Ex Unitate Vires

18-07-2015

I cannot believe how fast the days and weeks are going. But I still have some months left, so it won't go too fast. 

This week, we had our first zone conference under the direction of President Bunnell, on Wednesday (together with the Den Haag zone, and followed by the other zones on Thursday and Friday. He and his wife began with a introduction of them and their family. We then heard about their mission vision and what they see in the mission's future, or at least a small portion of that. We then heard from the APs and a member from Zoetermeer (about Dutch etiquette and such). After lunch, we split into four groups and went to workshops led by the four zone leaders, mainly about learning the language. Something I cannot really relate to, but it is important for most of the other missionaries, I guess. 

We had a great dinner appointment with the bishop on Wednesday (they called us on the day itself). It has been a while since I was last there (first time for my current companions). We talked about Nephi and his desire to obey (cf. 1 Ne 3:7) and played Jenga Blast, since the bishop's 3 year old son said it should be family home evening as soon as we brought up sharing a message. It was fun.

The rest of the week, we knocked doors a lot more than usual and tried to get in contact with people who had previously shown interest, so not much success, but we did get some good work done during the week. And I found another fellow gamer, and he is interested in the Book of Mormon, so that's cool too, haha.

On Saturday, I had a good time at football, better than last week: it really is not as fun when only us and one other member shows up to football (Admittedly, it would be worse for him if we did not show up either). After our usual p-day morning routine, which has almost exactly the same pattern each week, we e-mailed at the office. I then wrote and read for the rest of the day, until dinner. It was good to just stay at the office to relax for a change. We are at the office everyday, but for work and not fun stuff. In the evening, we visited our good Cambodian friend (an inactive member who lives north of Leiden). He is a great guy. The best thing is that he wants to go to church and the only thing holding him back is his health and a lack of funds. Fortunately, there are great members in the Wassenaar ward who will hopefully be able to give him a ride to church.

There is an Indonesian member in the ward who feeds every so often and she always feeds us a lot of food. We ate with her on Sunday and she served us bami, mac & cheese, a chicken omelette and some other side dishes. Just the mac & cheese alone would have been enough to feed us and her and her daughter and grandson (who were visiting), but fortunately she did not make us finish it all, hahaha.

"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world." - Douglas Adams