Tuesday we had zone training which is just zone conference but with only our 1 zone when it is normally with at least 2 together. It was nice though with only a few people. I got to see Elder Blackwell which is always fun. He is almost done his mission! The conference was very spiritual and we all felt that. The assistants did a great job. That took the entire day to travel there and back and everything. Thursday we went on exchanges with the Amsterdam elders. Elder Crow and I decided to both go there. We got there a bit later than planned. I was with Elder Flores from El Salvador. It was fun to work with him because he is a very sincere and hard working, spiritual guy. We were street contacting and this one guy was like oh hey I know that church that's an American church and you are both from SLC right??? It gave us great satisfaction to say that not only are we both not from Utah but not even from America! We worked on the same street for like 1.5 hrs and got wrecked so went to another street where he says they usually have decent success. So we went there and also got destroyed… just wasn't our day. That night we had some fun because Amsterdam is a 4 man and plus us makes 6 total. They have a bunch of guitars and this one thing called a pickup which basically turns your aucustic guitar into electric. That is super fun!!!
We came back to Alkmaar the next day in time to travel to Zuster VR's to help her in her backyard. We cleared a whole bunch of bamboo out and are building a little fence out of it. I had to saw this bush out of the ground. It is always interesting there. But it is fun and feels good to get the place looking good! Service is great, especially on the mission. The next day was called NLDOETDAG, which is just a day when the whole country focuses on going out and doing service. You sign up to projects and it's great. We went to this one school, elementary, and helped clean up the front area which was a little park. We trimmed this one tree structure and put stones in the ground. The coolest part was that halfway through when we were eating lunch (it lasted 8 hours), this random lady comes in and told us they were having a reunion from a class that was together at this school 30 or more years ago. Coolest part was that one of the people coming was Marco Borsato, a famous Dutch singer!!! So yes I got to see him. That was sick. I didn’t get a photo though… The service went well and I was able to talk with this one lady about the gospel. She was extremely respectful and at lunch asked if we wanted to pray, so we did! That was cool. Her little daughter who came asked why we do that and she gave a little explanation. I gave her our number and told her to call if she has questions or wants service done. That night we played volleyball with some members of the ward. That's always super fun.
Sunday was good. I give a talk next week. The weather has definitely gotten better. It reached 15 degrees on Saturday!!! Wow. I know right it, is beginning to set in for me too. I have been gone a long time haha. I think back on Brugge and the people there and it feels like that was people from back home. It was so long ago. Sunday we had Elder Ademas parents come from Emmen, it was really nice to see them. I love seeing people from my old areas. I sat by them in sacrament and Br Adema put his arm around me and made a few jokes. The connections you make with people as a missionary are so great. I often feel loved by people.
Questions:
1. Did you have Zone conference this week?
2. Did you get your parcel and can you use what is in there?
3. Does your helmet help you be more visible, do you have to “turn” the lights on or do they turn on automatically?
4. How is the missionary work going? How are your investigators doing?
5. Did you have dinner appointments this week? What do you make to eat in the apartment when you have to make dinner for yourselves?
6. Do you eat out or eat street food much? What kind of food do they sell on the streets?
7. What missionary skills are you focusing on developing lately?
8. I’d like to hear how you feel your testimony has grown, in what areas of the Gospel?
9. Best thing that happened this week?
1. Yes. Almere, far away but not too bad. No specific focus.
2. No!! They forgot it but will bring it this week when someone comes to check our apartment for cleanliness.
3. Oooh yes. I love it. I turn them on.
4. Great, slow.
5. A few. Home we made pannenkoeken with bacon and cheese and melted chocolate, healthy right. Also mexican food. Other than that we had dinner app or on zone conference day we got Subway on the way home.
6. Not often. They have a lot of snack bars where common things to find there are Dutch version of burgers, fries, chicken, that kind of thing. There are a lot of Turkish places all over which is my favourite!!! Oh this week we also went to this Indonesian restaurant by our house and that was super super good! Also common here.
7. Elder Crow and I made a goal to only speak Dutch the rest of our missions so that is going well. We are trying to improve our language.
8. I got no time for that now. You will be glad to know that I haven’t missed a day in my journal for over 2 weeks now though, so things are being recorded!
9. Yesterday we went to a church of one of our investigators. It was at 3:00 pm so we went after ours. It began normal and quickly went down from there. Some of the songs were nice and the people were nice too. It was like 70 percent in Spanish and 30 in Dutch. Kind of odd. This one preacher lady was getting super hyped and was like yelling into the microphone at the top of her lungs in Spanish going freakin crazy and at the same time the person translating into Dutch was also yelling and trying to keep up with her. That resulted in us not being able to understand anything and having my hears being blown out… madness. About the 3rd time that happened I almost got up and left. Then she invited people to come forward and she put her hand on someone and was blessing them, I think… she used oil. Then some other person fainted on the ground. Everybody was chanting and had their hands up as if there was a bon fire and their hands were cold… super weird. Afterwards we went up to our investigator and she said “so when is your service?” We walked out and told each other we were happy to have shared that special moment with each other, haha. That was fun. Oh ya it was a pinkster church, if someone would have told me that before we went in I wouldn't have been so surprised. So ya that was cool.
Dutch word : zwaartekracht means gravity but the literal translation is black strength...
Elder Fernhout
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