Week 41 Almere Netherlands

This last week was temple conference! It was super cool as usual but I noticed a big improvement in my Dutch. I actually understood everything that was going on unlike the last temple conference.  We then went to this place called keukenhof.  If you haven't heard of it, it is like the most famous tulip garden here. It's like Disneyland for these people.  I'm not a big flower fan but it was super cool!! We got to hang out there for the rest of the day.  It was super exciting! I will send pictures of the tulips mom so don't worry. 

With the big Facebook project here, our mission has been receiving a lot of referrals lately.  We received one last week for this little town called Zeewolde, which we didn't even know was in our area.  We had to travel for about 45 minutes on a bus to get there and then they weren't even home!!! I hate when that happens. We then went back to the bus stop to catch a bus back to Almere.  The way the busses work in this country is you get off on the right side of the street and if you want to take the same bus back then you just go to the opposite side of the street, and it picks you up there.  So we did this and we got on the bus and about 20 minutes later we realized we weren't going the right direction!! haha we actually traveled into the next zone... We eventually made it to another bus station where we could find a bus back to Almere, but we were an hour and a half late to our appointment.  We felt super bad, but not going to lie it was actually quite a fun trip! Oh yeah and also we left our card behind when we were looking up the referral, and a lady called us while we were on the bus.  She told us that her husband doesn’t know what he is doing on computers and he just clicks on random things and she wants us to leave her alone. We get stuff like that all the time.  The church is starting to put ads on Facebook now, and I feel like only stupid people click on the ads on Facebook. So What can you expect!

Elder Hulet

Week 40 Almere Netherlands

Our Stand on kings day!
 

This last Saturday was kings day here in the Netherlands and it is the craziest holiday!!! Everyone dresses up in orange and the streets are just like one big yard sale.  In years past they would just give the missionary’s king’s day as a pday, but this year things changed and they asked us to set up a stand in the centrum.  So our ward mission leader traveled all around the Netherlands to pick up stuff for us on Friday so we could have enough things to give out for Saturday.  It was pretty cool.  We had to be out at like 7 in the morning to find a spot for the stand, and we were out until about 4 in the afternoon. It was the longest day of contacting ever!! But it was super cool and we got a few good potentials out of it. 

Sunday we had another less active show up for church! It is so cool to see members get reactivated.  We have had 3 come back to activity this transfer, and we have taught 0 investigator lessons. haha we had to call in numbers last night and our district leader was really worried that we were not working.  They only take numbers for certain things so when we decide to focus on members and less actives it makes our numbers go down.  We had a really busy week though and we set up a lot of return appointments for this week so I'm excited to see what happens.

Elder Hulet

Week 39 Almere Netherlands

This week we had 3 days of service in a row!  This is the time of year here where everyone is starting to work on their gardens, so they go to the missionaries for help.  I always look forward to service days. 

Farley fed us this week. We went over early and helped him cook, but we weren't much help because we had no idea what we were doing.  One of the things we ate was fish. I will send you a picture of it, but it is the first time I have eaten an entire fish like head and all. haha it actually was pretty good though! 

So a big thing they have been working on here in the Netherlands is the new church website and Facebook page.  It is a big deal, and they are starting to do Mormon messages that are all in Dutch.  The first one is the conversion story of someone in our ward, and they asked us to be the missionaries in it so I'm practically going to be famous. No big deal. I will let you know when it's finished so you can see it.

One quick random thing that happened this week was some guy on the street came up to us, as we were talking to a member that we happened to run into, and he showed us his diaper. haha he told us how he was always prepared with an extra one! haha it was funny.  

Yesterday was a great day! Ivan came to church!!!! He is a less active that we have been working with and he came to sacrament meeting! He is from Uganda and doesn't speak Dutch so I had to translate for him during sacrament meeting, but luckily one of the talks was in English so that was nice for him.  We then had a dinner appointment with Fam. Seel.  They are the American family in the ward and it was like the best dinner appointment ever!!! You have no idea how nice it is to talk in English. You don't have to try hard at all to keep conversation going and you understand every word they say!! haha I really enjoyed it. They also had ranch dressing so I was in heaven.  

Elder Hulet

Week 38 Almere Netherlands

Mom you wanted pictures of me and my bike so heres 2!

We made the chocolate cake that Audrey sent me!
And yes it was Delicious!

We were super busy like every day this week.  We got a call Monday night that we needed to help this family in the ward move on Tuesday, so had to help them all Tuesday and some of Wednesday. Turns out they had to be out of their house within 24 hours, so it was super stressful for them.  They had like 50 cats and dogs and rats too.  We ended up getting the sisters and the hilversum elders to come and help us too, so we had a lot of help but they still didn’t quite get everything out on time. 

I enjoy doing service and helping people out. That has to be my favorite part of missionary work, because it is just something different to do and I feel like people appreciate it more than when we bug them on the streets. haha so then Wednesday we had the funeral for zuster van vliet.  She is one of the ward mission leader’s wives.  Broeder Van Vliet wanted it to be a missionary opportunity, because most of their family aren't members.  So he had us set out a table with book of Mormons and liahonas.  Then in his talk, he was the only family member not crying and he just THREW DOWN on everyone else with the plan of salvation. It was super cool.  He is such a positive guy.

Then after the service we had to stay for the rest of the day cleaning, which was fun, but it was a lot of cleaning.  Then Thursday we had to travel to rijswijk to pick up my companions ID card, and that took most of the day and when we got there they didn't even have it yet, so it was a waste. 

We had a few really good lessons with Farley this week.  We are on the post baptism lessons so we got to teach eternal families this week, and we showed him the church film "together forever". I don't know if any of you have seen it but it was like made in the 80's haha so it was super cheesy. He actually ended up falling asleep during it. haha it was funny.

Week 37 Almere Netherlands

This last week was a lot of fun! Wednesday I got a new companion Elder Fowkes.  He is in the same mtc group as me so I already knew him a little.  I am sure we will have an awesome transfer together.

 

So conference was so dang awesome!! Because of the time change here we had three sessions of conference yesterday so we had our studies then just hung out at the church all day long watching conference!!  I wish we could do that like every week.  So Saturday night one of the senior elders came up to me and told me this story about Jabari Parker. He knows I follow basketball so he thought I would be interested.  Anyway he showed me this article that he printed off the internet and it said that the NBA had worked out a deal with the church so that Parker could be drafted into the NBA and wherever he gets drafted is where he will be called on a mission. Then we read further and it talked about how they would have one night a year called Mormon night and they would give out free copies of the book of Mormon to everyone in the stadium, and a bunch of things like that! haha then Sunday when we were watching the priesthood session president Monson said a quote from Jabari Parker, so I was like so convinced that this was true! Then I found out Sunday night that it was a big April fools joke and I felt pretty dumb.. haha it was pretty funny though! The article sounded so convincing and then when pres Monson talked about him I just knew it was true!! haha but anyway it made for a good story! 

 

We didn't have much else going on this week.  We did a lot of finding, as usual, and we had one day of service at a handicap farm place that we have worked at before.  I love service so I hope we will get some more of it soon!

 

Elder Hulet

P.S.

So farley went to the temple this week!! I forgot to say that in the other email but he got to go for the ward temple day and he loved it! He's so dang cool! He makes a perty dern gud mormon!

Week 36 Almere Netherlands

So it turn out baptisms are super bad for numbers.  We taught less lessons this week than I have in months. haha we turn in our numbers every Sunday night and they were pretty pathetic this week.  Once you get someone baptized your lessons like cut in half. So I’ve decided to stop baptizing on my mission because numbers are the only thing that matter! haha I'm just kidding. It just shows that we need to find another Farley!

 

So transfer calls came last night and I'm staying here in Almere but elder Schmidt is going to Rotterdam!!! I'm so excited! He's going to my greenie city! Well he is Rotterdam north and I was in Ommoord but they are right next to each other so that's pretty exciting.  I will be getting elder Fowkes as my companion. Don't really know too much about him yet but I'm excited.

Not a lot happened this week.  We had a zone training and learned some cool new stuff, taught a few other lessons, and just did a lot of finding.  I've had a lot of fun here in Almere with elder Schmidt and it will be sad to see him go, but one thing my mission has taught me is to get used to change because as soon as you start to get comfortable transfers come.

Elder Hulet

 

Week 35 Almere Netherlands

A whole lot happened this last week in preparation for the baptism.  We met with Farley every day and made sure he was ready for this big step he was taking.  So Friday is a big Netherlands holiday type thing where everyone in the country is supposed to do some sort of service and our ward mission leader, broeder Kat, set us up to help on a farm run by handicap people.  So Friday morning we headed out for service. The whole week had been super nice weather but then on Friday the rain wouldn't stop coming.  It was crazy!!  We just ran wheelbarrow loads full of bricks and dirt for about 4 hours. Farley was there too and he really enjoyed himself.  He grew up on a farm in curacoa so he was telling me all about the chickens and all that good stuff!  Then after the service project we ran home and showered then headed back to the church to start getting ready.  We made sure to fill the font on time because we were in charge of filling it for another baptism and we started it way too late so we remembered this time to make sure to get it going on time.  

Farley invited a bunch of people to the baptism and they started showing up around 6,30, and it didn't even start until 7,30.  It was super cool that so many friends and family of his came.  Me and Elder Schmidt got to be the witnesses so we stood up on the front row.  A priest named Thomas was the one who did the baptizing, so we took him on a few joint teaches last week so they could get to know each other. But anyway when Farley came up out of the water he stuck his hands up in the air and said hallelujah!  Haha it was so awesome! And when he grabbed my hand from over the edge of the font I could see the tears in his eyes!  That is one of the most memorable experiences of my mission.  He was so prepared and ready to make this covenant. He was confirmed on Sunday and that was also amazing! He is going to be an awesome member of the church.

 

Love,

Elder Hulet