April 14, 2014
We were looking up an investigator who we hadn't seen in a while. My companion and I knocked on her door, then waited. While we were waiting, two little Dutch girls came up to us. One had some important questions for us...
Little girl: "What are you guys doing here?"
Me: "We're coming to see a good friend of ours."
She heard my accent... "Oh. Are you guys from England?"
"No, we're actually both from America."
"Oh! Do you know Beyoncé?" (Girlfriend, please. Who doesn't know Beyoncé?)
"Haha. Of COURSE I know Beyoncé."
"Really?? So, is she your neighbor?"
I had to disappoint her. "No, I don't know her like THAT."
"Oh..." She disappointedly walked away. I hate to disappoint. Maybe I should have started singing "Single Ladies" while Elder Goates and I both busted out dancing to it... Wouldn't be the first time.
So, another week has gone by! Meanwhile, nothing too exciting has happened here in good old sleepy Lelystad. Missionary work is rolling right along. We've been struggling to find new people to teach recently, but we do have one fantastically progressing investigator. If only we could manage to teach some other people regularly, too...
On Thursday, I got to go to Den Haag (the Hague) again on exchanges! I was with one of the zone leaders, Elder Gomez. We had a good day. One of our appointments was a dinner appointment with a younger couple, one of which is a relatively recently returned missionary. It made me think about how my time on a mission really will come to an end someday. I mean, I've already been out for ten months. I really need to work hard to accomplish the things the Lord has me out here to accomplish. It's like that one talk from General Conference by Gary Stevenson. He talked about the Mormon athlete who raced in the skeleton (I always think that that's a goofy name for a race, but it looks pretty intense, so...respect). She had four minutes to win. Four minutes to do her best. In those four minutes, what happened before didn't matter. It was those four minutes that mattered. He compared it to our lives -- what will we do in our four minutes? I've compared it to my mission. What will I do in these two years, my four minutes? They're ticking down. What do I need to do to insure success? It's comparable for all of us, not only for our lives, but for the mini-missions in them. Even goed nadenken.
Elder Goates and I have been trying to make finding a little bit more fun than it usually is. We've been knocking a lot of doors lately, and you have to get creative. I've started asking people for help with Dutch -- asking about certain verbs, or asking them how to say something in Dutch (by pointing to something in their house or their front yard -- and by that I mean the excuse of a front yard that everyone here has). Even if these people don't become potential investigators, at least we usually end our door contacts being friends with the one we talked to. So that's cool. And, I've learned a lot of weird words. Hoorah.
That's all for this week, folks. Sorry that it's so short. Next week should be better, but I've gotta roll. I didn't even talk about the angry Moroccan man who hates Americans and yelled unrepeatable things at me.... Well, to make a long story short, there was an angry Moroccan man who hated Americans and yelled unrepeatable things at me.
Til next week, amigos!
--Elder Bonney
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