Dec 30, 2013

Familie en vrienden!

 

This past week has been absolutely amazing! I just love the Christmas season and all of the joy it brings! Because so much has happened, I will just begin now with a detailed (or at least as good as I can do) description of the past week.

 

Maandag

Voorbereidingsdag! P-day! We actually didn't get to do much that day because our emailing got pushed back later, and our dinner appointment got moved up earlier. We never even did our weekly grocery shopping. Fortunately, we had enough appointments for the week that we didn't really need to buy any food. Actually, we had a record amount of appointments! Six dinner appointments and one lunch appointment! We were super excited because normally we only average about three dinner appointments a week. Anyways, after we did our emailing, we went to an indoor voetbal (soccer) arena rented out by a member and played some voetbal with a few members and nonmembers. It was super fun! After that we went home and changed in record time to get to our dinner appointment. We had dinner with Familie Jonkheer, a super awesome familie! They also invited us to watch a Disney movie with them, but we declined because President Texiera (of the Seventy) told us at our last Zone Conference not to watch movies.

 

Dinsdag

We started the day with our weekly District Bijeenkomst (meeting). It was really well given by our District Leader, Elder Cooper. One of the announcements in the meeting was that our mission president allowed us to watch a Disney movie with a member if they offered without us asking. So yeah, we found out a day too late. We missed our only chance to watch a movie. But that's alright! Being a missionary isn't really about watching movies anyway! It's about walking out in the cold wind and rain trying to find people who are prepared to hear the Gospel, haha! :) After District Bijeenkomst, we had lunch as a district followed by Correlatie (correlation) with the Antwerpen missionaries. Later we had dinner with Familie Cannoodt! They're a really cool familie who gives of lots of food, haha! We had gourmet for dinner. Gourmet is when there is a grill on the table and lots of meats and vegetables and everyone picks what they want and cooks their own food right in front of them! It's a super cool experience! Familie Cannoodt also lives close to the American Store, so they bought some A&W Rootbeer for us! After not having rootbeer in over five monnths, it was really lekker (delicious)!

 

Woensdag / Kerstdag

First thing Christmas morning my companions and I opened our packages and gifts! It was kind of cool to see some American brand food, haha. Following our studies, we proceded to create individualized Christmas cards which we then took around to a few members, less-actives, and investigators. After that, we went to Familie Evans. The mom is inactive, the dad is not a member, and their second oldest son, Phillip, will be leaving a mission next month. They had three laptops that they let us use for our Skyping. It was pretty handig (handy) for all three of us to Skype at the same time. After Skyping, we had lunch with them, and we ended up staying with them for about three hours (not including Skyping)! Immediately after leaving their house, we went to the home of Familie Schiltz. They're practically like the missionaries' grandparents! We have dinner with them every week! By the time we got home, we were super full, haha! It was indeed a wonderful and Christ centered Christmas! Oh, and for those who may be wondering, since most homes here aren't stand alone and are connected to other houses on each side (and often a different familie lives on each floor), people don't decorate the outside of homes to much. Very many Christmas trees can be seen inside though, and the city does a lot of decorating in the centrum area and in Centraal Station.

 

Donderdag

We started our day by heading to the train station to send Elder Harvey to the mission office. It's crazy to think that he's home now. Shortly after that the entire zone (which covers all of Vlanderen, or the entire top half of Belgium) came together in Antwerpen for a zone service project. We went to some nearby rest home where we sung carols to the patients there. It was super fun! Elder Bean and I then did a little bit of contacting in the centrum and then we went to Zuster Van Laere's home for dinner. All of the missionaries were there as well as some of Zr. Van Laere's familie. We had gourmet that night as well!

 

Vrijdag

We went on exchanges with our District Leader. I went to Sint Niklaas (a city just southwest of Antwerpen) with Elder Denny. While there we attended a funeral of a recently passed member. After that, we went on the longest bike ride of my life! We had to contact a referral (which actually turned out really well and an appointment was made), and drop of a plethora of Christmas cards for the Sint Niklaas ward. When we were biking home at the end of the night, it was dark, windy, rainy, and cold. And we had hold a flashlight in one hand because there were no street lights on the bike path. It was quite the adventure, haha! When we were home at the Sint Niklaas apartment we looked at the map and realized that with the distance we biked we could have biked all the back to Antwerpen (when normally we would travel there by train). We were tired to say the least, haha.

 

Zaterdag

We exchanged back in the afternoon after our studies. We had a lesson with an investigator (Guido) that fell through. After Elder Bean and I went home for lunch we went with Brother Schiltz, the sisters, and the other elders to go do some more caroling. Once again we were out for about six hours and only visited two people. This time though it was because we stayed with each one for several hours just talking. The first man we visited was super nice. He leaves close to Centraal Station and his home is an apartment which is no bigger than 30ft x 30ft. While there he gave us a little bit to eat, including a cactus. Yes, a cactus. He cut it up into bite sized pieces and then we dipped it in tomato sauce and ate it! Surprisingly, it's not to bad. I'd probably eat it again.

 

Zondag

We went to church, and unfortunately, Guido din't come (like he said he would). After church there was a Doop Dienst (baptismal service) for one of the sisters' investigators. His name is Eugene and he got baptised at 91 years old! The Gospel truly is for everyone! He's a wonderful example to remind me that I should never be afraid to talk to anyone! After the service, I had the opportunity to give Sister Aldous (one of the sisters here) a blessing because she has had really bad neck pains for the past week. The Spirit was really strong during it. After that we received a phone call from Guido. He told us he wanted to return the BoM and that he had lost his faith. Needless to say, we were extremely dissappointed. We had our weekly planning session at the church. After we started with a prayer, Elder Bean received the spiritual impression to call Guido again. After a 15 minute conversation over the phone, Guido agreed to meet with us one more time. We gave him much encouragement and support. We now have an appointment set up for this Wednesday. We aren't going to plan much of a lesson. We're just going to share the Restoration video and follow the guidance of the Spirit. We ended the day with dinner with Familie Taselaar. They live an hour away by bus. The sisters were also there for dinner. When we left there house we went to the bus stop and realized we had just missed the bus and the next one wouldn't show up for an hour. So, we stood outside in the dark and cold for an hour. When we finally got on the bus we took it to Merksem, where the Zone Leaders live. We ended up staying the night with the Zone Leaders, because it would have taken us another hour to get home and it was already past 10pm.

 

Well, that's the week! It was quite an adventurous one! Now one to the rest of our p-day. Oh, and just something interesting. In our mission, New Years Eve is to dangerous to do missionary work, so we all have to be in our apartments at 4:00pm and stay in the rest of the night. Here's President Robinson's exact words: "This week is oude nieuw.  Please be in the apartment by 4:00 pm on 31 Dec 2013.  Stay in the apartment for the rest of the evening eating, studying, catching up on journals, trying to sleep, watching fireworks out your window, listening to fireworks through your window, wishing you were outside setting off fireworks, etc.  There is a real safety need to do this and there are no known ways to effectively and safely do missionary work that evening in our Mission."

 

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year!

 

Groentens,

Elder Fowkes