Breda - Week 25

Breda - Week 25
This past Tuesday I hit my 5 months in the mission mark! WOOHOO! Zuster Mangum is from my MTC group too so we both went an celebrated with a fancy pancake. She got a pumkpin chocolate cupcake and I got a banana chocolate cupcake. Het was echt lekker. We were supposed to have a lesson that day but when we showed up to Maria´s house, she wasn´t home, so we were pretty disappointed. We were going to leave the area but then I figured last second that we might as well knock on our less active´s house. We have been leaving her cookies and trying our best to meet with her but she´s never home and always cancels our appointments. But this time when we knocked on her door, she was actually home and made an appointment with us for the next day, and when we showed up the next day she was actually home and hadn´t cancelled. We were so happy! Small miracles are real! 

On Thursday we went and helped Zuster Parker and Neale with their portion of Breda and then during a break went and found Vincent Van Gogh´s grandfather´s grave. Vincent Van Gogh grew up in Breda and his grandfather was actually a preacher at the Grote Kerk. There were lots of old and gigantic graves. 

On Friday we had a dinner appointment! YAY! 

Sunday was an amazing day. I understood nearly everything in church, there were some amazing testimonies from some people in our ward (including a guy who is self investigating the church), and then afterwards we had ward correlation at Rocky´s house and his family made us all hamburgers. It was amazing. After that Zuster Mangum and I went to Linda´s house and made some more Christmas things with her. Linda and her husband made us dinner and we gave them a geestelijke toentje (spirtual treat) about finding miracles in our lives through looking everyday for the miracles that happen to us and writing them down. They were really excited, even her nonmember husband. He shared a story with us about how he had been in the hospital because of Leukemia for a really long time and he had done that with Linda and that had helped him through it a lot, and he found it interesting how we can easily forget to do that when life isn´t as hard and we aren´t praying as desperately for help. That was really awesome to see them both get really excited about it. And then later we saw a shooting star! A really big one. Small miracles. :D 

Today for P-Day we went to this really big World War II museum in Overloon, which I thought was super interesting cool. :D It was amazing.

 

This week is going to pretty exciting. This Saturday we get transfer calls... I´m terrified!! I can´t believe a whole entire transfer has already flown by. I feel like I literally just began this transfer. Also, in one year this will technically be my last transfer. So I technically have about one year from now left! 

It might also snow this week. Thank goodness I got a free giant waterproof jacket from the Murtons. I don´t really want it to snow... it has been SO cold lately. 

We are also going to temple this Wednesday. I´m pretty excited. Joyce from Dordrecht ward is also getting baptized this next Saturday! I am so excited and so Zuster Parker and I are going to go to her baptism. Elder Isaksen also told us that Christina is praying for a baptismal date too, which I makes me SOOO HAPPY. I will travel literally from Groningen to go to her baptism. I love Christina so much! 

Breda - Week 24

Breda - Week 24

Breda - Week 23

Breda - Week 23

Wat heeft deze week gebeurd? Well, firstly we found a lady (while doing bellups) who actually knew who we were and wanted us to come back, so on Tuesday we returned to her house for an appointment. It ended up being a 3 and a half hours long... Mevrouw Smith is a lonely old lady who mostly wanted some company, and though we tried to bring up the gospel and how she got her Boek Van Mormon, she would keep steering the conversation elsewhere. It was pretty funny and it also kept us out of the pouring rain. During that day, Mangum and I also tried some centrum contacting. We´re both terrible at it so we challenged each other to contact one person, and after we did that we could get some fresh harring at the market in the centrum. Zuster Mangum hasn´t had fresh harring yet so that was an adventure. 

Thusrday was a day of little miracles. We had interviews that day and also we gave away both of our Book Van Mormon´s within two hours and had scheduled an appointment! This rarely happens, so we were both eccstatic. Mangum did a glorious heel click out of happiness that I recorded. 

Our highlight of the week though was definitely on Saturday. There is this thick bush/hedge (when I say thick, I mean really thick, you can´t stick you´re hand through it) that comes up to about shin-high and is pretty wide, and these five kittens live inside of it. They are feral and super young and whenever we go knock over there I always try to feed them a little cat treat but they´re super scared and will only come to the edge. Anyways, we knocked for like an hour and then returned only to see this other guy trying to do the same thing. I decided to be brave and go and try to talk to him, and he and his girlfriend loves rescuing animals, so they wanted to help these kittens. You can tell that the kittens were starving. So we tried to help them get the kittens while talking with them and getting to know them, and it was pretty hilarious. I didn´t think their method of trying to get the kittens was at all effective. They ended up getting their neighbor the bring giant sticks to whack the bushes and herd the five kittens to the middle of the bush (the middle was not a good idea but I was like whatever). And then the guy and girl were like trying to walk through the hedge, which involves basically destroying it, so there are holes in that hedge now. It was the funniest image. Two missionaries in skirts with three random people whacking a hedge trying to catch kittens. We ended up leaving eventually but hopefully they caught the kittens, and now if we ever see those people, we have a pretty good conversation starter. 

We also had an appointment with Zuster Staf that evening. Zuster Staf is this adorable old lady who lives in a resting home who is less active because she can´t leave, so we go and share a spiritual thought and sing hyms for her and she loves us. We call her Oma Staf and it makes her cry. When we started to leave she started crying and it was so sad. :( Next week is her birthday so I am going to make her a card with Mice on it, since she loves mice. 

Those were some of the highlights from my week! Oh yeah, we´re also doing this challenge for the whole mission to read the entire Book of Mormon from Oct 13 to the end of the year, while highlighting the names of Christ and any reference to Him, and it has been a really uplifting experience. I have loved doing the challenge. 

I love you all!!!