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

Week 14 Ommoord Netherlands

 Temple conference.  THose are the Noord elders.  
We took and awkward crammed picture because we have been liveing
 in their super small appartment... we thought it was funny!

 Our Fron't door. A sweet picture we stole from the Rotterdam Noord elders
and a quote I took from dad's email!

Me and Dhana! He's wearing my other name tag!

This week was awesome!  So we got all of the problems with our house worked out.  Turns out the heat and electricity was just a blown fuse so we replaced that and then our neighbor came over one day and said she either found my blog or elder shoemaker told her that we were having problems. (she was telling me this in dutch so it was hard to fully understand) She then told us that she really didn't want us to move because we give a sense of calmness to the place and she said she prayed that we wouldn't have to move!! Then about five minutes later she shows up again at our door and hands us the phone and it is our landlord!! No one at the mission office could get in contact with her.  The water company couldn't reach her and neither could the real estate people, but our neighbor did!! How cool is that!! Our landlord was super cool and she kept telling us how sorry she was and she called the water company and it turned out to be a huge misunderstanding, so they got the water turned on that day! Pretty sweet!! We also had temple conference this week! That was really fun.  I'll try to send some pictures.  So on Saturday we met this guy Dhana at the church to teach him and he was actually elder keys investigator in his last area and he travels to rotterdam every week so we are going to teach him too.  He was supposed to meet some guy for a school project but the guy bailed so Dhana just hung out with us all day! He went tracting with us! haha he is a super cool guy! He's been investigating for a long time and he really knows the gospel.  

So yesterday in church the speaker called me up on the stand and made me hold a 20 kelo weight the entire time he talked!! He told me why I was holding it but I couldn't understand him because it was in dutch! haha and he kept looking over at me and saying stuff and I would just smile and laugh... haha I felt like a fool! haha but then he let elder key come up and help me hold it so it wasn't too bad.  All in all it was a pretty great week!

 

Elder Hulet

Week 13 Ommoord Netherlands

My new colega elder key. petting a goat in the middle of rotterdam city.

Cinamon rolls we made this week with oreo icing.

Our district before transfers

Crazy Week!

 

Sent Shoemaker home this week.  It was sad to see him go, but I love my new companion elder Key.  He is a small town hick from Wyoming!! We get along super well and we are always singing country music. haha he's a cool guy.  

So This week has been super weird.  Wednesday while my companion was unpacking I decided to call Carolyn (our only Progressing investigator) and see if we could set up another appointment and she told me she wants to get baptized into another church... So we are down to zero investigators.  That night our power went out in our apartment and then Thursday morning two guys showed up and shut off our water.  We found out that the lady who owns our apartment hasn't paid her bills since January.  We also have no heat. haha So no electricity, heat, or water.  It's great.  We are staying with Rotterdam north elders but their apartment is one little room and whenever the guy above them showers then it rains from the roof. So they are in the process of moving as well.  We have also gotten a lot of other bills in the mail and this lady who owns our place hasn't paid taxes in a long time either and we got a letter saying if she doesn't pay soon then the cops and a repoman will show up and take everything out of the apartment.... our things!!! haha so we try to carry all of our valuables with us just in case.  So the church tried to just pay off her bills for her but they won't allow that without permission from her.  The only thing is they think she is either dead or left the country.  haha its great! Almost no missionary work got done this week because we have to sit in our apartment waiting for calls and such and we have to travel every night and morning from Rotterdam north and back so we haven't gotten much accomplished.  We might move next Saturday to a sweet apartment with the rot north elders.  It’s on an island!! Their bishop told us we would be moving from hell to heaven.  So I'm pretty excited about that.  

Week 12 Ommoord Netherlands

Cool church we went to in Gouda

Our sushi we made with familie kat last night

Pday shopping with elder cluaflin

 Making cake for district meeting

Final product! We didn't have pie pans so we improvised

 



So transfers are this week and I am staying in Ommoord! My companion is going home this week and my new companion will be elder key.  I know nothing about him yet. But that he is only one transfer ahead of me so neither of us speak Dutch.  So this week I had to go to Brussels for some legality stuff and I realized after I got back that I didn't take any pictures.  So sorry mom but I will be going back next month again so I will take some pictures then. This week was pretty slow.  We only taught one lesson.  We brought sister Gruppman along with us to teach Milka and they went off in croation and serbian.  Sister Gruppman practically taught the lesson for us because neither of us speak serbian.  It turns out that missionaries have been visiting milka for 17 years now, and she never saw the importance of baptism until yesterday.  She really opened up!  It was super cool.  I have no idea what they talked about but when it was all over Milka said she wanted to be baptized!! Super cool.  I don't know how sincere she was because she has never kept one commitment that we have left with her so we will just have to see if she can progress.  We also got an oven this week! I'm pretty excited about that!