Train Stations, a Viking Village, and Waffles

March 16, 2016

Henry? Nope.

This week was really busy. On Tuesday, we had district meeting with the old district one last time. It was an awesome district meeting as always. Elder Stanger is really good at moivation everybody to work harder and do better. He is a perfectly dedicated district leader. After district meeting, we all went over to the Murtons (canadian guy) for waffles. He is super funny. He was in the English army for a long time and served in Iraq and never has a shortage of crazy stories. He makes knives and stuff, but has not been to church in a while because of a bad shoulder and he has also been really sick recently. He made a tone of waffles, and I went for the record and broke it for the house that the Murtons live in now at 18 waffles. Apparently at their old house, there was an Elder that ate 21 and then 4 potatoes or something, but I am not sure about that. Besides, the Murtons moves from that house at least 8 years ago.

Belgium waffles with custard

We had a lesson with Efrem later that day, and were able to commit him to the same baptismal date. It has been so awesome to teach him, unfortunately the new Roosendaal elders are going to be teaching him now. He talked to us about how now he has lost the desire to smoke and drink. He had big problems with alcohol and tabacco before, and he willingly accepted the challenge to stop and live the Word of Wisdom.

Belgium waffles are magical

He has noticed a change in his life, and we were able to identify with him the presence of the Holy Spirit and his growing spiritual light. It has been a challenge to teach him because he has no christian background and does not actually understand things that he says he does. However, he is making amazing changes in his life. We have been so blessed to be able to teach him. It will be the coolest thing if Harry and Efrem are baptized together.

Eindhoven Train Station

Anyway, we had an appointment with Harry after that. Harry is super cool. He is around 80 years old and first contacted the missionaries because he thought they were a personal information desk. However, after we cleared that up, he started taking our discussion more serious. He can barely speak english, but can write in almost perfect english. He says really funny things all the time and always has this apple juice for us that is really strong but really good. He never wanted to make a baptismal date because he does not want to jump into things too fast but we were able to pose one on him for May 14th finally and he accepted. Hopefully he will stick with it. He is super nice and thinks that he knows all about American culture because apparently we all take off our shoes before entering the living room and like McDonalds and like to say "working hard or hardly working!". He loves saying that and usually says it to us at least twice a visit.

Inside Eindhoven train station

A couple days later, we were able to get yet another baptismal date on a lady named Angkea. She grew up Bhuddist, so also does not have a great Christian background. She was a ward member referral about a year ago, and then lost contact with the missionaries. A few months ago, she got back in contact and was super excited to learn more about the church. The missionaries began teaching her again. She is golden. She has been consistently coming to church and keeping commitments, and we are almost done with the lessons. She did not want to make a baptismal date because she saw it as a huge commitment and she wanted to be absolutely 100% sure before she was baptized. At the end of our lesson this week I felt like sharing Mosiah 18:10 with her. It was perfect for her because she has been feeling the Spirit a lot and this scripture tells us that if we are baptized we can have it more abundantly. She committed to April 2nd, so it was even cooler to see her realize that baptism is the beginning, not the end. We are super excited for her.

On Wednesday, we accidentally took the wrong bus and missed an appointment. However, when we got to the station, we bumped into the two Americans that I had talked to on the street a few weeks earlier. They are going to school here in Breda and are from LA. They are super cool and the one is actually baptized. As they say here, "Toevallig bestaat niet" or "coincidences don´t exist". We are going to fellowship him right into the chapel super fast.

Saturday we did service in Eindhoven at a park that was actually a viking village museum.
They had erected a town in the same style of a little viking village with sheep and thatch houses and everything.

We got to do landscaping and tree trimming, same stuff that I did for Brother Partridges crew.

It was one of the best days of the whole mission. It was super fun just to cut stuff and throw it awa again. I feel like a sissy some days here in the mission because I take a shower every day and do not get in the least bit dirty.