Weeks 52 and 53: Christmas, Tweede Kerst, and New Years

Wowowowo I am halfway! It feels really short but at the same time when I think of all that I have done it feels like a long time. No, I didn’t do anything special, just celebrated the new year which was freakin crazy! Ya, the Wassenar Ward members are great at sending photos to you. They know what it is like and a lot of them have missionaries of their own out in the field. So ya, about New Years. We had to be in at 4:30 pm cause it gets really crazy here. People will shoot you with fireworks and will put them in your hood and run away or blow up trashcans with them. All kinds of things. The night of New Years is like the movie The Purge honestly, you're kinda allowed to do whatever. At about 8:00 pm we were chilling in the house setting goals, planning, and playing board games (a game called Ticket to Ride) and all you hear for hours on end is fireworks, nonstop, fun stuff.  They have been going for like 5 days. So we decided to go to the 13th floor of our building and look out. You could see fireworks all over but then at 12:00 we went out and it was probably the coolest thing I have ever seen. It was amazing. We could see Den Haag and in 360 degrees there were fireworks as far as you could see. I have lots of vids and pics of it. But I am convinced that the Netherlands is the best place to be on New Years!

Oh wow sounds really cold. I wish I was there to help scoop up the snow, but here I was doing my own shovelling. We went to the farm and we hadn’t been for 2 weeks so there was a lot of poop to scoop. I thought I was done and then he showed us this other area. I had never seen so much poop, I can’t even describe it, and I had to scoop it all up, it was extremely heavy.  My snow shovelling skills came in handy. I scooped it into wheelbarrows which were then hauled out by the other elders. It was kinda fun and really satisfying.

I miss not being in Hawaii right now… ugh. Oh well. I’m more jealous that all the family is together and I am missing than the fact that they are in Hawaii.

Exciting things about the week are we had a great appointment with a less active member, he said he will come to church and that he really appreciated us coming by. We have had a few good appointments with families A and F. They are progressing and came to a ward Christmas dinner party we had. They loved it! It was really fun for the missionaries as well. The husband really wants books to read but the problem is that he reads only in Turkish, so we downloaded the Gospel Library App for him and now he has access to more books and other materials, he likes it. They haven’t come to church yet on Sunday but they want to, the desire is there.

Questions:
1.  What did you do for Christmas?
2.  What did you do for New Year’s?  Did you see/hear any fireworks?
3.  Did you have many dinner appointments this week?
4.  How is the work?  I imagine it is difficult to see people this time of year.
5.  Did you do anything for your 1 year celebration?
6.  Did you give Elder Ballard his stocking I sent?  Did he like it?
7.  How full is the drive getting?  Do I need to download pictures?
8.  I saw on the forecast for Zoetermeer rain and showers everyday for the week. Are you managing to keep dry?  I hear the Dutch have a lot of different words for rain.

1. We had a lunch appointment with a family in the Wassenar Ward, super cool family. We played some games with their kids and talked. The husband was sick so we gave him a blessing afterwards. Not much else besides looking up a few less actives.
2. ooooh yes, they went non stop for about 5 days. The other elders could not sleep, haha.
3. Yup, mainly with members from the Wassenar Ward which was sick. This one Filipino fam fed us, we had a good time and I learned a few words in Tagalog.
4. Ya it is really hard, everybody just says next year, next year. So we have a lot of appointments this week and next but it has been kinda rough. We went on exchanges with the ZLs [Zone Leaders]. I was with Elder Enger. I have worked with him before back when I was in Emmen. He is really great, we had a fun time. Also found a new investigator so that is always nice. Then Ballard and I found this Polish couple a few days after so we have 3 new investigators this week, so pretty good!
5. Not really
6. Ya he did and yes he did. We used the snow powder on New Years, it was fun.
7. Ya, maybe a good time to take some things off. I have lots to upload, don’t know when I can do it but soon. [He is writing from a library in Den Haag because the computers in the library in Zoetermeer were down and he is also having a district PDay, lunch and activity in Den Haag.  I’ll add pictures to the blog as he sends them.]
8. Ya it is wet here, sucks but it's okay. Ya we are staying mostly dry.

The scripture of the week is Alma 38:5, I was reading and I did the thing that you always used to do when we did family scripture reading, you replaced the name with my name. So I did that and it was nice to see how it was applicable in my life. And like it says, if we put our trust in God then things will work out and I see that so much! not only in my life but in the lives of so many others. If you don’t know what to do just trust God and things will work out!

[What is cool about him sharing this scripture is that I had a scripture in a draft email, but hadn’t sent it yet, that reminded me of him … Alma 38:3… same chapter just a couple of verses earlier.  It reads, “I say unto you, my son, that I have had great joy in thee already, because of thy faithfulness and thy diligence, and thy patience and thy long-suffering among the people of the Zoramites (Zoetermeer).”]

hou doe