Elder.Connely.Packard

Thanks for the Bday wishes. They are really weird and i almost decided not to watch them.   the cat that lives by the train station. She is one of my best friends here in Breda. When I call her, she literally runs and jumps on my knee and sometimes tries to give me a hug. Much better than Daisy Anyway, the news is that I am getting transferred to Emmen . Emmen was Elder Deardens first and previous city, and his previous companion is there right now, so my new companion will be Elder DeBloois. Elder Dearden freaked out when he heard I was going there. And I already know Elder DeBloois so that will be good. Emmen is small and right up next to the German border, and some of the branch members live in Germany, so I will be having dinner in Germany every now and then. There are supposed to be a lot of Jehovahs Witnesses in Emmen as well, so I will have to brush up on my biblical scriptures as will. I can not wait to go but leaving Breda is pretty sad. I have been here just ...

Happy Independence Day. It's p day. I put on all of my American colors and people have been giving me weird looks all day. But maybe not as weird when we are just in white shirts with helmets. Anyway, it feels good to be free enough to buy some marijuana if I wanted to. Just kidding.  This week we went on exchanges with the zone leaders. What is nice is that they have a car, so we looked up a ton of people in a very short amount of time. We even got to stay dry on the way, and listen to music, and it was WIERD to be sitting in a regular car. I am so used to it being a bus if anything. We got a lot of work in since all four of us stayed in Breda.  We also made another trip to Etten Leur on Thursday. I do not think there are many Jehovahs Witnesses there because people are always more open on the door.  At our last zone conference, President Bunnell challenged us to pick a small area and scour it, which means knock and contact every house in the area. He...

The polish people gave this tank to the Breda people after they liberated them in World war II This week was better than the last, we got let in several times. We are encouraged tracting more now because 50% of our converts come from knocking doors. We had zone conference this week, and that was one of the things that was emphasized. The focus this time was to find through family history. It works. People are a lot more open if you are not just there to tell them about Jesus Christ. Usually they will ask, "What are you leading into? What is the point of you coming here?" But then you tell them that as a church we believe that families are really important and that through coming to know more about where you come from, you can be closer to your family. They can not disagree, because then they deny their love for their family.  One cool thing that happened this week was that we looked up lady that we met on the door because she said she would be willing to come to...

June 20 This week was pretty typical, maybe a bit slower than the normal week. We have been doing a lot of knocking and a lot of contacting. We found a cool neighborhood by the centrum that we have been doing a lot of work in. We did not really have very many teaching opportunities this week. In fact, it has been raining a lot this week and it seems that the attitude of the Dutch people just dampered with the weather. But it will brighten up soon. It is going to rain for 15 consecutive hours today.  This week, there was a demonstration for gay pride or something in the streets. We were heading out, and there were police trucks, motorcycles and vans everywhere, but we thought they were just maybe doing a blitz because they were just sitting around at different corners waiting. But then, we heard a couple sirens and a few whistles around the corner, so we peeked out into the street, say a rainbow flag, and decided to leave the area. It was over pretty fast. There were several p...

This is the planner cover I made for this transfer, "Feast on the words of Christ" on Monday we had lunch with a recent convert in our ward from Suriname. He grew up deep in the Suriname jungle. His family grew a lot of their own food growing up, and they would fish in the jungle river nearby for their dinner a lot. He told us a story about how one time they killed a chicken for a party, and after they cut its head off, it flew away.  His mother gave birth to 5 or 6 children by herself out there in the jungle. He talks all the time about how all the things in his life prepared him to recieve the gospel. Apparently he walked into the church building after a friend that was investigating reffered him and he said, "Aw, this is the place for me." And  27 days later  he was baptized. He studies the gospel for 2 hours every morning and has been ever since he got his hands on a Book of Mormon. There are a ton of cool people in our ward here. We have been s...

JUNE 6: It is not 115 here, but it is warm and humid. The other day you could almost taste the water with every breath. But al lot of the water dried up today. We just got back from playing soccer with a kid from Congo, a kid from Morrocco, and a kid from Iran. And later, another joined in that looked like he was from Ethiopia or Eritrea. It is getting easier to distinguish where people come from just by looking at them.  There are hundreds of goslings at the park now On Wednesday, we went to Roosendaal to help with the transfer. Transfers can be pretty stressful here because people have to sometimes board several trains with 2 suitcases, a backpack, and a bike. We missed Elder DeBloois leaving towards Emmen, but were able to do a little work in Roosendaal. Elder Knaupp was telling us that he sees people here all the time that look like people he knew back home. Elder Dearden started noticing it too, but I did not think anybody here looks like people from home.Then Elder P...