Week 70 Hengelo Netherlands

Us with Gagik Torosian. He loves taking pictures of us!

Our new tie knots we made on exchanges!

 Riding in a German train. We got our own little compartment thing to ourselves and some one came by selling drinks so we bought some and we felt like we were on the hogwarts express!!

Lieve Familie en vrienden,     (Dear Family and Friends)

 

We were really busy this week.  We had exchanges with the Enschede elders on Tuesday. That was a lot of fun, because we got to play basketball Tuesday night! It has been a long time since I have played basketball. They split us up into 3 teams, and they called our team "the Americans."  We destroyed them in the first game, but then they realized we are all short and they just took it to the basket every time. We couldn't stop them. All Dutch people are just so tall! But anyway it was a lot of fun.

Wednesday we had to travel to Leiden to spend the night, because Thursday we went to Belgium to get our drivers licenses.  It was so much fun! We bought some Belgium waffles, and some of the Belgium fries. They are so dang good!!  My comp used to be a skateboarder, and we saw some dude skateboarding in this big plein and he went up to talk to the guy, and the next thing we know he had switched shoes with the dude and was doing tricks on his skateboard! haha it was pretty cool.  We also both forgot our cameras so no pictures. I think I forgot my camera last time we went to Belgium as well. Sorry mom.  We will just have to go visit it someday again.

We taught familie torosian this week, and it is so difficult. They don't speak much Dutch at all, and also no English. So most of the time we are just reading out of the book of Mormon with them. They have a pretty sad life, so I think they love it when we come over. They also said to "doe de groetjes aan iederéén!" Or to tell you all that they say hello! I will send a picture of us with them. I don't know if I sent it last week but I will send it this week. Today we are all traveling to Zwolle to have the annual Turkey bowl! It's where we all get together and play American football! I'm super excited! I hope you all have a great thanksgiving week!

 

Love Elder Hulet

Week 69 Hengelo Netherlands

We did not receive a Blog e-mail this week so I will just put part of the letter Ryan sent to his mother.

So sorry there is no big email this week.  We have too many appointments today so our pday is only 2 hours, and we have to do shopping still too. The members here are super cool, and they invite us to everything! We are going to a bday party of zr daniels granddaughter today. And actually last night we had 2 dinner appointments so I almost died because they were both crazy good Indonesian food and it was so good! I ate a ton!

Thank you for the post card. I got it this week, and I love it! I miss those Utah leaves! But fall here is super cool as well.  So about the skating on canals. They like never do that because it never freezes anymore. But maybe this year it will freeze again. It is not too cold, so I'm staying nice and warm. As long as it's not raining it's pretty warm all the time. And yeah the hagelslag is just like sprinkles. We eat them a lot especially on the pancakes.  Do you remember those like dutch biscut things you sent me while I was in the MTC? Whenever a baby is born they eat those with butter and sprinkles on top.  If it's a boy they use blue sprinkles and if a girl then pink.  That's a pretty typical Dutch tradition. Turns out Dutch ovens aren't Dutch. I've been asking around my whole mission and no one knew what they were, but I finally found a member who knew and they said they are American.

I didn't realize how many famous artists are from the Netherlands until I got here. And I've been saying van gogh wrong my whole life! haha

So that referral I got to look up someone’s family here in Hengelo. ya well we looked her up and she didn't even open the door. She yelled from inside and asked who it was and I said elder Hulet and I was sent by zr van der putt to visit you, and she just said to go away. Super lame!

Week 68 Hengelo Netherlands

My new bike!

FREE REFILLS!!!

Sweet Dutch Graffiti

This week we had exchanges with the zone leaders. I was here in Hengelo with elder Corsini, and we decided to get me a new bike because we hadn't been able to find time yet. Soo we go to this run down used bike store, and before we go in elder Corsini just looks and me and says, "don't say anything. I'm going to get you a deal." haha so we walk in and he goes and asks to talk to the manager, and then tells them this whole story about how we are missionaries for our church, and we have saved money our whole lives to be able to come here and share this message with people and someone stole my bike. haha and he's like my companion only has 200 euro with him but he really wants that bike! haha so he ended up talking the guy down fifty euro! haha it was so cool, and it's a pretty nice bike!

On Friday we had a dinner appointment with Br Kabel, and he took us out to KFC! He just wanted us to get a little bit of 'merica for dinner. But he drove us super far to a certain one and we were wondering why but then we walk in and see that they have free refills! That is the first one in the country that I have ever seen with free refills! It was like Christmas.  He also bought us a ton of food, and even made us go back for seconds. haha he was super nice.

The work in this part of the country has the rep of being a little slow.  We don't really have many investigators, so we have been doing a lot of look ups lately.  We looked some formers up this week, and we met this family from Syria. They let us right in and they want to meet with us weekly! It was awesome! They don't speak very good Dutch though, so it is kind of hard to communicate with them.  They said they love the missionaries because we care about them, but whenever they talk to any members all they talk about is baptism baptism baptism.  I kind of thought it was the other way around. haha but anyway they are a super cool family, and I'm excited to start teaching them.

 

Elder Hulet

Week 67 Hengelo Netherlands

Jewish Synagog tour. It is the biggest one in the country.

 My District!

I found platform 9 3/4!! I tried to walk into to pole
and it turns out I am a muggle after all

So this week was transfers! I am now serving here with elder Holt from Canada! We actually have two Canadian elders in the ward now so that's cool I guess. Not a whole lot happened this week. We were pretty busy with meetings and stuff but I do have one story that happened to me Tuesday night. 

So as I woke up on Wednesday morning I went into my study room to work out, and I looked out our window and noticed our shed light was on.  So I yelled at Goates to see if he had turned it on and he said no so I went out to check.  When I looked in the shed I could see elder Goates bike pushed over and mine was gone!! Someone fetchin' broke in to our shed in the middle of the night and stole my bike!!  The worst part is that I had just barely bought a new pair of gloves and they were in my saddle bags with a jacket, an unbrella, and a tool kit.  So it's all gone now! Our new zoneleader is letting me use his bike for a while until I can get a new one so I guess that's a blessing.  I'm carrying around my bike keys still though so if I see this fool riding my bike around Hengelo I can push him off my bike and ride away! haha Or if I see it locked up somewhere I can get it back. I hear though that a lot of the time when people steal bikes here they sale them to bike stores, so maybe while I am looking for a new bike I will run into the old one! ha that would be funny. 

Well the work here in Hengelo is going great. I really like my new companion, and we are going to do work here!!

Luvs

Elder Hulet