Week 68: Wij Vonden een Bosje!

April 16, 2018

It is  nice weather here, almost 20 degrees which was already too hot for me.

Well last Pday I took like a thousand photos. Elder Peck and I went to a city called Bergen Aan Zee which is on the coast of our area and it was so pretty. There is a nice beach and an aquarium as well as some hikes though a forest and as much of mountains as you'll find! Super pretty. We want to go back with our bikes next time. I also found these really cool looking cows that I took some pics and videos of.

Something fun about this week is we had 4 service appointments with members. Luckily we also had beautiful weather! Something really cool about this country is the way they do their vegetable gardens. Often there is not enough room at their house or they live in an apartment so they have a backyard or garden area somewhere else. Someone will buy a big plot of land and sell little pieces of it to other people that they can use for gardening. We did a lot of work like that this week. I took some pics.  One family had a little cabin built on theirs and it was really cool, we even had a lunch inside it. We built a bamboo fence for Zuster Van Rhijn. We dug holes for familie Kleijweg. We moved dirt for Br. Dieduksman and we cleaned up the patio for Zuster Bosch.

Questions:
1. How was the work this week?
2. Did you go anywhere this week?
3. Did you eat okay this week?
4. Do you have a spiritual focus in your district?
5.  What events do you have coming up?  District or zone activities?
6. When do you go to Keukenhoff? (I’m looking forward to the pictures!)
7.  Do you ever get to see or hear from Elder Nielsen?
8.  How was church on Sunday?
9.  What was the best thing that happened this week?
10.  Is Den Helder part of your area as well?  Do you have any plans to go to new areas?

1. Great. Elder Peck is getting used to the Dutchness of people up here.

2. Coast, Bergen Aan Zee and Den Helder and Hippolytushoef, Amsterdam of course.

3. Oh yes. This week we challenged ourselves to only spend 2 euros total on food and I think we can pull it off. We have a lot of dinners this week!

4. As a district we do really well at finding investigators, the problem is getting them to progress to baptism so that is an overall theme lately. We set some zone goals that we are working towards all together.

5. Interviews are this Wednesday and in a few weeks we have Keukenhof again! Zone pday is next pday. We convinced the zone to come to Bergen Aan Zee for zone pday. That’ll be nice for us.

6. Soon, end of the month.

7. I met a lady who is in his ward and she took pics of me for him haha and told him hi for me. She is really nice. She was at one of the member's houses. He is in Den Haag.

8. Great. Elder Peck gave a good talk.

9. Pday. It was so different that what we normally see. The little hills were so weird, we joked that we never use our uphill muscles so they are really weak, haha.

11. Den Helder is ours too. We actually got a new map to hang on the wall and began a project of putting everyone in the area book up there so we can contact old investigators to see if we can get things going again. Lots of comments in the teaching records that they just got busy and couldn’t meet so it would be good to come back in 6 months and no one did that so we will try and see what happens. I think it'll be really good!

Okay that is all,
Elder Fernhout

yak cows :)

helping to garden

Week 67: Overplaatsingen!

April 9, 2018

Transfer day was fun, I got to go to Amsterdam Centraal and chill for a few hours with some other missionaries until Elder Peck got here. The next 3 days we had service planned each day and they all fell through… but luckily I was able to make new appointments for this upcoming week.  I had to do a baptismal interview for this 10 year old girl though she wasn’t feeling ready so we didn’t do the interview but it turned into a lesson. It went well. She and her mum are form Brazil so I was able to use the little bit of Portuguese I know to get along with them. She set a new date to be baptized, the 21st of this month so that is good!

When I first got to Alkmaar this one lady took us out to eat at a restaurant and it was really good and she took us again with Elder Peck. It was fun to go there again. The restaurant is like Hu Hot, so good! We got to watch some more General Conference talks at our dinner appointment. The next day we had to go to Amsterdam for a meeting with the Zone Leaders to set some goals and come up with some plans for things and that took awhile but was good. Then we came home and we had an appointment fall through so we worked in the area for a bit. It was a beautiful day though and it was so nice to be outside!

Sunday was great because we had some tourists at church, and some were from Pincher Creek, so that was special! I translated for 9 people which was nice because it kept my mind off of how hungry I was because it was Fast Sunday. Translating is weird but enjoyable, and if you mess up they don’t know, haha. We also went up to Den Helder to see M. He is doing well.

Elder Peck is from Rexburg, Idaho, and is pretty chill. He is cool and a very positive, smiley person. His last city was Gent, so Belgium, and his last comp was Elder Adema. So now he is serving in Alkmaar with Elder Adema's grandparents. The beginning of the week was spent helping Elder Crow get a few things finished and pack. He painted the back of a guitar. It looks really good, I’ll include a photo of it.

Questions:
1. How are your investigators?
2. Tell me about your new comp!  Can he cook, haha?
3. Did you travel anywhere this week?
4.  You mentioned last week you had a lot of appointments, was it a busy week?
5.  Did you have many dinner appointments?
6.  Did you get to finish watching the General Conference sessions?
7.  Do you have any insights to share or spiritual thoughts from your studies or scripture reading?

1. Great, a lot of dropped appointments though.
2. He can't cook, haha... but he can play guitar so I enjoy that a lot!
3. Amsterdam, Den Helder, the usual.
4. Should have been!
5. 2 and this week we only have 3...
6. I have half a session to go.
7. I read the story of Ammon and we can learn a lot from him and the way he acted.

I think that’s all,
Elder Fernhout

Guitar Elder Crow Painted

Saying goodbye to the Zusters at transfers

Transfer Day

Missionary work in the BNL Mission  

Week 65: HARING

(March 26, 2018)
Last pday was great. We traveled to the museum and took some pics with the “I Heart Amsterdam” letters, so that was cool. Then we went inside the Rijksmuseum. I was so happy to go there! First of all it was a super duper cool building and second I had never been to a really nice art museum. I also always love going to Amsterdam. I took tons of pics inside the museum, and yes I took some of the Van Gogh paintings that were there. There were 3. There was also some other pretty famous paintings. They had some really huge massive ones. They had other cool things like ship parts and miniature models as well as a whole room of cool old weapons. One of my favourite things though was the library of cool old books they have all about art, I think. I also took pics of that. I loved it, there was so much to see. However, the coolest thing that I saw was a little self portrait that I found. It was done by a guy named Edgar Fernhout… how cool is that!!! I need to learn more about this guy haha! I took a few pics of that too. So weird to find my name in the Rijks Museum! I wonder if his temple work is done...?

The weather has been okay, not too bad not too great. It hasn’t been too wet so that’s nice. Ya, I am also really pumped for General Conference! It is at the church and they are going to have some food for us! They will have stammpot in the evening and a solid breakfast for the priesthood session. Sadly, one of the session goes from 10:00 pm to 12:00 pm Central European Time so we won’t be able to watch that and it will have to be done on a different day. I don’t think they will do anything cool here like the parade they had in Belgium last year. It'll just be like back home I think.

M. dropped us, that was expected though. We had a great lesson with K. She is very positive and made a comment that she has found the true church, she is so cool. We didn't have that many appointments this week which means we had time to find and find we did. We found 17 people this week, it is was crazy. That's the most I have had in a week. So the next 2 weeks we have now a lot of appointments! We had an app with this guy who spoke Arabic and pretty much zero English or Dutch. Our entire lesson was translated through someone on the phone he called. It worked well and we gave him an Arabic BOM. He liked it and said he would read it. I am learning a few Arabic words because we meet so many people.

Then on Friday we had interviews and I got my package and then we traveled home to Alkmaar with the Zaandam elders. We went on exchanges and all worked in Alkmaar. It was great. I was with Elder Duwors. He is from all over cause his dad is in the military but mainly from the Seattle area. He is cool, we worked hard and found 5 new investigators. We got lost looking up a referral but it was good. We treated them to pizza for dinner. Saturday we had volleyball which is always fun! Sunday we had potluck which is my favourite. We also had a good app with an African family. They all speak Dutch and French, except the wife who only speaks French. It was fun to speak the very limited French I know but if you can say ca va and allez you are set. They thought that was funny. They got really excited when we explained the Restoration and the BOM. We gave her a French copy and she reads it a decent amount! Oh I forgot we had a dinner app with fam M. and they heard I haven’t had haring yet so they got some for me and I finally ate some. It was really gross but honestly not as bad as I thought it would be... I definitely only had the one bite though…got some classic pics.

Questions:
1.  Did you have any activities this week where you could get the Easter parcel I sent?
2.  Did you go anywhere this week?  Anywhere new?
3.  How is the missionary work going in your area?
4.  Tell me about what you did last PDay, did you make it to the museum?!
5.  Did you have many dinner appointments this week?  (Stammpot and worst sounds so good!)
6.  Transfer calls are next weekend?  When will you know what is happening?
7.  Where will you watch General Conference next week? At the church or a members house?
8.  Did you get a new bike mileage counter?
9.  How has the weather been?

1. yes interviews. thanks for the package! very much appreciated!
2. nowhere new. biked through a cool forest but that is all.
3. great lately! hope I don’t get transferred.
4. yes and I loved it. took many photos. met some Canadians, one from Red Deer.
5. nope but it was all good.
6. Saturday. I will probs stay here with a new comp.
7. at the church but then we will miss some sessions so we will watch that here at the church on another day .
8. I actually found my old one!!! I was so happy .
9. warming up a bit.