A Culture of Higher Expectations

The java program for referrals is coming along nicely. Elder Lyman and I have almost made it functional (if not implementable) and will be completing it and then testing it thoroughly during the coming week. 

On Tuesday, we went to zone conference in Apeldoorn. It was incredibly uplifting and educational. Changes are coming, both in the way missionaries find people, and in the way investigators are taught. The arrival of facebook campaigns such as the one for Easter a few weeks ago, has really given a boost to the number of investigators that certain areas have. And when response time improves, those numbers will naturally improve too, as the message reaches more people. The theme of the conference was, at least in part, expectations in relation to faith. How you have to expect certain things to come to pass. Just as, in the words of President Scheltinga, a certain basketball team expected to win a championship, and went so far as to make t-shirts to celebrate that victory, before they played the game. Elder Seiter spoke about safety and emergency preparedness, so I will be building up a 72 hour kit over the next few weeks. Something I think everyone should do.

We delivered supplies to the zone conference in Rotterdam on Wednesday, arriving just on time for lunch, not so accidentally, hahaha. We had a fun time there. The next day, we expected elder Henderson to arrive, but apparently we had all separately misread the e-mail concerning his travel plans and he only arrived on Friday. But we had the day planned out already, so the two missionaries that arrived last week, as well as two others from last transfer came so that we could take them for pancakes and then to the city hall in Leiden to sign them in. Finally, the newest part of the process, we took them to the IND, so that one of them could get registered biometrically. 

Yesterday, elder Cockbain and I went to go pick up luggage from the new elder and the new senior couple and take it back to the office and almost as soon as we got back, we left for Brussels, to help get a bunch of other missionaries legal in Belgium. It was a bit more complicated than normal, but we managed alright. 

We had a good game of football this morning, with 13 players. Hopefully, we can get a better turnout next week: the last time that we will have 9 missionaries for a while. After, we showered and went to the market near the Blaak train/metro station. It was very busy (of course) and we did not buy anything, but it was fun looking around.