Monday, February 29, 2016

5th letter from Almere, Netherlands -- Week 88

Soccer P-day with our district  02-29-16
I've gotten to the point of my mission that all my clothes are falling apart

Elder Steenblik jammin with his homies

Hey Guys!

Well, I heard that Leo finally won an Oscar! That is fantastic news.

We had a busy week this week with exchanges.  On Tuesday, I was on an exchange in Almere with Elder Fairbanks.  Elder Smith had the car, so Elder Fairbanks and I had to bike around and use a map.  That was the first time I had biked in Almere, so we got lost a lot.  I always feel like such a moron stopping my bike and looking at a map haha.  People just laugh at us because they probably don’t even know what a map is.  We were missing a piece of our map and it’s the part that was going to tell us where we needed to go, so we decided to ask some people where the street was that we were looking for.  We had to knock 4 doors before we could even find someone that would listen to us long enough that we could ask them! Everyone else just said "no interest" and slammed the door! Man oh man…. Even after 20 months these Dutch people still test my patience.  Haha, but I do love them!

I was also on an exchange this week with Elder Gemmell and he is from New Zealand.  We found some hand warmers in the apartment, so he took some.  He had no idea how to use them and he thought that you had to put them in the microwave to get them warm.  You should have seen his face when he opened it and it started getting warm! Haha he could not believe it.  His mind has officially been blown.

We met with a less active woman this week named Valarie and she is from Suriname.  She hasn’t been to church in over a year, so we were just straight up asked her what the reason was.  She went on to tell us that Sunday is the day that she catches up on her TV series.  She showed us her iPad and she has a full on schedule of the week and when her TV shows are on.  Uh, I think we might need to re-evaluate some priorities! Now don’t get me wrong, I have watched more Netflix in my days than I would like to admit.  But c'mon! It has actually been super nice, kinda hard, but super nice to go 2 years with no TV and video games.  It is a good feeling to never be wasting any time.

Things are going great with Rashida.  We had a lesson with her this week and the Bishop came on a joint teach.  She had lots of questions about baptism.  We taught her about how when we are baptized, we need to do it in the right way with the right authority.  It made a lot of sense to her and she said that she felt good about it.  We want to set a baptismal date with her but it is difficult because her husband is in Nigeria right now and he won’t be getting home for at least another month.  Maybe even longer.  We want to make sure that he is well aware of what is happening.

That’s basically it, I think.  Have a great week everyone!

                            -Elder Steenblik

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