Week 48: Uitwisselingen

This was the week of exchanges! We did 2. The first was with the other elders, so I guess it wasn’t really with us because it was the Den Haag elders and the other 2 in the apartment, Elders O en B but it was cool cause we hung out with with Elder Leland that night. He's from Atlanta. He has been out for only 1 transfer so he is pretty green. Then 2 days later, I went on exchanges with him. We exchanged after district meeting then came back and did some work. We also had a dinner appointment that day with a really cool member. He fed us swarma meat, good stuff. On Wednesday we had to stay home the whole day cause someone was coming to fix the heater and they gave us a time gap of 7 hours of when he could probably come.  It worked out well cause the next day we had apartment checks where they check the cleanliness of the apartment, so we used Wednesday to clean up really well. I was in charge of the bathroom which I mopped and made clean. It looked great! We did a good job I must say. The next day, when the senior couple came over they said that it was nice and especially so considereing we are a 4 man.

Thursday Elder Ballard and I had some time and we went to this poorer area of Zoetermeer. We found more success there, the people are more humble and it went well. We gave out 6 BOMs in 4 different languages and found this Russian girl who said we could bring a Russian copy by her sometime. We met her on the street. What's cool is that we have a Russian lady in our ward and we had a dinner appointment with her and her husband a few days ago. We gave her a Russian BOM and asked her to write her testimony in the front of it in Russian! So we will give that to the girl we found. The next day Ballard and I gave out 4 more BOM. Just to put that into perspective, last transfer Ballard and I combined gave out 3 the entire transfer, him in Den Helder and me in Emmen. So we did double that in one day, haha, crazy. We didn't have very many appointments with people so we went around to all our investigators and people and tried to make appointments with them. We called up a bunch of our potentials too and ended up with some good stuff for next week. Also, yesterday at church we got a few dinner appointments for the week.

We went to the farm again which is always good. This time we cleaned out the barn where the 4 baby cows live [or calves, haha]. It was full of straw and hay that was matted together. It was super super heavy and there was so much of it, but it was fun and a good workout.  I have now learned a few hymns on the guitar and EO got his violin from home and he has been teaching me to play that now, haha. It's really really fun, and tbh, pretty easy. Oh and for transfer calls, all of us 4 are staying here, which I think will be really nice for Christmas. I am excited. Elder Rytting is being transferred to Delft which is really close. He is in my district. So it'll be fun to see a friendly and familiar face again. The guy I went on exchanges with, Elder Leland, got transferred to Brugge. I told him he's gonna love it. Emmen is being pink washed, which means it’s being white washed but with sisters, haha.  Zr Wolverton will go there. Elder Nielsen is going to Utrecht. I will most likely see him at the next zone conference!

We had a good lesson with the Turkish family, they are so nice. The husband read almost the whole BOM! The wife had homemade Turkish soup for us when we got there and it was super super delicious. She also gave us a bread and some more homemade Turkish vegetable stuff, so so nice. Then we taught a good lesson and she even gathered her family for it and asked the kids if they wanted to go to our church. So we will hopefully see them one of these days! They have this little daughter who is 3 and she is sooo cute, we played with her for a bit. That reminds me, yesterday was the primary presentations. It was soooo funny, it was a typical primary presentation with loud kids singing rambunctiously and kids being funny. They had the whole chapel laughing, it was great.

Questions:
1.  What is happening with transfers?
2.  Why were you up at 4:00 am last Sunday morning?
3.  Did you teach the Polish lady who is reading the BoM?
4.  Any investigators progressing?  
5.  Do you have many referrals from the “Light the World” campaign?
6.  How do the Dutch celebrate Christmas?
7.  Did you do service at the farm this week?
8.  Does it rain more in the winter?  Is it cold and do you have a warm enough coat?

1. Staying
2. So I was woken up by some loud yelling and door slamming in our building somewhere at like 4:00 am. Then at 4:20 someone rang our doorbell. I looked out our bedroom window which looks onto the area in our front door, no one was there. So I went to the door and no one there either. So I went back to bed. I heard some more yelling in the distance and slamming. It sounded really crazy, tbh. Then at 4:40 someone rang our doorbell again like 3 times really panicky. EO goes to the door and I watch from the window. All I see is this guy talking to Occon, then he comes into our apartment! So I thoguht he was beating Occon or something. Turns out he locked himself out of his apartment and wanted to go through our house to get to his balcony from ours because he is our neighbour. So we let him run through real quick. We were all up at that point and talking about it. Then he knocked on the glass door on our balcony 5 mins later and wanted to walk back though. He told us that his wife is crazy and locked him out. He smelled really bad of alcohol and weed. We let him through once again then decided to leave our apartment so we wouldn’t have to deal with that again but it was 5:00 am and I didn't want to leave so we just stayed. We watched him out the window and he and his wife or girlfriend or whatever were banging on his door with all of their might and they tried to break the door down. They were super super angry and were yelling threats like they were going to kill the person insides mother and dad. It was super bad. They were furious. Then they ran away and slammed another door that went to the stairs and they shattered the glass, crazy. This week we were home and one night he just started cleaning our windows from the outside cause he felt bad, haha. It helped us cause the next day we had apartment checks.
3. We went by yesterday and she wasn’t home, dangit.
4. J still comes to church which is great but we haven't had a lesson with him since...
5. We got one more, haha.
6. I don't actually know. Sinterklaas is pretty big...
7. Yup
8. Rain oh yes. Oooh yes very cold and windy, so cold here. I like it.

Love you lots bye!

Exchanges with Elder Leland