Week 82: "Ha, Agents -- from the system. Trying to stop our meeting."

January 5, 2015

It's a cold afternoon, windy with clear skies. Elder Pouwer and I are walking in a park, and a man approaches us. We shake hands and start to talk. Two ladies walk past us with their dogs, and one of their dogs' leashes wraps around Elder Pouwer's legs. The man with which we're speaking lets out an annoyed little laugh and says, knowingly, "ha. Agents -- from the system. Trying to stop our meeting."

Which got me saying to myself, "oh no. Here we go..." We'd contacted that guy the day before on the street, and he'd set up a meeting in the park. Little did we know, he was actually an evil genius who is on the brink of exposing a lot of phonies and fixing a lot of the world's problems, and he spent almost an hour telling us about "the system" and how they're trying to keep him quiet. Who knows? Maybe he's right. Just another day in the life of Elder Bonney.

Oh, and 2014 is over! I can't even believe it. On New Year's Eve, we are required to be inside our apartments by 4 PM, because the Dutch people like to light off a lot of fireworks and drink a lot of alcohol on "Oud en Nieuw" (what they call New Year's Eve). Needless to say, not the best combination. We stayed up until midnight (as in, we went to bed early and set an alarm for right before midnight...) to see the fireworks. They didn't disappoint. It seems like people here just try to get the loudest fireworks and blow them up more and more as the 31st of December goes on, so midnight was a treat. I couldn't have slept if I wanted to. There was this one long-haired, bearded, probably drunk Dutch guy on the street right outside our apartment building, and he was loving all the fireworks he'd purchased. Our windows shook everytime they went off, and we're on the third floor... It was a free pass for people to explode whatever they wanted. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they were throwing grenades up in the air just for fun...

2014 was a great year for me. I learned a lot and saw a lot of miracles, had a lot of fun. And now...it's 2015. As missionaries call it, the "year of the jet..." Well, there's no better time to work my hardest and try my best. Might as well make these last months the best ones!

The other parts of the week in Alkmaar were pretty good. On Tuesday, we went to visit Carlos, and he took us for a walk on the beach. His progression is slow but steady. He told us about how Steve Jobs must have been inspired by God, because - how else could he have invented the iPad? We also worked a lot with Aafje this week, our 79-year old gem. Next Sunday is the baptism! I spent about half the week working in Leiden, Zaandam, and Haarlem on exchanges -- nothing like being back on a bike in the winter rain. Honestly, though, it makes you feel alive.

So, I don't know if I ever emailed about an investigator in Groningen named Julio. Elder Besendorfer and I worked really hard with him and taught him almost all the lessons for the first time (before I got there, he'd been taught the first lesson or two). He was great, and we tried really hard to help him build up his faith. Unfortunately, there were some difficulties, some small things that stopped him -- things we couldn't fix for him, but he'd have to fix for himself. That was over a year ago.

This past Saturday, in the Groningen church building, Julio was baptized.

About five months ago, I was companions with Elder Rudolph in Eindhoven. It was our first week together, and I was having a rough time -- I'd been out for a little over a year, and I was tired, in some ways, of missionary work. I'd prayed that I would have a spiritual experience that day to give me a little boost. We were walking down a street, contacting people, when Elder Rudolph and I got the feeling that we should bell-up a certain apartment. I usually would have disregarded it, but I thought, "hey, maybe this is what I was praying for." We rang up, and a nice guy came down, named João. He was from Brazil, if I remember correctly. He told us that

he was religious, but wasn't really "churchy." He told us we could come back. We came back a few times, but never found him home. On my last week in Eindhoven, we found him leaving his house, and we got his phone number. I never saw him again.

This past Saturday, in the Eindhoven church building, João was baptized.

I don't really know what else I can say. You never really can know how much good you do. You can never say that your effort was wasted. I didn't get to see either of the baptisms, but the Lord had definitely used my companions and me to help Julio and João come closer to Him. I can't really ask for more -- I mean, that's what I came here to do, isn't it? Being a missionary is great.

Keep calm and have a great start to 2015.

-Elder Bonney

 In Zaandam, on exchanges, Elder Toole and I found a Christmas tree that hadn't exactly made it through New Year's Eve...

Alkmaar from the top of a hill. Exciting, huh.