Nicholas Fernhout in the Belgium/Netherlands Mission: Week 39: A Visit to Nieuw Amsterdam and Deventer

Ya, I think so too! [How special it is that he is serving in the area his ancestors are from]. Ya, it does help me feel more connected to the area, I feel like I want to go out and find these relatives. One of the members here that I told about the Fernhouts looked up the grave and called the people and someone here is paying for the upkeep or something like that. It is paid for forever so it will be there a long time. I want to find out who these people are and tell them who I am, haha. I went to Nieuw Amsterdam and took photos of the graves, I’ll send them to you. Also, I found another Fernhout but I don’t think I am closely related. Ya, I searched all the graves in the Netherlands and there are a lot of Fernhouts. All over though.

Well, this week was not going to be very busy or exciting one but it turned out to be! We got a call telling us we would be going on exchanges with the ZLs [Zone Leaders] and both Elder Rytting and I would be going to Apeldoorn to work there, for a 48 hour exchange! The ZLs are great so I knew it was going to be fun and not only that but they actually live in Deventer with 2 other missionaries so there would be 6 of us there. The other two missionaries are also really cool guys, one of them (Elder Blackwell) is from Magrath. So we talked about home a lot and how hard it is to explain coulees to people, haha. Also one of the best moments of the exchange was when we were talking about Raymond then like 10 seconds after the conversation we both, in perfect sync, whispered under our breath “fetch Raymond" it was so perfect. So it was really fun to hang out with all those elders. We were going to head there Thursday morning but instead went on Wednesday night. It turned out that they were just finishing exchanges with 2 other missionaries so for the first night there were 8 of us!!! But the apartment is massive so we all fit just fine. One of the other elders was Elder Chamberlin, who is awesome. He was in my district last transfer and he was also in Matt's [MTC] group. That night we watched the 4 original missionaries continue their game of Axis and Allies. Great time. We stayed up a little longer than we probably should have, haha.

The next day we did studies and had a chill morning, then after lunch we went off to Apeldoorn to do some work. I went with E. Enger and E. Rytting with E. Grondel for the day. We all went to this one neighbourhood then split there and went door knocking. We got a lot of work done and it was fun because EE is personable and has good Dutch. We had some good convos with people but no new investigators. The other 2 elders, however, found 2 new investigators so that was good. After about 1.5 hrs we went to another neighbourhood for a bit then to the centrum to street contact people. After that we got ijs! This week is cheap pizza week so on the way home we picked up some pizza for dinner. The next day was almost the same except we went to the church for a bit. That night we played the 6 man board game. I got betrayed by my own companion, however, the alliance I made with EE and EB went well and EE ended up winning. Anyway, I had a great time. The next morning we left to go back home to Emmen.

Okay, on another note, I finished the Doctrine and Covenants in 9 days total. I had never read it that intensely before, only once for seminary… so it was nice to read it all again so fast. I will now begin the New Testament again which I am excited for. Although I really want to read the BOM again, haha. I will do that right after the New Testament. What I think is cool about the BOM is that it is much more pure than the Bible… the Bible has been translated so many times, for example the Holy Ghost is only mentioned 90 times in the New Testament and only a handful of times in the Old Testament. In the BOM it is mentioned over 300 times. The BOM is straight from the original words of prophets and translated one time to English by another prophet of God. I think that was cool.

Lately I have realized that if I decide to workout in the mornings it doesn’t happen so instead I workout at nights, which goes a lot better. For cardio I would like to go running but ER does not so instead I skip rope in the apartment which I really enjoy. Then in between I do exercises like pull ups and push ups and curls and dips. Skipping rope is great for indoors and I can do it in our apartment cause we are on the bottom floor.

After our exchange we came back and did some service for T. It went well, we helped her build a new path of bricks which was hard cause the path was curved so we had to get creative. Then after, I climbed on her roof to put something up there so her vines could grow… then I fixed her fence, just a bunch of random projects that needed doing. She then made us dinner which was her really good veggie and meat and rice dish. Healthy and tasty!

Questions:

1. How is your journal streak going? Do you still write when you are staying over in other cities?
2. How did the work go this week?
3. Did you get to any other cities this week? Did you go see your 2x great grandfather's gravesite in Nieuw Amsterdam?
4. Where is your zone conference this week?
5. When are transfer calls?
6. Did you have some good dinner appointments this week? Do you have good visits with the families?
7. What topic are you studying in your personal study time?

1. 100 percent still, sometimes I have to catch up the day after but it's still good. Ya, when we sleep over sometimes I just write on a paper I find and then tape it into my journal when I get back.

2. Well we worked a lot in Apeldoorn, but it went well there. We are using this survey that works really well.

3. Yes and I went there already, haha. It’s only 15 min away and we worked in that little dorpje [town] for the day so it all worked out well.

4. It will be in Zwolle which is nice, not too far away. Also I get to see Elder Furniss!!

5. Saturday the 14 of next month.

6. No we didn't but we were gone, just T. This next week though we have some good ones!! Also, I am pumped for General Conference!!

7. The language and the D&C, and also how to explain the Gospel on door contacts. All kinds of things.

The word this week is, if you want to say “is that allowed?” you just say “mag dat” which literally translated means "may that?" It's nice when Dutch is shorter than English!

That is all, tot ziens.

Hou doe

Elder Fernhout