Nicholas Fernhout in the Belgium/Netherlands Mission: Week 50: Sneeuw en Sinterklaas!

Well Dec. 5th was Sinterklaas, which is a very popular holiday here. It is like Christmas, however not the same with all of the presents. What normally happens is you and a group of people all put names in a hat or something then you draw a name out secretly and you have to make that person a present out of cardboard or something. Then you write them a poem and get them a real present and you put those things inside of the thing you made. So for example, I had my companion Elder Ballard and he likes basketball, so I made him a shoe and then inside I put my present which was mints and an umbrella. Then I wrote a poem about the present and him and Sinterklaas. It was fun. We went over to our ward mission leader's house to celebrate with the other Zoetermeer missionaries. There were some really well done presents, it was awesome. There was a lot of Dutch treats like pepernoten en kruidnoten en other snoepjes [sweets]. It was great, Dave, WML, dressed up like Zwarte Piet who is Sints little helper. There are a bunch of them, so for example, there is spying Piet who looks in your window to see if you are good and present Piet. We also listened to a lot of typical Sinterklaas songs, or liedjes, in het Nederlands. It was great. A lot of kids dress up for it for school, they go as Black Piet. Oh and the bad kids get shipped off to Spain, ahha. There were Zwarte Piets all over Zoetermeer that day, just walking around, some throwing pepernoten at people, good stuff.

Well we had a lot of appointments set up this week and we had a lot of them fall through sadly. We almost lost someone but Elder Ballard said I saved it. We managed to set up a return appointment and she said she will read in the book. Ya, it has been really cold here and people don’t like to open their door for very long to talk to us or stop on the Streets in the rain or snow… we did have a good appointment with a Surinamese guy who we found last week. He has a really funny Surinamese accent, all his w’s are actually w’s instead of v’s. Anyway, we will see how our next app with him goes. That night we also had a really fun dinner appointment! which is always sick. Then after that we went to an appointment we had with a potential and we called up a member to see if he could meet us there and he did. He made the appointment so much better. He connected wth the investigator really well and now we have a new investigator! sick.

So on Friday Wouter called us and said he needed our help at the farm. So we went over and he had a problem. He has a chute in his barn where food pellets come out and a cow managed to hit it and 3000 kilograms of food poured out… we had to clean it all up, haha. Oh and there are grates where the cows poop goes down and the food fell in there. So much of it that we had to get in there and scoop it out. That was my job. I got some good pics of that. So that was a good start to the day. We got some oliebollen on our way home.

We went to young mens that night, Elder Balthar and I took the tram because it was snowing. Elder Ballard wanted to bike and Elder Occon went with him. Elder Ballard got lost on the bike ride there. It was bad because it was dark and snowing and he doesn’t really know his way there on the bikes. About 20 mins later he showed up and he wasn’t happy, ahha. We helped the young men and women set up the church for Christmas and for the Stake Conference on Sunday. I had a really good time. There were a lot of members there and they had music playing and it was snowing outside and we were setting up for Christmas and people were happy, it was so fun I thought. I helped tie bows for the Christmas tree. It was great. Sunday was crazy, we had Stake Conference with hundreds of members there, way too many for that building. Also, we had almost 40 missionaries, so I saw so many people, it was great. Not only that but it snowed like 6 inches during the conference, which was insane for here. First time that has happened since 2007. So that was great. Then that night we had a dinner appointment and we arranged for 2 investigators to come and it all went perfectly well. They loved it and the members did a really good job. So happy about that! Other than that, the week was full of looking people up and walking in the cold and handing out BOMs, like a lot of them. It was a good week.

Questions:
1. Did you go anywhere this week?
2. How was the work?
3. Has the Samsung camera come in very handy?
4. Have you met Sister Lowry from Pincher Creek?
5. I like your Christmas decorations :) Is that in your living room? Where are the stockings from?
6. You have zone conference this week on the 12th? Do you know if they are doing anything special for it for Christmas? And you think you will get to see Matt? (That will be so awesome…can’t wait to hear about it).
7. Did you have many dinner appointments this week?
8. Did the ward have the Christmas Dinner yet, if so, how was it?

1. Nowhere exciting, Den Haag for district meeting.
2. Great.
3. Ya kinda, I downloaded Zoetermeer map so I can use it.
4. I heard about her but have not met her yet.
5. Ya, haha, they were just in the apartment.
6. Ya we do, tomorrow! probably, idk, and yes I will!
7. Like 2, ya but it's dying down. We used to have a calendar they could sign up on but now that is not allowed so they can’t do that which they don't like so we get fewer appointments.
8. Not yet, soon, I think it's the 23.

That is all, hou doe,

Elder Fernhout