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