Zoetermeer temple and Keukenhof Gardens

APRIL 18, 2016

This week was exciting. 

First, the bombings in Belgium, and the loss of the lives of 34 innocent people. Missionaries injured. You all probably know more than I do about that. The work rolls forward. 

This week we wore our self-tailored pants. Elder Stanger is pretty smart and skillful and he showed me how to tailor my pants so that they don't look so american anymore. I am going to work through all of my pants eventually and make them skinnier. It would be a lot easier with a sewing machine though. I am surprised that our apartment does not have one, since it was a sister´s apartment. We do have a kitchen aid.

We spent a lot of time knocking on doors. We need to increase our teaching pool so we have a lot of time to do finding. I have learned to like knocking doors. It is a good opportunity to get outside, and if people want to tell us no, they have to say it to our faces. Knocking constituted almost all of Tuesday. It was a good day.

Our ward mission leader has us over for dinner usually every week, and he is of Indonesian descent, and his wife as well. Sometimes they make us Indonesian food, and it is super good. Also, his mother also makes super good Indonesian food, and if we ever go there, she makes us a bunch of snacks. There is a topping of sorts called Sambal that is used frequently on Indonesian food here. It comes in varieties of spiciness and flavors, but usually it is pretty spicy. It is kind of like a thick sweet salsa. Salsa for Indonesians. 

Thursday was a big day. We stayed over in Den Haag on Wednesday so that we could get to the Temple in time on Thursday morning. Den Haag is a much bigger city. Unfortunately, there is a bit of construction on the outside right now, so the pictures of the Zoetermeer temple were not really worth taking. It was a really good session though, and all in Dutch. Afterward, we waled back to the church and had a small meeting and had Dominoes pizza for lunch. It is not that much different from American Dominoes. I did not really eat much pizza before the mish but it was reeeeaally good. Also much more filling than I remembered. Then we all got on a bus and went to the Keukenhof Gardens. 

They were gorgeous and enormous. There must have been hundreds of varieties of tulips and they were huge. 

Everything was in perfect order. I did not take many pictures. Just a couple to prove that I was there.

 If I want a good picture of the flowers, I figured I could just google one. 

Friday was filled with a lot of finding again.

We had stake conference this weekend, which was in Brussels. A member gave us a ride there and back on Saturday and Sunday, so my tally of times I have been to Belgium is now at 5. While there, we got do do some splits with the Brussels elders and do some more knocking. Vlaams, or Flemish is really different. It kind sounds like Dutch with french/spanish pronunciation, and a Scottish/German accent. However, it is still a dialect of Dutch. It is a lot smoother, and I like the sound of it, though I understand even less of the little that I already understand in regular Dutch. I got to try copying it a little on the street and also try to introduce ourselves in French. The problem is that when I tried to speak french, the people just spoke english back. Belgian people are weird.

We got back and had dinner at the Murtons on Sunday afternoon, ate homemade pizza and listened to brother Murtons war stories. 

This is a 7 week transfer so we have 1 1/2 weeks left, but the next will be a 5 week transfer. We have to accommodate our schedule with the MTC schedule. Fingers crossed that I stay in Breda. 

nice flowers at Keukenhof

Directing the choir