Arrival in Amsterdam
 |
| The classic map photo |
Elder Davis in the cafeteria with a lovely pose
P day is still monday. I am in Breda. It is a decent sized city, but not that big compared to most American cities. Elder Stanger and I cover all the way from Bergen op Zoom to the western third of Tilburg. There is a lot of area between us two. We are the only missionaries in the whole city. Apparently, Breda is doing really well right now, and it is. We have 8 progressing investigators right now, and we are doing our best to get them all baptized. We have to schedule every day to be in a different town or part of Breda because it is such a big area. Some areas take an hour bus ride to get to, so we really have to manage ourselves well. As expected, my Dutch is much worse that it seemed in the MTC. I will contact somebody on the street and then have no idea what to sya to them after I introduce ourselves. Elder Stanger is from Washington, he is a bit shorter than me, and really awesome. I will get a picture for next week. He has only been out 8 months, but he speaks very good Dutch, so we are alright. I got a bike for 145 euros on Thursday, and it is a good bike. On all of the bikes here they have lights attached to the front with at little spinner that spins on the side of the front tire, and it generates enough power to make the light work it is really cool. Mostly we take the bus or train everywhere though.
The work is good! It rains frequently, but thanks to Grandma Lavon, I am dry. Elder Gemmell is in Amsterdam, Elder Steele in Eindhoven (so he is in my zone), and the other three actually are in Belgium. Down here in Brabant, the gutterals are not so accented and it is a bit harder to understand, but probably not so hard as those in Belgium. Life is good.
Every care here drives a hatchback. About 1 in 20 cars is not a hatchback, and they are usually those small work vans like the one that Caleb drove for that extermination company, so almost the same thing. They have a sidewalk, a bike road, and then a car road. Scooters are allowed on the real road and the bike road. Dad would love it here. 
We had pannenkoekjes for lunch in Lieden. They are dutch pancakes, but more like crepes. They are not very bready, but they are huge and thin. I had hot cherries, powdered sugar, and vanilla icecream on mine. ]The other is just another classic windmill and dike in the Netherlands.
The church is a very small building just across the street from our apartment. The ward has only 40 t 50 active people in it, but there are a lot of less actives. They are all a bunch of awesome people. We had a couple dinner appointments this week, and the bishop made something he called aardeappel anders, which means potato different. It was super good. Mom, I thought you would love to hear that when I was in the MTC, Elder Gemmell would use his fingers to push food onto his fork as well. You would also love to hear that the Dutch people always eat witht their knife in their hand, using it to push food onto their fork. So I guess we both win.
We had to go into this building to register with the country, but none of our things filed right so we have to go back in a couple weeks. It seems that this building was an outdoor courtyard once, but they just put a glass roof over it and sealed it up, so it is really cool. There are a few trees that are growing right out of those benches and there are water spouts off of the roofs and porches, which are now indoor balconies. Very interesting and beautiful building.
This is near the market. The second photo is just the average Mickey D´s |
| Micky D's is everywhere |
We have an awesome investigator right now. He is a political asylum refugee from Africa, and he has two kids still there. He is super spiritually receptive and lives with his brother. He speaks some English, and is trying to learn Dutch so he can go to school . We will teach him and then he teaches his brother in his native tongue since his brother does not speak English or Dutch. we have him set to be baptized on the 5th of March. He has an awesome story. He was imprisoned for a political song, but escaped and got on a boat. In the middle of the ocean, the boat ran out of fuel, so the people on the boat prayed, and miraculously the boat made it to land. Ever since then, he has belived in a God. He is trying to get his kids over , but they are living with his parents. Their mother died some years ago. Elder Stanger found him and taught the first lesson right before I got here.
This is a huge chapel or something in one of the towns that is in our area.
Thursday was a long day. We went a long way for an appointment, got there early so knocked a bunch of doors with no success. Our appointment was good, but he guy said he would feed us, and he did not so we were starving. We also missed our bus so we had to walk a bit to find a bus stop that would come sooner. We took a bus to another city where we waited a long tome for another bus, but again missed the final bus home so we just walked the rest of the way. It was freezing and I only had a sweater. We made some rice and went straight to bed, but it never felt like a really hard or long day until we got home. It was kind of like when the people of Alma were burdened by the Amalacites I think, and they prayed and the Lord lifted their burdens.
Another picture of the average neighborhood.
This is a turkse pizza. There is a common "fast food" store at most of the train stations called the Donor company. They have these huge rounds of meat that spin and slow cook. They carve slices of donor off of the outside and put it in pita bread, like a gyro. There is chicken donor and another one with lamb and pork and stuff. I am going to get my first donor this week. They say I have not been "baptized" yet because I have not gotten real donor yet. The turkse pizza does not have donor in it, but I did not know that when i got it. It just has sause and onions, peppers and marinated purple cabbage stuff, but it is still delicious.
Comments
Post a Comment