Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Off to ROTTERDAM!!!!!!

Generation Photo: Elder Muller with his "father", Elder Childs, and Elder Childs' "father", Elder Elkins





Elder Hunt with  Elder Muller. Elder Hunt was his second companion/trainer in Brugge


Elder Muller and  Elder Hills


Land of the Tulips!






Elder Muller and Elder Pugh

Elder Muller and Elder Pugh,  Companions in Antwerpen


Elder Muller in the Keukenhof ...The Garden of Europe!

Love!



Elder Muller in the Keukenhof....beautiful tulips!





13 April 2015

That's right! I'm getting transferred to Rotterdam Noord (North)! I'm leaving Antwerpen :'( Elder Pugh is also leaving, we are getting whitewashed, (Term used to mean both missionaries are leaving and two new ones will come into the area.) so it's going to be a crazy couple days getting everything ready. 

Anyway, I'm going to Rotterdam North with Elder Paur as my new companion. I've only heard good things about him, so I'm excited. That apartment is right in the center, so it should be really cool. 

Something really cool, Elders Silva and da Silva are going to be in my district, and we are in the same ward! I'm so excited to see them! I haven't seen them since our first Zone Conference in the land. (They were all roommates in the Missionary  Training Center!)  I'm super pumped! Also, Elder Shelton, my last comp, is going to be my district leader. It will be fun!

Elder Pugh is also going to Rotterdam, but another area and ward. He is going to be district leader there (which is why we are both leaving). We will probably still see each other though. I'm going to miss him, he's a great friend and companion. We had a great time together. 

So the highlights from my week... Here it goes. 

So Monday was cool. Nothing crazy happened. We mostly studied the Disc of Knowledge. It's a collection of files and notes put together by a mission president in California about a whole range of topics. It has the whole set of the General Journal of Discourses, as well as notes for almost every verse in the scriptures. It's really cool, and we've been learning a lot from it. I added a link to where you can download it to the email. Elder Pugh gave it to me, and I uploaded it to my cloud storage thing. Go learn some cool stuff. Warning: It can get kind of deep, this isn't your run of the mill study guide. 

Tuesday was a busy day. We had dinner with the Evans, which is always fun. That night we slept over at the Zone Leaders. It was a lot of fun. 

Wednesday was the big day. Temple Conference! It was so good. It was about a two hour drive up to Zoetermeer where the temple is. We rode with the Zone Leaders (hence the sleepover). The temple was just absolutely great. I haven't been able to go since the MTC, and it was just awesome. We did a session with our whole Zone, all in Dutch. It was really cool. It definitely was a twist, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I could understand. The Spirit was really strong the whole time, and I learned a lot. There is nothing quite like being in the Celestial room with 40 other missionaries after an endowment session. It was really powerful.  (If anyone has any questions about our temples and the sacred ordinances that are performed there, please click on this link http://www.mormon.org/faq/use-of-temples )


Den Haag Temple




After the temple session we had a big lunch with everyone from the Antwerpen, Den Haag, and Eindhoven zones. A lot of missionaries. Then we hit up Keukenhof, all 70 of us. Yeah. The Garden of Europe. I have lots of lekker pics. We just wandered around for hours taking pictures and being with other missionaries. It was a lot of fun. 

Thursday was also a really busy day, we had 4 appointments, which was great. We started off by teaching Yury about faith. It was a pretty cool lesson. In the afternoon we taught Louis, a less active guy about our age. He's the best. He was the only one home, but his whole family are just awesome. They are probably one of the coolest families I've worked with so far. I'm going to miss them a lot. We had a dinner appointment that night with Ivan, another less active we've been helping out. He took us out to eat for couscous, it was really good. They hooked it up fat, we couldn't even finish it all. Missionaries can eat a lot, so it really was a ton of food! 

After dinner we had a really cool appointment with a recent convert/less active named Jen. He hasn't been able to come to church because of work, but he recently got his schedule changed so he wants to come back. He wants to go to the temple this summer, so we talked a lot about it and answered some questions for him. It really was a blessing being able to teach that lesson right after temple conference. We were able to bear awesome testimony about the temple and how it's helped us. It was the icing on the cake for temple conference. Sharing it with others. That's what's so cool about everything in the gospel, the best way to strengthen yourself, is to share it with others. Recognizing and being grateful for the blessings you've received, and then sharing those blessing with others and helping them learn how to receive them for themselves. 

Friday was also a really cool day, we worked with Michael Boegaerts, a fairly recent RM. We looked some people up, and knocked doors with him. It was a lot of fun. He knows what he's doing as well, so he was a big help. He's a really cool guy, I think if I had stayed here and Belgium, we would have been friends. :)  He also took us out to eat, so that was cool. We went and had some lekker frietjes. (delicious Belgian fries!)

Saturday was tough because it rained all day. We stayed inside and worked on area book in the morning. We had a really cool look up though, it was an Easter Referral that is actually in the sisters area, but we went and looked it up for them. The lady was really cool and was pretty interested in learning more about the church. Sadly, we had to give her info to the Sisters. Jammer haha. (Too bad!...meaning they would like to have been able to keep teaching her, but because she is in the Sister missionaries area, they turn the contact information over to them!)

Sunday was great. They had a special Easter service, and it was just great. The whole sacrament meeting was based around musical numbers sung by the Young Single Adults.
The Sunday School was combined and was probably the best part. Every class (so teens, gospel principles, gospel essentials, gospel doctrine, YSA, etc.) gave a ten minute 'presentation' or something. In Wijk Antwerpen (Elder Muller's Ward), there are two main Sunday School classes, one for the Dutch speakers, and one for English. The English class is mostly made up of African people. For their portion of the meeting, they sang a song. It was great. By they end it had turned into an African gospel choir with clapping and Alleluias. Probably mag niet (isn't allowed) but it was great anyway. Made my day. 

Sunday night we also had transfer calls... which I already talked about.

It will be a cool transfer. I'm excited to go to Rotterdam. All of my companions have served in Rotterdam South. I'll be in North, but I'm still excited to serve there. 

I'll talk to you guys more next week! Loves!

Elder Muller

My new address:

Wijnbrugstraat 131

3011 XW Rotterdam
Netherlands



The Keukenhof













Elder Muller & Elder Childs


































No comments:

Post a Comment