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

Week 8 Ommoord Netherlands

This is off of the balcony at our appartment



my companion



That cool bike is called a bakfiets. you see like whole families in these things all the time



This is me today walking by a super tall guy in the mall

This week was great.  We only taught one lesson but we keep giving out tons of book of Mormons.  We taught this lady named Filipa and she speaks papimento.  It is a really cool language but she had been taught like ten years ago by the missionaries and she won't tell us why things didn't progress but she wants to take the lessons again so we are excited, but in our first lesson she just went off about weird bible stuff and she said she would go to church and then she didn't show up.  So our neighbor Ellen was really interested last week but she wanted to know more so she googled our church and she found a bunch of antimormon sites and she is really doubting the church now.  It is super sad but we gave her a mormon.org card and told her to look it up and find some true info on the church and she said that she would.  I hope that doesn't ruin her chances.  She totally believed that god put her in our path so that we could teach her and now she is believing the internet instead.  So on Sunday the craziest thing happened at church.  We were sitting there in priesthood and I couldn't really understand too much but someone said a stupid comment and it got everyone mad and it turned into a huge argument and Broeder Goetals (our ward mission leader) stormed out of the room and slammed the door super loud.  It was the weirdest priesthood meeting I have ever been too.  I'm kind of glad that we didn't have any investigators there this week because that would have scared them away.  Church here is a whole lot different than in Utah.  It's kind of sad actually.  I love the people but there are some weirdies for sure.  I don't know what our investigators will think of church.  We might have to explain to them to not judge the church by the members.

(From Roger: I asked Ryan about his thoughts on obedience)

So I was actually thinking about obedience yesterday, and that talk by I think it was L Tom Perry and he says Obedience to law is liberty.  I studied the word liberty for a while and obedience really is an interesting topic.  It is hard sometimes to be exactly obedient to mission rules but Even though it is hard, it is totally worth it.  I slept in last week for like fifteen minutes on accident. I got up on time but fell back asleep while I was praying and even a little thing like that made a big difference in my day.  I couldn't study as well, I got frustrated a lot quicker, and I had a really hard time with the language that day.  It's kind of stupid actually how this works.  We know that if we are obedient and submit ourselves to gods will then we will be happy.  So why is it so hard to be obedient? I think that is the natural man in us that tell us if we do things our way then we will be happier and it is easy to be lazy and give into that temptation but when we are obedient we receive more blessings and more liberty and freedom. I don't know if that really makes sense, and I could write a lot more about it if I had more time but this was what I talked on for my farewell and I related it to golf and how it is easy to cheat in golf because you are your own ref. Remember? Anyway It is a very good topic and those are a few of my thoughts on it.  Thank you for the "What about Bob" quote too. haha its awesome.  I love you and miss you.

 

Elder Hulet

Week 7 Ommoord Netherlands

I only have like 20 minutes to write so this is the only email you will get this week. Sorry mom. my first week was great! I am serving in Ommoord with elder Shoemaker.  It is a new area that we are opening and missionaries haven't been here for a long time.  The people here are super prepared though.  We have given out like 15 book of mormons in less than a week. Our apartment is really nice.  We live on the third floor. Well it’s really the fourth because the floors here start with the 0th floor. Weird.  Well anyway I have a hard time with my companion.  He is super good at the language but we are very different and he never laughs at my jokes. haha I think he thinks I’m an idiot.  But he is teaching me a lot so he’s not too bad.  So we had to travel here from Leiden and we travel by trains but they didn't give me the card that I need to get on the trains and they said they would send me one in two weeks which sucks because the train tickets are really expensive and we ride them every day. So I am completely out of money and my credit card doesn't work here.  My debit will only work in some atms and it is seriously a miracle that it worked when I bought my bike.  I only had 100 euro and the cheapest bike we could find was 175 so I tried my card and it went through! It was awesome.  The food sucks.  All it is, is dry bread with cheese and if you’re lucky some meat too.  I eat sandwiches every day and this stuff called speculoos is sooo good.  It is like peanut butter but it tastes like gram crackers.  I make speculoos and nutella sandwiches all the time.  So we have I think 16 potential investigators and two progressing already.  All we did was contact last week and we are going to start getting appointments this week.  I will hurry and share one story that happened a few days ago.  we got home around 9 and my companions bike was low so we decided to ask the neighbor for a bike pump and as soon as she opened the door she got super excited and she invited her friend over and she told us that a few weeks ago she met this lady (now her best friend) and they were both having a lot of problems in their life’s and they got into a deep conversation about religion. Her friend decided to pray and she asked for a sign and 14 hours later someone gave her a bible and then she met us and they were so excited to hear about the book of mormon and they both committed to come to church this week. It is soo cool.  I couldn't understand anything that was going on becuase I really don't speak any dutch at all but my companion told  me all about what they were saying and I could see the excitement in their eyes.  It was really cool.  I also had to introduce myself in sacrament meeting yesterday and teach part of a lesson on the doctrine and covenants.  I messed up a lot and I'm pretty sure no one understood me.  It was a good learning experience though. Sorry I'm out of time.  I will try and write everyone soon but the world stamps are super expensive and I’m out of money so I might have to wait until next week.  

 

Landed in the Netherlands

Sept 3rd 2013
Message from Sister Robinson's Facebook page

We have 28 new missionaries from the Provo MTC in the Belgium Netherlands Mission. They arrived Tuesday and we are impressed with their preparation, testimonies, and their commitment to their calling as Missionaries. We are so very happy to have them in the mission and look forward to their service to the people of Belgium and Netherlands. This continued 'flood' of missionaries is a blessing and miracle. They are so excited to be here, and we are so excited to have them here.

Last Week in the MTC

Here is a picture of two of our teachers, Brother Lystrup and Brother Norton. No letter this week just pictures.