1st letter from Almere, Netherlands -- Week 84

District in Den Haag

Hanging with my new neighbor, Ronald

Hey Everybody!

Well, this has been a super crazy week full of lots of change.  Wednesday was our transfer day.

We stayed at the station all day helping all of the missionaries getting transferred.  There were a lot of problems this transfer day! Lost luggage, and lost missionaries.

Elder Smith and I are both new to the city.  Luckily we had the car that we could just load everything into and drive home.  Before we could even get home, we had a dinner appointment and a lesson with an investigator at a member’s house.  That was pretty nice!

We unloaded all of our stuff and by that point it was 10PM, so we just parked the car by our apartment. We went out the next day and found a nice 60 euro parking ticket waiting for us! We paid for parking but it turns out that parking automatically shuts off at midnight and then starts back up at 7 AM.  Those crafty ticket people just wait until 7 and then go give away a bunch of tickets.  Dang them! You win this time parking people.

Our apartment is awesome! We literally live in the middle of an enormous outdoor shopping mall.  It is basically like we live at the Gateway, but not as ghetto.  More like City Creek and it is a great location! Just the parking is a pain in the neck.  We spent an hour this week at the city hall place trying to apply for a resident parking pass but we couldn’t since the church is a "business.” We are still trying to get that figured out.  Oh and the best part is, WE LIVE ABOVE A MCDONALD'S!!!

What more could I ask for?? I mean, it is a European McDonald's, so you have to take out a loan just to buy a Big Mac, but still.  McDonald's!

It has been pretty tough since we are both new.  We have tons of names of investigators and people to look up, but we don’t know who they are.  Right now it is just a big list of names and it will just take time to get situated.  For now I just feel like a lost child! Haha

The members here are great! They are all happy to have us here and they are all willing to help us.  The ward here is about 40-50 active people.  Quite the change from the Den Haag ward.

I am super excited to be here in Almere and there is a ton of potential here.  I am excited to work with Elder Christian Smith from Provo, Utah.  He is an awesome companion.

 Have a great week everyone!

                    -Elder Steenblik