Breda - Week 22

Breda - Week 22

This was an absolutely hectic week, haha. On Tuesday, Jasmine asked Mangum and I to come over while she opened her mini-mission call. She was called to Antwerpen and she is so excited. She´s going to be there for four days sometime next week. I am so excited for her!

Jasmine receiving her mini mission call

On Wednesday, we were tracting and we found a windmill with a cute little animal farm next to it. There aren´t a ton of windmills in Breda area so that was pretty fun to see. We debated what would happen if we grabbed onto one of the sails... they looked really strong. We also found some super gorgeous houses and knocked on all of them. One of them is probably going to be my future house. 

Pictures of my future house! :)

On Thursday we went to Eindhoven for Zone Training, which I was super excited for because Eindhoven was the first Holland city liberated by the 101st Aireborne. There´s even a memorial behind the church for them, which I was extremely excited for and took a picture with before Zone Training.

Zone Training was inspiring as usual. It always helps me refocus and get reinspired. There is a super awesome old guy named Harry who is in his 80s who goes out tracting with the missionaries all the time and who comes to every single zone training and conference and district meeting. He does so much with the missionaries that the mission made him a legit missionary badge. He knows everyone's name in our zone and where we are serving. He is amazing and everybody loves him and it´s so fun to see him at Zone Training. After Zone Training, Zuster Mangum and I went to Tilburg for exchanges, which was pretty fun, but added to the hecticness of the week. We were really tired. 

On Sunday we had Stake Conference but it was all the way down in Brussels... Which is really far away and really difficult to get to because it´s in a different country. We have NS-Business cards for transportation in the Netherlands but for Belgium it´s a whole different story. They have a totally different train system (which is a lot more difficult) so we had to a drop a lot of money in order to get down there. And it also took an hour and a half for Elder Soso to make our travel plans.

In order to get down to Brussels by 10:00am, we had to leave an entire day earlier and sleepover. I chose Gent because my old MTC companion is down there, and it was SO FUN to see Zuster Leman again. I was so happy. We left Breda at 4:50 pm and got to the Gent apartment at 8:30 pm, and then we had to leave by 6:50 the following morning and walk kind of far in the dark. It was pretty exhausting but an awesome adventure. It was fun to go to Belgium again. Stake Conference was good, I can understand a lot of what´s being said for the most part but the trick is focusing and wanting to pay attention haha. It was also really cool to hear the Belgian accent, which is called Vlaams. It sounds really French and it is soooo pretty.

It was a pretty hectic week! ​

Breda - Week 21

Breda - Week 21

So this week has been pretty uneventful missionary wise, there was lots of door knocking every day. On Tuesday I went on exchanges to Tilburg with Walqhist, who is in the transfer before me so I was technically oldest! It was fun, we managed to make an appointment and we had a dinner appointment with Hans Boom, who is in the Area of the Seventy. 

On Friday we had a crazy dinner appointment. One of the ladies in our ward is really old and can't take us out to dinner so she has her daughter take the missionaries out every transfer to this really nice buffet where you eat for two hours straight. We had to work through our lunch hour in order to go but it was worth it. We had tons of sushi and little pancakes and all of these exciting foods. Also, Marine is AMAZING, she is so funny and she is obsessed with America, her phone is decorated with the American flag and her ringtone is literally the National Anthem. 

General Conference was really amazing and felt very personal to me. I got a lot out of it and I don't think I've ever loved Conference more than now on my mission. It feels very different. When they say "everyone from all over the world is watching", I realize that I am one of those people far away from America! Ah America! I miss you! But it's okay, I love the Netherlands too. 

On Sunday we knocked for four hours in the pouring down rain and we were FREEZING. Although this week we  did get to climb up the Grote Kerk during a lunch hour, which was super amazing and beautiful. 

Oh yeah, we got transfer calls! Zuster Abbott is going to Groningen, Zuster Parker is going to be training a new greenie (for her third time in a row!!) in Breda still and then Zuster Mangum and I will be companions staying in Breda. So that is awesome!!! Mangum was in the MTC with me and I love her. And I love Zuster Parker so I am super happy that I get to see her everyday! 

Breda - Week 14

Nothing crazy exciting happened this week. A lot of knocking doos and we met some funny people, including a polish guy who told us in broken english that we needed to choose our own way of life, that Zuster Parker´s shoes were too old, and that we needed to not follow our boss or ´chef´(i think he meant chief...). Then we told him we needed to go and went down the street to get away from him when we look over and he´s standing outside of his house again watching us. Then later he walks all the way back to us (we´´d gone quite a ways down) and starts talking to us while we´re in the middle of knocking on someone elses door and it was really awkward and weird and then we had to talk to him for a while and it was also hilarious. 

The only other interesting thing that happened this week was.... Efteling!!!! For PDay today our whole zone got to go to Efteling, this awesome theme park that´s themed off of original fairytales and it was really really fun. I really enjoyed myself. I will send pictures when I have time to upload all of them. 

This is my last week of this transfer! Crazy! I have no idea what will be happening but this is extremely likely to be my last week with Zuster Parker. i love her!!! 

Breda - Week 13

This has been an absolutely exhausting week. Monday was our last day in Sliedrecht which was a lot sadder than expected. We had just started to actually find potentials and lessons and now we´re gone! Monday was really hectic with a ton of packing and cleaning and a last day spent in Dordrecht. I will miss Dordrecht! I also gave away from bike (Deathwish) to Elder Isaksen because although my bike sucks, his had no breaks. The Westenlockens gave us a ´going away party´ and Mirta gave us this cute basket with candies and notebooks which was really sweet of her! 

On tuesday we were completely and a hundred percent exhausted. We were driven out to Breda and spent a lot of the day setting up new desks and beds to set up the four-man apartment. And then we went out to find a new bike for me in Breda. Breda is GORGEOUS. It has a castle (which the military trains at) and a giant beautiful church and this cool prison thing (which is actually a refugee camp right now). But I also smashed my finger eally hard in our door and that was pretty painful. Later that evening we went out to go park contacting and I was so tired, but then we saw a really cool miracle. There´s this old convent next to the park and Zuster Parker and I took a selfie there. I was starting to put my camera away and we had started walking when this guy came up to us and asked if we´d like him to take the picture for us, and I was like ``alstublieft!`´ and so he took the picture and then he noticed my crappy American accent and started asking where we were from and we started telling him who we were and we started talking about religion and then the conversation was starting to end and he was starting to leave but then he was like `actually, can I give you my number? Are you busy or anything, or is it possible that I can come back here and talk about religion some more? What about on Thursday at 6:00?´ and we were like ´yes!!!´. It was amazing. He kept saying that he felt like it was meant to be for us to meet. It was amazing.