Nicholas Fernhout in the Belgium/Netherlands Mission: Week 36: Staying in Emmen

Okay, so this week a lot of stuff happened but at the same time not much... One of the best things was Zone Conference. I'll get to that in a bit. We also got transfer calls a few nights ago and it wasn't very exciting. Me and ER are staying together here in Emmen. I don't mind staying here though. 1 transfer would be really short so I am happy to stay. I like it here but probs will be done with this city after this transfer. In our zone there aren't too many changes either, just additions. There are so many greenies that a lot of people are training 2 people at the same time! We have three 3 mans in our district which means our district is 13 people now, which is huge! I love having a big district though. I heard about Matt. He is with a very new missionary and will be staying in Roosendaal. He will be a DL [District Leader] there. Exciting for him! He said he's nervous but he will be a great DL!

Okay, so Zone Conference. So it was held in Zoetermeer, which from here takes about 3 hours to get to. And it began at 10:00 am, however, we had to be there at 9:30 am ... so that means our train left at 6:15 am and we still had to travel to the station from the apartment. So that was not going to be fun. We called the ZLs [Zone Leaders] and asked if we could sleep over in some city closer. They said yes and we got to go to a place called Deventer. That is the nicest apartment in the mission! It is huge! The Deventer elders live there as well as the Apeldoorn elders who are also ZLs. So we got to stay there with all 6 of us which was fun. One of the elders was Elder Blackwell from Taber. He's cool. His uncle is Bro Willoughby! So he's been to Lethbridge a lot. I told him where we live and he's like, oh by the Superstore? It was cool to talk to someone who knew Lethbridge. Anyway, the next day we got on a train and ended up in Zoetermeer awhile later.

Before the meeting began I got to reunite with all my buddies. I saw Elder Steele and my two MTC comps Tanner and Cameron and some other people I knew from before. It was so fun! I sat with Elder Cameron during the conference. Good times. I also met Elder Oliphant at the conference, the one that Maddie and Jackie know. He said that they are really good, like really good, professional level. [Elder Oliphant played in the orchestra with the twins in Utah - he played clarinet with Maddie who was the principal clarinet, Jackie the principal flutist].

Okay, the actual conference was great! I loved it, Elder Gary Sabin is a super cool guy. He talked for a total of like 3 or more hours I'd say. I have 3 quotes that I like from him. The first is, "you don't take the easy classes in school to grow." He talked about how if you only took classes like cooking and gym and fun option classes, you won't grow as if you took classes like calculus and sciences and things like that. Just like in life, you grow from the hard times more than from the easy times. And if you look in the BOM it is filled with people who are having hard times, it doesn't touch for very long on the easy times of the people. The second quote is "don't trade what you want the most for what you want in the moment." Simple, but how often do we do this!? A bunch I'd say. We want to get a degree in school or lose weight but we decide to not study and do something more fun, or to eat a piece of cake or something. If we are able to focus on the end and broaden our perspective then we will more often achieve our goals. Think about what you are giving up when you are in the moment of the little decisions. The third quote is, "you'll never be happier than you are grateful." Have you ever seen a happy ungrateful person? Not really. If you are 30 percent thankful you will never be more than 30 percent happy, so simple. So be more thankful for things! He also proposed the thought,"what if every morning you woke up with the things you were thankful for the night before?" What would you say differently? I think my prayers would be a lot longer. But still, express more gratitude and be happier. I took many other notes but these are the main things I liked.

Random things paragraph. First, I have a bunch of music from other missionaries and one of the songs was sung by Tanner Linford, haha. [A missionary in Lethbridge that sang at Nick's missionary farewell and was a contestant on "The Voice"]. Pretty cool to have had that guy over to the house and now I'm listening to him on the misison... Also, we had an investigator ask us if you could give animals a priesthood blessing then asked if we would give her rabbit a blessing. Let's just say we did not end up giving it a blessing, haha. At one of our dinner appointments the family had pet goats in the backyard, I took a video of the 2 young ones fighting. It was pretty cute. A few days ago the JW girls knocked on our door. After they asked some questions about the Bible I asked them if they have ever heard of the BOM, they disappointedly said yes and walked away, haha. I lost the key to my bike lock... but the way it's locked I can still lift it up, so I carried it to the church from the station trying not to look like I stole it, haha. One of the members is gonna help cut the lock off.

Okay, now to read your email. Ya, September is here already! I can't belive how fast it is going! This past week we had, I think 3 [dinner appointments]. They fed us pizza at one, which was delicious. Oh, weird about Texas. There are few people in Sunday school but everyone says so much and has so many comments, the teacher doesn't even have to do anything cause people comment so much. They have to tell people to stop so they can bring up the next section. Ya, that is cool about our Proclamation a while ago, but it's cool they are putting theirs out there now! [Talking about the Church's "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" and the recent Evangelical "Nashville Statement"].

Questions of the week:
1. How was Zone Conference? Did you get your package?
2. How was travelling to Zoetomeer? Was that your first time? Did you see the temple?
3. How was your week? Best thing/worst thing that happened?
4. How is the training going? (I remember you saying that ER he has a good understanding of gospel doctrine).
5. How was the teaching this week? Did you help Tea in her garden again this week? How is the mother/daughter investigators, are they progressing?
6. Can you think of anything I can send you for your birthday?

1. Great, yes, I got my package! Thanks so much! The pants fit great, like perfect and I have worn them everyday since I go them, super nice. All the other stuff was perfect too! I love the food! Also, I thought the Canada lights were funny because it's a Dutch company that makes them and on the back the instructions are in 6 languages and none of them are Dutch... but thanks for those too, they are perfect!

2. It went well, boring to travel there but back was fun. I had been there once before for the Keukenhof Conference a while back. I didn't get to see the temple ... we get to go there early November though!!!

3. The best was Zone Conference and seeing all the missionaries and to hear Elder Sabin. The worst was Tuesday... just a boring day where nobody wanted to talk and we didn't have any appointments. Not too bad though.

4. Decent. ER knows the gospel well and can answer all the crazy questions we get, also my random deep doctrine questions, haha. It's always fun to have those convos. We were up till 1:00 am just talking one night, it was fun. Oh, haha, I didn't even read what was in between the brackets till now.

5. Not great, no we didn't. Ya, we had a lesson with the mum and daughter. They are progressing but everyone else decided to take a break from us this week it seems.

6. No, I can't sorry...

That is all,

Oh, the word is vos which means fox. I don't know if the Vos' already knew that but I didn't...

Elder Fernhout