Week 73 Hengelo Netherlands

Dear Family and friends,

This last week was transfers, so we were busy getting companions packed and unpacked. It also like rained like all week. haha but it was a good week.

I am now with elder Frisby. We have changed out apartment around quite a bit since he got here. We are at the library now and all of the good computers were stolen and all that was left were the standing ones. So we have to stand for our emailing time. haha

One cool experience we had this week was Monday night! We had our usual dinner appointment with the Aldrinks and after it was over he took us to see the new church. They just bought a building for the church here and they found out the alarm in the building had been going off for a few days and making the neighbors super mad. No one had a key to the building though so we got to break in and break the alarm to pieces!! haha It was a lot of fun and it was cool to see the church. It will be like 6 months until they can use it though because it was like an old school or something so they have to build it up like a church first.

Saturday we were out of town all day. We had DLC in the morning and then from there we traveled to apeldoorn for a Christmas concert. A couple of the missionaries participated in it, and it was soo cool!!! One guy sang a song from les misrablés and that was my favorite part! We talked to a lady on the bus ride home who was from England, and it was nice to talk to someone in English again. Not many people over here speak English to us like they would in the west. I guess it's good for my Dutch though.

Groetjes,

Elder Hulet

Week 72 Hengelo Netherlands

The surprised us for elder wiscombes birthday. He goes home this week and they
wanted to give us a real sinter klaas party for his birthday.



Me with the zwarte Pieten!! They put gifts in our shoes.

Last night we got transfer calls and turns out I am staying here in Hengelo! Elder Holt is going to Rotterdam as a ZL with one of his former companions. Super cool for him, and I will be getting elder Frisby! We are from the same group and he was in my last district.  He is super cool so I am excited!

I got a call Friday night from elder Parr and elder Lee in Delft and they were letting me know that the baptism of Josh was this Saturday!! I don't know if you guys remember but josh was a guy that me and elder Parr started to teach two transfers ago. He is from Africa and was in Delft for school. We set the baptismal date with him the night before I was getting transferred and It went through!! I am so happy for him! I just wish I could have been there to see it.

We had 2 investigators show up to church this week!! Belloh and Br. Torosian. They both loved it and I hope they will come next week too.  The work is starting to pick up here a little so I'm excited for this coming transfer!

 

Love Elder Hulet 

 

Week 71 Hengelo Netherlands

We spent the night in Den Haag before our conference and
I stopped in to visit Broeder Scherf

This is us chillin in the business lounge in Rotterdam. We get in with our
NS Business card from the church and we get free drinks and stuff.
We just feel so cool so we had to take some pictures

This week was a lot of fun. We only had like a half a day of actually knocking doors! We had 3 full days of service this week, and then we also had a conference in Rotterdam with elder Moreira a 70. Then we had DLC on Saturday so we had to travel all day for that as well. It was not a good week for numbers but it was a very good week.

The elder Moreira conference was awesome. His English wasn't the best so it made his jokes even better. He kept saying that we need to, "keep the smiling."  Haha this guy’s hobby is to dress up as a clown and go visit people in hospitals! haha he was just such a goofy guy! He told us how we need to apply the things we learn on our mission to life when we get home. He said when he got off the plane he went up to the girl that would become his wife, and he said to her, "you can date all the guys in this stake, but the marriage. That is for me!!" haha then he told her to put his name in her prayers that night and if she feels the happy then they are to be married.  If is works for the book of Mormon then is has to work here as well! haha and he said the most important thing he learned on his mission was following up. So the next morning he called her to follow up, and they ended up getting married. haha Just picture that story being told by a  guy who can't speak very good English. haha then it's more funny.

Saturday night after we got back from DLC we stopped by a less active member named Arend. His girlfriend just had her baby a few weeks ago so we just brought them a little gift, and they invited us to stay for dinner. This guy told us he makes the best panenkoeken in the world so he taught us how to make them. They were super delicious, and when we were done he asked us when the next 5th Sunday was. We told him it was the next day and he said he wants to come and bring panenkoeken for the whole ward.  So Sunday morning we went over early to help him make panenkoeken, and HE CAME TO CHURCH!! It was super cool.  It was also unit conference so the whole stake presidency was there to teach the lessons. It was super awesome! One thing I've learned on my mission is that nothing gets people to church like making food with them.

Elder Hulet 

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