Hey hey hey! So things are going well. Thanks a TON for the package! Much love unto ya'll. Every time my companion says, "Ya'll,' I can't stop imitating it for some reason =D Yeah I think I might have to be sending back the card games though... People keep telling me that they're not allowed on your mission =( Ha ha I'm trying to learn that juggling thing you sent me. Didn't we send that to Chris and he never even used it? I burst out laughing when I saw that in the box. And thanks a ton for the delicious foods and Arizonas (definitely appreciated) and that sheet music, one day I was just (badly) singing that song in the shower and a couple of the elders in my district started singing it with me. It was super funny, so now I play it and we (attempt to) sing it. Oh! Bad news... I discovered the 4 long sleeve shirts that I just left in their packages, in my suitcase... Should I send them back to you and let you exchange them? I need 16 1/2, 34/35s. Or should I take another adventure into the outside world to get them altered? Let me know in a dearelder.com please so that I can get that started before next Tuesday. They still haven't gotten my original stuff that I got alterations for, but hopefully tomorrow will be the day. Or maybe the next day. Or the next. Yeah. Mijn collega has shared some shirts with me though, which is nice.
Things are going really well between my companion and I. Too well. In fact, we've been given quite the trial to overcome... There's this Swede who's never really on time to anything, drives his companion insane, likes to squirt people with mini water guns, etc. Oh and his broken foot hasn't gotten better while we've been at the MTC, so he has to stay two weeks past when he was supposed to leave. And who are his new companions? Elder South and I... He's super funny and we like a lot of similar stuff, but he's just not very responsible at all and we've heard he has temper tantrums sometimes if you chastise him at all. So we'll get him as a companion sometime during this next week. Prayers would be appreciated =) Everyone is kind of struggling from time to time in our district with each other because each little problem just starts to become more and more apparent as time goes on. But we've all been doing really well on not really dwelling on anything and making sure to just be quick to forgive each other.
I'm still amazed with how the Spirit is at the MTC. It's so consistently strong, that we kind of get jaded by it and whenever someone gets mad at each other or some thing like that, then it honestly feels like it hurts as the Spirit leaves. One of our teachers started to get on a last straw with Elder Rauma the other day, because Elder Rauma doesn't think about the things he's saying (and is unfortunately often rude without realizing it) and sleeps in class a ton, and my teacher just got super stern and turned on Rauma a tiny bit one day after one of his comments. Later on, Elder Warner and I both described it as feeling almost like we got the air knocked out of us because the Spirit left so quickly. It was so weird, but it seriously felt like it hurt a bit. And I know it was a result of the Spirit leaving because I've wanted to get mad at Rauma so many times and I kept hoping a teacher would just do it for me, but now I definitely know it's just not the right thing to do. It's not worth it.
Some of the awesome spiritual experiences I've had here are usually at devotionals we have every Sunday and Tuesday night. So last Sunday was Fast Sunday, right? Right. Saturday evening, I was so ready for dinner, and then all of a sudden I just started feeling sick like I shouldn't eat. Elder Rauma mentioned he was doing a 24 hour fast, and I thought, 'Weird, but okay.' But now I felt like doing it too. So I just prayed that this could be a meaningful fast for me and that I would have help with it. Then I started to write some questions and concerns I have in my journal. Next day, boom boom boom answers answers answers. I seriously got so much inspiration from lessons, meetings, my district, the devotional, etc, etc. It was crazy. So I made sure to share my gratitude to Onze Hemelse Vader and then for like the next few days as well, I just kept getting strong inspiration for things that I was searching for and also for things that I just needed, but didn't know it yet. Oh and you better believe that I pigged out Sunday night though.
AAAHHHHH!!!!!! And THEN: 2 stake presidents before our Sunday dinner, suddenly just appeared at the MTC and said they wanted to speak with our district. Where were they from? The Netherlands. Yeah. They're here for business and to see General Conference, and just decided to come see us and answer any questions we had. They were these two RMs (both to England, but not together), native Nederlanders, hilarious, and super helpful. I'm so excited to go there, that I've already begun to plan my escape... If Jason could be ready with a small cesna plane just outside of the MTC campus at midnight tomorrow, that'd be A++. So there's only four stakes in my whole mission (including the northern Belgium part, which is actually part of a Netherlands stake); so basically, we met the representatives of half of the Netherlands members. Oh and word on the street is that they're opening another branch soon, possibly a ward. Supah dupah cool.
Anyways, de kerk is waar. I've learned that the best way to keep the Spirit always strong with me is to keep pointing out tender miracles and "coincidences" all day. It's helped my companion and I a ton to just receive lots of inspiration and look at each day with some righteous pride. This last Sunday, we had the Provo Temple President come speak at our devotional and he talked to us a tiny bit about his thoughts on the women in the church wanting to go to Priesthood Session and all of that hullabaloo: He said that there are at least 6 major blessings for women that are equal or greater to what men recieve in the temple. He talked for several minutes on how much God loves HIs daughters and how men have been commanded to never raise their voices to them and to respect them. He also mentioned how much the Priesthood affects and blesses women. A good speaker indeed.
Today, we went and had breakfast in the temple (I'm salivating just remembering it). I walked in, saw Heaven open up, and said, "Um... Can I just have the works?" And it was given unto me for $8. Amazing deal, if I may say so, especially after all of this MTC food. Then, we did initiatories and a sealing session. Which was all pretty cool. Oh and I'm starting to understand more and more of the symbolisms of the temple which is way cool. Oh and Mom, that would be cool to hear your thoughts from stake conference like you mentioned, alstublieft!
TRC (teaching Members) and our normal investigator lessons have all been progressing nicely. Elder South and I are actually really starting to excell together as we teach more. And we started creating our own personas to be taught by each other. So the point is to still practice teaching in Dutch, but now I'm also an investigator and I'm using an old friend of mine to impersonate so that I can better understand what's it's like to be an investigator (and also apparently better understand that friend). So that's been a cool experience. There are so many extremely difficult things about teaching Dutch people..... Door knocking approaches are probably the absolute hardest. I don't know if I mentioned this in my last letter, but you try not to mention the Church, Jesus Christ, Missionaries, Messengers, etc, etc. or else they'll think you're just there to talk AT them basically. So you truly have to make everything a discussion and make sure you're always listening more than talking. Coming up with the right questions and answers (*cough cough* IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE) is super frustrating at times, but it's a good challenge and teaches me a lot actually.
Yeah and we were supposed to go to the new West Campus today, but that fell through for some reason that our Branch Presidency and teachers have no idea about. But the Main Campus definitely has its benefits over the West Campus, so I don't mind much. Oh and I can't access my blog at all, so I have no idea about it. I'm sure you all are doing good with it though. Thanks Dad for putting up my letters! Again thanks everyone for the package and our family picture looks really good! Except I think I was hyper extending my legs... Oops. Oh but don't think about that or look at that =D tee hee.
One more story: I woke up in the middle of the night last night, started to stretch just a bit, and immediately got a bad Charlie Horse in my leg. So I just stiffled my "ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch"-ies and went back to sleep. It killed when I got out of bed, but I stretched it out and now it just flares up every once in a while, but isn't too bad. Oh and my cold is pretty much gone now! Sure took it's time though... The MTC is apparently called the world's greatest petri dish. Or something like that.
Okay I'm gonna start doing some individual letters now. Bye bye, and love ya'll!
Things are going really well between my companion and I. Too well. In fact, we've been given quite the trial to overcome... There's this Swede who's never really on time to anything, drives his companion insane, likes to squirt people with mini water guns, etc. Oh and his broken foot hasn't gotten better while we've been at the MTC, so he has to stay two weeks past when he was supposed to leave. And who are his new companions? Elder South and I... He's super funny and we like a lot of similar stuff, but he's just not very responsible at all and we've heard he has temper tantrums sometimes if you chastise him at all. So we'll get him as a companion sometime during this next week. Prayers would be appreciated =) Everyone is kind of struggling from time to time in our district with each other because each little problem just starts to become more and more apparent as time goes on. But we've all been doing really well on not really dwelling on anything and making sure to just be quick to forgive each other.
I'm still amazed with how the Spirit is at the MTC. It's so consistently strong, that we kind of get jaded by it and whenever someone gets mad at each other or some thing like that, then it honestly feels like it hurts as the Spirit leaves. One of our teachers started to get on a last straw with Elder Rauma the other day, because Elder Rauma doesn't think about the things he's saying (and is unfortunately often rude without realizing it) and sleeps in class a ton, and my teacher just got super stern and turned on Rauma a tiny bit one day after one of his comments. Later on, Elder Warner and I both described it as feeling almost like we got the air knocked out of us because the Spirit left so quickly. It was so weird, but it seriously felt like it hurt a bit. And I know it was a result of the Spirit leaving because I've wanted to get mad at Rauma so many times and I kept hoping a teacher would just do it for me, but now I definitely know it's just not the right thing to do. It's not worth it.
Some of the awesome spiritual experiences I've had here are usually at devotionals we have every Sunday and Tuesday night. So last Sunday was Fast Sunday, right? Right. Saturday evening, I was so ready for dinner, and then all of a sudden I just started feeling sick like I shouldn't eat. Elder Rauma mentioned he was doing a 24 hour fast, and I thought, 'Weird, but okay.' But now I felt like doing it too. So I just prayed that this could be a meaningful fast for me and that I would have help with it. Then I started to write some questions and concerns I have in my journal. Next day, boom boom boom answers answers answers. I seriously got so much inspiration from lessons, meetings, my district, the devotional, etc, etc. It was crazy. So I made sure to share my gratitude to Onze Hemelse Vader and then for like the next few days as well, I just kept getting strong inspiration for things that I was searching for and also for things that I just needed, but didn't know it yet. Oh and you better believe that I pigged out Sunday night though.
AAAHHHHH!!!!!! And THEN: 2 stake presidents before our Sunday dinner, suddenly just appeared at the MTC and said they wanted to speak with our district. Where were they from? The Netherlands. Yeah. They're here for business and to see General Conference, and just decided to come see us and answer any questions we had. They were these two RMs (both to England, but not together), native Nederlanders, hilarious, and super helpful. I'm so excited to go there, that I've already begun to plan my escape... If Jason could be ready with a small cesna plane just outside of the MTC campus at midnight tomorrow, that'd be A++. So there's only four stakes in my whole mission (including the northern Belgium part, which is actually part of a Netherlands stake); so basically, we met the representatives of half of the Netherlands members. Oh and word on the street is that they're opening another branch soon, possibly a ward. Supah dupah cool.
Anyways, de kerk is waar. I've learned that the best way to keep the Spirit always strong with me is to keep pointing out tender miracles and "coincidences" all day. It's helped my companion and I a ton to just receive lots of inspiration and look at each day with some righteous pride. This last Sunday, we had the Provo Temple President come speak at our devotional and he talked to us a tiny bit about his thoughts on the women in the church wanting to go to Priesthood Session and all of that hullabaloo: He said that there are at least 6 major blessings for women that are equal or greater to what men recieve in the temple. He talked for several minutes on how much God loves HIs daughters and how men have been commanded to never raise their voices to them and to respect them. He also mentioned how much the Priesthood affects and blesses women. A good speaker indeed.
Today, we went and had breakfast in the temple (I'm salivating just remembering it). I walked in, saw Heaven open up, and said, "Um... Can I just have the works?" And it was given unto me for $8. Amazing deal, if I may say so, especially after all of this MTC food. Then, we did initiatories and a sealing session. Which was all pretty cool. Oh and I'm starting to understand more and more of the symbolisms of the temple which is way cool. Oh and Mom, that would be cool to hear your thoughts from stake conference like you mentioned, alstublieft!
TRC (teaching Members) and our normal investigator lessons have all been progressing nicely. Elder South and I are actually really starting to excell together as we teach more. And we started creating our own personas to be taught by each other. So the point is to still practice teaching in Dutch, but now I'm also an investigator and I'm using an old friend of mine to impersonate so that I can better understand what's it's like to be an investigator (and also apparently better understand that friend). So that's been a cool experience. There are so many extremely difficult things about teaching Dutch people..... Door knocking approaches are probably the absolute hardest. I don't know if I mentioned this in my last letter, but you try not to mention the Church, Jesus Christ, Missionaries, Messengers, etc, etc. or else they'll think you're just there to talk AT them basically. So you truly have to make everything a discussion and make sure you're always listening more than talking. Coming up with the right questions and answers (*cough cough* IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE) is super frustrating at times, but it's a good challenge and teaches me a lot actually.
Yeah and we were supposed to go to the new West Campus today, but that fell through for some reason that our Branch Presidency and teachers have no idea about. But the Main Campus definitely has its benefits over the West Campus, so I don't mind much. Oh and I can't access my blog at all, so I have no idea about it. I'm sure you all are doing good with it though. Thanks Dad for putting up my letters! Again thanks everyone for the package and our family picture looks really good! Except I think I was hyper extending my legs... Oops. Oh but don't think about that or look at that =D tee hee.
One more story: I woke up in the middle of the night last night, started to stretch just a bit, and immediately got a bad Charlie Horse in my leg. So I just stiffled my "ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch"-ies and went back to sleep. It killed when I got out of bed, but I stretched it out and now it just flares up every once in a while, but isn't too bad. Oh and my cold is pretty much gone now! Sure took it's time though... The MTC is apparently called the world's greatest petri dish. Or something like that.
Okay I'm gonna start doing some individual letters now. Bye bye, and love ya'll!