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