Week 9! (I think... I may have lost track...)

Hallo van Nederland!

I love being a missionary! It is crazy hard, but also rewarding enough that you just can't get enough. We didn't have a ton of appointments this week, so we did a lot of knocking. I love it is short amounts, but sometimes it is a little long.

One day we knocked an entire street in a few hours, and almost the entire first half of the street was not interested, and not particularly nice either (which is weird, because for the most part I have found that people here do their best to be polite, even if they have "Geen geinteresseerd.") On the second half of the street we found several people, and had to bring back a Book of Mormon because we ran out. That was a little weird, but so awesome. On this street we found 3 19 year-old boys, who all were interested and took a Book of Mormon. We are hoping to teach them together, cause that would be so cool!

I had my first exhange this week, and I finally broke through the barrier of speaking to people on the bus. I now can have a full conversation with someone on the bus, and for the most part understand what they are saying, which is so cool.

My trainer is super good at Dutch, and I am doing my best to learn from him. I have improved a ton since I got here.

My trainer is super awesome! Elder Stanger is really good at Dutch and talking to everyone. He actually has done musical theater since he was 8, so we have enjoyed that, and he is almost the exact same height and weight as me, to which everyone in our ward has commented on.

Our investigators are doing pretty well. Joelle is progressing, and wants to be baptized, but doesn't want to commit to a certain date. Dionis and Peter did not do their reading, so that is a little frustrating... Joka is from the Dutch Reformed Church, and doesn't really think it is important to change, even though she has asked us to pray with her multiple times. I think we are going to be able to get all of them going this week, with a little help from above.

Have a great week!

Beverwijk! A pretty little pond in our area

Haarlem Centraal! We take our a 30 minute bus ride to IJmuiden from here almost every day. (We are super far away from the church, about 1 hour on the bus, if we time it right.)

My classy companion and I on our bikes. :)



​Vla! Zuster Majors made this pretty awesome vla flower for me at a dinner appointment.

Love Elder Thornton!