1st letter from Lelystad, Nederland -- Week 25

Some random ship we saw.  (Lelystad, Nederland)

Elder Benjamin Steenblik, just being BEN!!

This is the Verschuure family.  They were my last dinner appointment in Leuven, Belgium.  (Elder Ryan Cockbain, Verschuure girls and Elder Benjamin Steenblik)

 Ben's "Genk" district.  He loves them a lot and will miss them terribly.

Guuuuuess who is in Nederland? This guy!!

Well, transfer day was very uneventful, which is always a good thing.  I got here safe and sound and in one piece.  And so far, I don't think I forgot anything.  I was super sad to leave Belgium.  I loved it so much, but Nederland is super cool.  The first thing that I did when I got here is take a big drink of tap water! It was awesome because you can't do that in Belgium.  (Unless you don't want to have children.)

My new companion is Elder Jeremy DeWitt.  He is super cool and we get along really well.  He is an awesome missionary! We are both still learning the language, so it has been a little crazy talking with people.  Luckily EVERYONE here speaks English, so if you don't  know a word, you can just ask.  We have an awesome apartment here in Lelystad.  It is super big and really nice! It is right on the centrum, and get this, I can actually walk around it without hitting my head on the ceiling! Yeah baby!!

There is a set of sister missionaries who serve in Lelystad too.  We go on joint teaches with them sometimes and have dinner appointments together.

I still cannot find my way around this place to save my life  There are big long bike paths that run through neighborhoods that cars aren't allowed to drive on, and then actual roads.  There are so many bikers here it's not even funny! It's unreal!

We had some cool lessons this past week and I got to meet some of the members.  We had a lesson on Thursday night with 2 of our investigators, and it was super cool.  We decided that we weren't going to give them a normal lesson and were going to teach what they needed to hear.  It was really nice because we weren't focused on covering all of the points in a certain lesson. We just said what we felt and what the spirit directed.  We taught about our life on earth and about making covenants.  It was a solid lesson.

Unfortunately, we didn't have church on Sunday, so I didn't get to meet all of the members.  We had Stake Conference which super fun.  There was a session on Saturday night that we went to in Haarlem.  Afterwards, we spent the night with the Haarlem Elders and 2 other Elders as well.  Elder Billy Shaw from my MTC group serves in Haarlem and we had a blast! I haven't seen him in forever because I have been way down in Belgium.  We had 6 beds that we basically just threw into a huge pile in the living room.  Everyone just found a little piece of bed to sleep on.  We were up late talking and just having a good time.

On Sunday, we had another session of stake conference in who knows where.  It was a rough morning.  Basically, everything that could go wrong, did.  A huge series of events led up to us missing our bus and trains and everything.  LONG story short, we got stranded and just had to call the Zone Leaders to come pick us up.  Haha, whoops! It was a super cool stake conference.  When I was there, some guy came and talked to me and he saw my name was Steenblik and he was super surprised! He said that his father and his father's family were baptized by another Elder Steenblik many years go.  He couldn't remember the first name, but he did remember Steenblik.  I thought that was super awesome!

Well, so far I have loved the Netherlands and my new companion! Thanks for all of the Birthday wishes from everyone! I had an awesome birthday.

 Tooooot ziens. 

 

Elder Steenblik