11th letter from Leuven, Belgium -- Week 17

Mooi

We were a bit lost on the way to the temple and couldn't find it.  We turned the corner and BOOM!!!!

Elder Martinez, Elder Perez and I doing work at the chocolate factory.

Goede Dag Mensen!!!

Hoooooly Toledo, it has been a crazy week! I have been all over the Netherlands and Belgium.  From Burges to Rotterdam to Rooesndal to The Hauge to Antwerpen to Brussels. 

To start the week off, we had temple conference in Den Haag! We are clear down in Belgium so we stayed the night in Rotterdam.  Oh man, what a mess that was! We left a little later for Rotterdam than we had hoped for and barley missed the train by a couple of minutes, so we had to wait for the next one.  Then we got to Rotterdam and had to take a train to the apartment we were staying at.  We were walking up the stairs to the train and we heard the whistle blow, so we just started booking it.  The doors were closing, so I ran and stuck my freakishly long arms in the door and had some big heroic save and pried the doors open with my bare hands! Aaaaaand, it was the wrong dang train! To make a long story short, we didn't get to the apartment that night until 11:45 pm and then we had to leave at 6 in the morning to get to the temple. I miss just being able to drive 15 minutes down the road to the temple.  It's a lot easier! 

The temple was siiiiick! It was so cool to hear it Dutch.  I was a bit nervous that I wouldn't know what was going on because of the language, but folks let me tell ya, that was the most Dutch I have ever understood in my life.  The Lord blessed me so much! It was so cool to be in the temple with all of the other missionaries and President and Sister Robinson.  The spirit was amazing! 

This week we were so busy with traveling and everything that we didn't get much work done.  We had a lesson with a French woman named Bea, and had her daughters translate for us.  We taught her the restoration and challenged her to read the book of Mormon with her family and pray about it. 

On Saturday night, we had Stake Conference in Antwerpen.  The stake is the whole Dutch speaking part of Belgium (basically the north half of Belgium) and a couple of wards in the Netherlands.  Afterwards, some of the Netherlands elders spent the night with us. On Sunday, we had another session in Brussels.  I got to meet a lot of the members from all over Belgium and they were all really cool.

Today, was perhaps the greatest day of my life! For P day, we went to Brussels and spent the day with the French Elders.  One of them is actually from France and he is a stud! Elder Perez and Elder Martinez. We went to a Belgian chocolate factory! I felt like Charles himself touring the great Wonka Factory, but here is the best part... ALL YOU CAN EAT CHOCOLATE!!!! I literally have never eaten more chocolate in my entire life.  We hadn't eaten lunch so we could eat as much as possible and it was the expensive stuff too! Some of the boxes had 24 chocolates for 60 euros.  That is $75! And you could just go up to the box and take whatever chocolates you wanted.  The whole time I was singing "Oompa Loompa, doopety doo!" People just looked at me and laughed because I had chocolate all over my face, haha.  I mean come on, if you give me an all you can eat Belgian chocolate buffet, it's gonna get a bit messy....and it did! I would die if I lived next to a chocolate factory. 

I had an absolutely fantastic week! Temples and chocolate!!! I hope all is going good in the real world with all of you! I hope yallz have a peachy keen week!

                                                             -Elder Steenblik