmas tree in gouda

 

Elder key sent this one to me of us with the bishop

First off. We watched the Christmas Devotional last Monday with the Teskes and it was freakin awesome!  I was sad that it wasn´t just apostles speaking but then the other talks were really good so I enjoyed it a lot.  We also went over to the teskes last night for dinner.  They invite us over all the time and I love it!  We will be spending the first day of Christmas with them too so that will be awesome.  

This week we had zone conference.  Elder Tiexera from the 70 came and it was super cool.  He did and awesome job at tearing us down and making us all feel like crappy missionaries... but then he finished up strong with some cool missionary stories that made us want to work!!  It was super cool.  He gave us some new contacting ideas that we tried and they work super well!  Our average day is just walking around and talking to people, but no one is ever interested, so his idea was to just walk up to people and practically shove a mormon.org card into their hand before they can say no and then to just tell them to look up the website and then we just say have a good day and walk away! haha it works alll the time!  Then we aren´t getting rejected all the time and we are getting more cards out to people.  It´s pretty cool and we made a district goal to contact 3000 people in these next three weeks!  and not just a contact but we have to extend an invitation in this contact to have it count! We have done pretty awesome so far but yesterday we didn´t get any because we were busy with other stuff.

Friday was the kerst avond in Gouda.  If you haven´t heard of this it is like the biggest Christmas thing in Europe.  People from all over came to it to see the uge christmas tree and stuff.  We showed up early with our whole zone and did some caroling.  While we were caroling we had a few people out in the crowd of people contacting them and talking to them about the Gospel!!! It was cool.  I contacted a guy and he wasn´t interested and he told me if he took a Book of Mormon it would be a sin because he wouldn´t read it! haha so I was like well just take it and put it up on your shelf and maybe someday you´ll want to read it. and then he was like well heres the thing.  If I take this book and put it on my shelf then I know I´m going to read it. haha so he took the book and our number and said he would call us. haha it was cool.  It was like a half hour conversation so I didn´t get to sing too much but it was the best contact I´ve had in a while so that was pretty cool.  

Another cool thing yesterday was the Baptism!  It was two of the sisters investigators and they asked Elder Tjong-Ayong to baptize them.  It was pretty awesome.  I´ll send some pictures.  All in all it was a good week, and I´m super excited for Christmas over here!

 

Elder Hulet

Week 20 Ommoord Netherlands

Playing Golf for the first time on my mission

Dhana

Three of  us at the beach just north of our apartment

This week was good.  We worked really hard and didn´t see anything come from it, as usual, but it was still a good week.  We lost our investigator Dhana because he moved back to indonesia but he took us golfing this week  before he went.  It was so much fun!! We chose the worst day to go because of the weather.  You actually have to have a license thingy over here to golf so when we showed up at the course they asked for it and of course we didn´t have one.  She was like well, there isn´t anyone even on the course today because of the weather so I guess you can go and play.  haha it was awesome.  It´s been a while since I have played so I didn´t play too great but it was a lot of fun.  When we got home we got a text from the district leader that we needed to stay inside the rest of the night because of the storm.  Haha it was that bad and we golfed in it!  Then on Wednesday we had an appointment with a guy clear up in Alphen aan den Rijn, which is about 2 hours of travel both ways, so we set this whole day aside to work in this little town.  We tried to look up some less actives and got nothing, then we went back to the station to catch the next bus to visit another less active and we missed it.  Another one didn´t come for another two hours!  So we went up to the mission office and took care of some legality stuff, and when we got back I realized I had lost my directions on how to get to erics house.  So I called him up and he freakin canceled the appointment on us!!  We set this whole day aside for this guy and then he cancels!  haha it felt like a waste of time, but then we ended up getting back in time to teach our neighbor ellen.  We showed her the restoration video and she loved it and she committed to read more and then come to the Christmas fireside on the 22nd.  It´s going to be a really cool thing so I hope she really comes!  Then at the end of the lesson elder Kettler prayed for her and she started crying!  It was super cool.  She is an awesome lady and I hope she will keep progressing.  I love my mission and I admit that I have gotten down on myself these last couple weeks, but It is moments like that which make everything else worth it!  We work hard every day and usually we have empty schedules, so we just knock doors or street contact all day.  We haven´t seen any success from this yet but if we keep working hard it will come.  Also a general authority is coming this week to our zone conference!  I´m super excited to meet him and have him teach us.  

 

Elder Hulet

Week 19 Ommoord Netherlands

Thanksgiving dinner with our cool hats on

All three of us crammed in an elivator with our bikes

This last week was transfers and I´m staying in Rotterdam for now.  I have TWO new companions.  Elder Tjong-Ayong and Elder Kettler (we were in the same MTC district).  I love them both.  We all get along really well.  I really hope I will get to stay the whole transfer with them!  There are 5 people going home in the next couple of weeks so there will be a lot of emergency transfers.  It´s usually the threesums that take the hit on those ones, so I really hope they will leave us together.  We have a really awesome Christmas set up with the Teskes so they better not take me out of the Gouda ward yet!!  So anyway this week we had three thanksgiving dinners.  The first one was at the Smiths.  It was so awesome!!  They made us cool little pilgram hats and everything! Then the next one was at Rotterdam 1.  The missionaries were in charge of that one so they invited us and we brought our investigator Dhana with us.  It was super fun!  Our third one was with the stake Presidents family.  These people make up about half of the church here in Holland.  There are 10 brothers and sisters and a couple are stake presidents, a couple are bishops and so on from there!  It's crazy.  We had it in the church so there would be enough room and their family was bigger than the gouda ward.  haha it was crazy!  Sister De Jonge is American so it was a good ol American thanksgiving!  I loved it!  We did a lot of door knocking and contacting this week.  We got quite a few good potentials but no appointments yet.  Dhana moves next week so we really need to get our investigator pool up.  Elder Tjong-Ayong is the Chinese elder for the area so we are supposed to pick up the Chinese investigators, but turns out there really aren't any.... Yet!! Hopefully that will change soon.  Well all in all it was a good week.  

 

Elder Hulet

Week 18 Ommoord Netherlands

Generic email this week sorry.  We didn't get time to email yesterday because we were in Den Boos for a huge bi-zone pday.  They do it every year and it's called the turkey bowl. haha it was fun.  We played football against the other zone.  It has been a while since I have played American football.  We have a bunch of huge guys, one of them is a lineman for SUU, and I thought we would destroy the other zone but they actually killed us.  I accidentally took out sister Aston when I was going for a ball... haha I felt bad but I caught it! So it was worth it.  So this week is transfers and we never got a call Sunday night, so we assumed that we were staying together for another transfer.  Then the zone leaders got a call while we were playing football and found out that Elder Key is going to den Helder and I am staying here!!! I'm super excited!!  Cool thing is,  I'm getting TWO new companions! One of them is elder Tjong-Ayong!!  I love that kid! and I don't know yet who the other one is!  So I also heard a rumor yesterday that my companion from the mtc, Elder Neptune, went home.  I don't know if it is true or not but I freakin hope it’s not true.  I loved elder Neptune and I hung out with him in Brussels last week.  It is super sad that so many people have gone home lately.  I guess my mission is pretty low for missionaries going home, and elder Neptune would be the first one since I've been out.  I am really hoping that he didn't.  

Dad Thank you for the email.  The quotes from modern family are awesome!! My favorite has got to be you can tell a lot about a person from his biography. hahaha I love it.  So did you go to Anchorman 2?  I wanna know if it was good or not. Also will you wish Oy tonx a happy birthday for me?  I heard you did a fantastic job on your talk!  I wish I could have been there to see it!  Mom thank you also for your email. So we actually have 3 thanksgiving dinners set up. I'm super excited for that.  Two of them are with American families! That will be awesome!  Sorry I know you wanted a long email from me this week but we didn't get to email yesterday because we were out of town and then when we got back we had to travel out to Moordrecht to eat with the Teskes.  It's rought when our pdays get cut short, but I'm glad they let us still email you guys.  I love you both and am grateful for all that you have done for me! 

 

Elder Hulet

Week 17 Ommoord Netherlands

Our wild fezant we treated ourselves to.

 Field hockey sticks we bought last pday

 Elder Tjong-Ayong looking like a samari!!

Cinamon bread I made this week.  
Not as good as dads but it was still super good!

The doner I ate in belgium.  It was about twice the size of my head.  
Probably the most delicious thing I've eaten in my life!!

The bike parking garage at the train station in Leiden.  
There are about a bagillion bikes there!

Sintaklaas in the centrum right outside our apartment

Chillin with Zwarte Piet

Sweet picture I took last night on splits with Elder Harvey

I had to give a freakin talk yesterday in church.  So last pday while we were shopping we got a call from broeder Teske and my comp answered it and when he got off he was like hey elder you've gotta give a talk next week on Vertrouw op de heer!  And I was freakin out!! I used every study time for the rest of the week just writing this talk because my dutch still isn't super good, and then Sunday morning on the way to church my comp leans over and tells me that when broeder Teske called he told him that it was up to us to decide which one of us would give the talk.  I wanted to punch him in the face!!! I can't believe he didn't tell me that!! So I made him teach the investigators class in church. haha but anyway I pretty much just read my talk right off the paper and I don't think anyone understood any of it, but it wasn't too bad.  

So sinterklaas came this week.  He's the dutch santa and he has a bunch of black slaves called zwarte piet.  It litterally means black pete. haha  I will try and send some pictures. 

Not much else happened this week.  We just did a bunch of finding and working with memebers and nonmembers and still nothing came from it but hopefully this week we will get a good solid investigator.  I had to go down to Belgium again this week to pick up my ID.  It was a fun trip.  We rode down in the big office van and I got to hang out with my old companion elder Neptune and a couple other elders from the MTC.  So  About one night a week we get together with the other rotterdam elders and go caroling in the park.  It is super fun and they can all sing super good so they cover up my voice nicely.  It is a lot of fun and hopefully we will do it a lot more when it gets closer to Christmas.  

Week 16 Ommoord Netherlands

So this week was pretty average teaching and contacting wise but one pretty crazy thing happened.  We found this guy Rob a couple of weeks ago and he had worked in the states for a long time so his English was perfect.  Anyway he gave us his card and wanted us to call him so we set up an appointment and we went and ate dinner  with him and had a nice little lesson about the church, and it turns out that he isn't interested at all!! We then went with him to his business meeting which was supposed to be half an hour.  It ended up being about two and half hours!  So we show up at this meeting and we realized it was a meeting for a coffee company.  They were kind of offended that we didn't accept the coffee when we walked in but anyway long story short.  It was one of those businesses where they try to get you to sell their product for them and then they say you make commission on it but really your just making more money for the guy up top.  haha we realized this pretty early in the presentation and it was really sad to see how many people fell for it.  Two 18 year old kids could tell it was a scam but they sold this on a ton of people.  We then went and met the guy who was on top of the pyramid and shook his hand and we told him we were Mormons and he was like oh yeah I’ve got tons of you guys drinking my coffee. haha I don't think he knew that we don't drink coffee, but anyway it was a really cool experience! haha We also had splits with the DL this week and I was with elder Tjong-Ayong and I contacted a cape verdian dude and he was super drunk and he gave me a nice big hug. haha you'd be surprised how often you get hugged by drunk people here.  Well sorry there wasn't much spiritual stuff in the email this week.  The people here are so closed off to religion so we work crazy hard and still hardly ever see success.  Hopefully this next week will be better.

 

Elder Hulet

Week 15 Ommoord Netherlands

It was only 11 Euro! So I had to get it but I couldn´t get

golf balls yet.  They are too expensive.

This week was awesome!  First off the Netherlands received the biggest storm they have had in 20 years last week. haha it was insane!! We were riding our bikes in it and I turned a corner and the wind hit me and stopped my bike right in my tracks!  My companion swerved off the road trying not to crash. haha It was insane!! Then later in the week my bike broke.  I took it all apart and it ended up being the stupid chain! I fixed it alright but I think I'm going to have to start saving up for a new chain.  That thing has gone through a lot.  So Angela sent me her talk last week and it talked a lot about tender mercies!  We had just watched the Mormon message on Tender Mercies so this got me thinking about them a lot and then you'll never guess what happened.  Like 5 times in a row we were running late in gouda and we had to be back to rotterdam and on our way into the train stations they have all the times for trains displayed up on big monitors. So we walk into the train station and realize our train left 10 minutes ago.  So we go up and wait by our spoor for the next train and they come about every half hour, but when we get up to the platform we see on the sign that the train happens to be ten minutes late! haha So right as we get there the train is pulling up! This happened seriously like 5 times last week!  If that's not a tender mercy then I don't know what is!  

So we visited the Gruppmans this week and sister gruppman started talking to us about this missionary fireside next month around Christmas and it is going to be awesome!! Both of the Gruppmans are super famous.  They are tight with Elder Uchtdorf and they played for the prophet on his birthday!  Crazy cool.  Oh yeah and they also translated D&C into Russian and did the Russian temple video.  But anyway they are super musically talented and they are going to play at this fireside.  It is mainly for investigators and both me and Elder key got super excited when she was explaining it.  We ended up staying there for like 4 hours planning the thing and it will be perfect for investigators to learn about the gospel.  The next day we got invited by Brother Gruppman to go to his concert and we our investigator Dhana lined up to come with us and he hung out with us all day and then when we were on the way to the concert he got a phone call and had to leave.  Bummer.  But we decided to go to the concert anyway.  It was super cool.  We are going again this week.  I've never really been into classical music but it was amazing!  So anyway we didn't teach a single lesson this week but we knocked a bagillion doors!  We handed out most of our copies of the book of Mormon and we had a lot of cool experiences.  I love knocking on doors.  You never know what you're going to get and yeah we get rejected a lot but we also get the chance to bear our testimonies multiple times on every street.  A lot of people hate knocking doors but me and elder key both love it!  We have so many potential investigators now because of it and I hope we will start to see some success.

 

Elder Hulet

Week 14 Ommoord Netherlands

 Temple conference.  THose are the Noord elders.  
We took and awkward crammed picture because we have been liveing
 in their super small appartment... we thought it was funny!

 Our Fron't door. A sweet picture we stole from the Rotterdam Noord elders
and a quote I took from dad's email!

Me and Dhana! He's wearing my other name tag!

This week was awesome!  So we got all of the problems with our house worked out.  Turns out the heat and electricity was just a blown fuse so we replaced that and then our neighbor came over one day and said she either found my blog or elder shoemaker told her that we were having problems. (she was telling me this in dutch so it was hard to fully understand) She then told us that she really didn't want us to move because we give a sense of calmness to the place and she said she prayed that we wouldn't have to move!! Then about five minutes later she shows up again at our door and hands us the phone and it is our landlord!! No one at the mission office could get in contact with her.  The water company couldn't reach her and neither could the real estate people, but our neighbor did!! How cool is that!! Our landlord was super cool and she kept telling us how sorry she was and she called the water company and it turned out to be a huge misunderstanding, so they got the water turned on that day! Pretty sweet!! We also had temple conference this week! That was really fun.  I'll try to send some pictures.  So on Saturday we met this guy Dhana at the church to teach him and he was actually elder keys investigator in his last area and he travels to rotterdam every week so we are going to teach him too.  He was supposed to meet some guy for a school project but the guy bailed so Dhana just hung out with us all day! He went tracting with us! haha he is a super cool guy! He's been investigating for a long time and he really knows the gospel.  

So yesterday in church the speaker called me up on the stand and made me hold a 20 kelo weight the entire time he talked!! He told me why I was holding it but I couldn't understand him because it was in dutch! haha and he kept looking over at me and saying stuff and I would just smile and laugh... haha I felt like a fool! haha but then he let elder key come up and help me hold it so it wasn't too bad.  All in all it was a pretty great week!

 

Elder Hulet

Week 13 Ommoord Netherlands

My new colega elder key. petting a goat in the middle of rotterdam city.

Cinamon rolls we made this week with oreo icing.

Our district before transfers

Crazy Week!

 

Sent Shoemaker home this week.  It was sad to see him go, but I love my new companion elder Key.  He is a small town hick from Wyoming!! We get along super well and we are always singing country music. haha he's a cool guy.  

So This week has been super weird.  Wednesday while my companion was unpacking I decided to call Carolyn (our only Progressing investigator) and see if we could set up another appointment and she told me she wants to get baptized into another church... So we are down to zero investigators.  That night our power went out in our apartment and then Thursday morning two guys showed up and shut off our water.  We found out that the lady who owns our apartment hasn't paid her bills since January.  We also have no heat. haha So no electricity, heat, or water.  It's great.  We are staying with Rotterdam north elders but their apartment is one little room and whenever the guy above them showers then it rains from the roof. So they are in the process of moving as well.  We have also gotten a lot of other bills in the mail and this lady who owns our place hasn't paid taxes in a long time either and we got a letter saying if she doesn't pay soon then the cops and a repoman will show up and take everything out of the apartment.... our things!!! haha so we try to carry all of our valuables with us just in case.  So the church tried to just pay off her bills for her but they won't allow that without permission from her.  The only thing is they think she is either dead or left the country.  haha its great! Almost no missionary work got done this week because we have to sit in our apartment waiting for calls and such and we have to travel every night and morning from Rotterdam north and back so we haven't gotten much accomplished.  We might move next Saturday to a sweet apartment with the rot north elders.  It’s on an island!! Their bishop told us we would be moving from hell to heaven.  So I'm pretty excited about that.  

Week 12 Ommoord Netherlands

Cool church we went to in Gouda

Our sushi we made with familie kat last night

Pday shopping with elder cluaflin

 Making cake for district meeting

Final product! We didn't have pie pans so we improvised

 



So transfers are this week and I am staying in Ommoord! My companion is going home this week and my new companion will be elder key.  I know nothing about him yet. But that he is only one transfer ahead of me so neither of us speak Dutch.  So this week I had to go to Brussels for some legality stuff and I realized after I got back that I didn't take any pictures.  So sorry mom but I will be going back next month again so I will take some pictures then. This week was pretty slow.  We only taught one lesson.  We brought sister Gruppman along with us to teach Milka and they went off in croation and serbian.  Sister Gruppman practically taught the lesson for us because neither of us speak serbian.  It turns out that missionaries have been visiting milka for 17 years now, and she never saw the importance of baptism until yesterday.  She really opened up!  It was super cool.  I have no idea what they talked about but when it was all over Milka said she wanted to be baptized!! Super cool.  I don't know how sincere she was because she has never kept one commitment that we have left with her so we will just have to see if she can progress.  We also got an oven this week! I'm pretty excited about that!



Week 11 Ommoord Netherlands

This is us at kinderdijk last pday!!  It was super cool!!
There are like 19 Windmills in this little patch of land.  It was way fun!!

This is me and my comp ochteroping! haha

Watching conference!  It was super good!! it´s like Christmas for missionaries!!

I had my first bike crash this week!! haha it was actually a pretty wimpy little crash.  I turned a corner too sharp and slid off the road and fell on to someone’s lawn.  haha it was kind of a lame crash but now I can say I´ve got my crash out of the way!  So this week was kind of slow but last night we were doing some planning and we want to go to the food festival today but we didn´t know anything about it so we decided that this was the perfect opportunity to talk to our neighbor again! So we went over and she looked up a bunch of stuff for us and then when we were about to leave she started talking about her job (she works for the police) and how she doesn´t like it very much because it is very negative and then she just started talking about religion! she told us she wouldn´t have taken the book of mormon from us if she wasn´t planning on reading it!! So she committed to read!! and then she started talking about mormon.org and she wanted to watch some more videos like that!! haha it just so happened to be 10:00 and that is when the Sunday afternoon session of conference starts so we showed her the site and she totally watched conference! We don´t get to watch that session because it is so late for us but It is so cool that she wanted to watch it.  This is the lady that was against the church because of all the stuff she found about us on the internet!! That has got to be one of the coolest things that has happened out here!!  My companion goes home next week!  It’s crazy.  This transfer has flown by!  

Week 10 Ommoord Netherlands

This is last pday.  our zone got together and played foetbal.  It was super fun.

Me and Elder Fonger enjoying our first warm, real, delicious stroop waffels together!

This week was pretty long.  We had a zone conference on Thursday and it was really good but it was like 6 straight hours of teaching.  I got really tired.  President Robinson taught out of revelations and explained verse by verse what was going on so that was really cool and he will finish up the book at mission conference next month.  My companion’s bike broke so we are doing what you call in Dutch ochteroping. It is where your companion sits on the back of your bike and you haul him around. haha it is fun for him but a work out for me and he goes home in a few weeks so he doesn't want to fix his bike.  We will see how that goes.  I also had to go to leiden this week to do some legality stuff and now I'm legal!! It was so nice to see a couple of my buddies from the mtc.  Me and elder Fonger hung out and got a nice warm stroop waffle together.  I will send you a picture.  So last District meeting they chose someone at the first of the meeting to teach the lesson and it ended up being me...  I'm still the new guy so what in the world could I teach a bunch of experienced elders!! Well anyway I talked on the topic of knowledge.  We read in 2 Nephi 9:28-29 and it talks about being learned, and how that can be a good thing or a bad thing.  This didn't really make much sense to me until recently.  We have been talking to a lot of jehovas whitnesses lately and they are super smart.  They know exactly what to say to us to stump us and I can honestly say they know the bible better than we do.  They have a lot of knowledge but that is unrighteous knowledge or falsely interpreted knowledge.  So we had a nice discussion on the differences between the two and we also talked about the saducees and pharacees (I don't know if I spelled those right) and how they were super smart.  They knew the scriptures very well and even Christ said they were not far from the kingdom of god.  But that knowledge was not righteous knowledge.  It was cool to hear all of the other missionaries opinions on what the difference between the two is, but the main thing we got out of it is, like it says in verse 29, To be learned is good, if you harken to the counsels of god.  So the way you can truly know if you have the right type of knowledge or your using that knowledge for the right reasons is if you have the spirit.  It is so important to teach by the spirit for us missionaries and if we can truly teach by the spirit in every lesson than we know that we are harkening unto the counsel of god.  That is kind of a summed up version of what we talked about and I hope that made sense but it was a really cool discussion.  We also did service this week for a family and we painted their house allll day long.  Seriously from ten in the morning until nine at night.  They fed us lunch and then they said they were going to take us out for dinner.  I got super excited to eat at a real Dutch restaurant and then we pulled into a McDonalds... haha it was really good though and they are really nice people.  Not much happened teaching wise this week which isn't very good but it was still a good week and hopefully next week will be better!

 

Elder Hulet

Week 9 Ommoord Netherlands

me with a 68 mustang

me on a golf course

Cool looking church  in Gouda

The kind of books you find in stores here

Ice cream from the icecream truck. it was delicious and you can see the truck in the background

 Cool water tractor they use to clear the canals

So we have been trying to stay close to our neighbor Ellen to just kind of be good neighbors and good examples but she is still against the church because of what she found on the internet. It is super sad because she had so much potential.  We started teaching this Jamaican woman this week named Carolyn and in the first lesson she said she wanted to be baptized!! We have a date set up for October 25th but she said she can't give up smoking.  She really has a long way to go and she has been taught by the missionaries before and she just has a hard time understanding what we teach.  We really have to teach very simply, but we get to teach her in English which is pretty awesome.  Also her husband is super against the church and he always tells us about all of his medical problems when we are over there.  He only has six toes. haha weird. So we decided to bike to Gouda this week and it is super far!! It took us about an hour and a half on a bike and then when we got there I got a call from the AP's saying I needed to mail them some things and they needed to be sent out that day so we were only in gouda for 20 minutes then we had to go back but we ended up getting lost and it took us like 2 hours to get home.  We figured it out and we biked about 65 kilometers.  Not to bad but it was super windy and rainy, so that made it worse.  We are supposed to visit members every single day so we really don't get much time with investigators.  They want us to focus on strengthening the ward more than building it. So we have dinner appointments just about every night next week.  I love it!! We ate at family Teske's this week and sister Teske is American so we got to teach them in English and it was nice to be able to contribute to conversations because I usually have no idea what's going on.  There was a little market thing outside of our apartment this week and it’s pretty much just like a traveling yard sale but we decided to check it out and I bought all three of the lord of the rings books in Dutch!!! It only cost me a buck fifty as well.  So I'm pretty excited about that.  Well it was a successful week and I will keep yall updated on Carolyn.

 

Elder Hulet