Two Trips to Belgium and Almost to France

This week was very fast and it is hard to remember exactly what happened. It rained a lot and we did a lot of biking. 

I went on exchanges to Tilburg, which has an international university. It is a very neat little city and it would be super cool to go to school there. The apartment is also super nice. While we were there we had a dinner appointment at a 70´s house. I think his name is Hans De Boom or something, and he reminds me a ton of Brother Campbell. They could have been brothers. The next day was pretty normal. However, found out hat I was going back to Brussels again to get my long term residency card. 

Trips to Belgium are always fun. They say it is hard to live there because you have to get all transportation reimbursed instead of using the transportation card, and it is more expensive. However, it is beautiful . Belgium is weird because half the buildings are modern, and the other half really old architecture. The problem though is that on the backs of the buildings, all the paint is fading and stuff is falling apart and looks like nobody has touched it in years. So Belgium is pretty but ghetto. it is hard to explain. 

Friday was a really long day. I was really tired that morning, and it rained and was super cold all morning, and I was fasting as well. The morning did not start off well and I just did not have very good studies The only thing I could really focus on was in Jesus the Christ about the 40 day fast and the temptations.. We got into the houses of a couple potential investigators, but they were not really interested. One guy had made it sound like he was really interested in the Book of Mormon when we talked to him on the street, but when we met up with him that day, he just tried to convert us into the Islam religion. It didn´t work. After constant contacting all morning and afternoon, we went to Bergen op Zoom to do a couple lookups. We got a couple rental bikes, but then I realized I had lost the directions to the houses we were going to, so we just started asking people where some streets were. I remember being in a really bad mood the whole day and just trying not to show it. Since we were fasting, we never even got a break and that was not making things better. After a while I got frustrated and said a prayer to take the bad mood away. A couple minutes later, it was gone. I was still tired and starving and cold, but I was not mad anymore. I was able to talk to people easier, rest my mind and relax a little. It reminded me of the 40 day fast, where after Jesus was tempted, the tempter left him for a season. I had been struggling with my mood for a long time, but it wasn´t until I appealed for divine help that I was able to cast it off. And then the tempter left me for a season. I was able to finish the day and finished the fast the next morning. It was a great example to me of the real meaning of fasting. It was pretty hard hunger-wise, but it was so much harder because of the temptations placed on my spiritual attitude. Once I figured out that I could not put it off alone, I was able to put it off. It felt pretty good to have won, too. 

Saturday was another fun day because I got to go to......Belgium again! Elder Stanger had a baptism in Kortrijk, so we took a few hour train ride down there. We got to stop in Antwerpen Station which is pretty cool because the Antwerpen Station is gorgeous. It is huge and old. We got some Belgian waffles at the station and they were much better than the ones that we always get in Brussels. We got custard on top and they are insanely good. Kortrijk is at the south west corner of our mission, and the church building is only 700 yards from France. We got a "welcome to France" text message, so I practically went to 3 countries on Saturday. It was an awesome baptism, and I got to hear a little bit of Flemish. It is very different and sounds like half dutch, half french with a scottish accent. It is much softer than even Brabant Dutch, which is very soft. Up north, the Dutch is supposed to be very gutteral and rough. On our way back, we got more belgian waffles. 

Saturday night, we also got transfer calls. Transfers are on Wednesday. I am lucky enough to be staying here with Elder Stanger, so I am relieved. That also means that next transfer, I will probably be here again with a different companion. Also, there will be Elders in Roosendaal again so we will not have to make trips to Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom anymore! We are going to lose about half of our investigators to them so there will be a lot of finding to do. 

Life is good, work is hard.