Elder John Bonney: Week 85: "I look like a monkey."

January 26, 2015

It was Friday night, and Elder Neptune and I were making some plans for the next day. The phone started ringing -- it was a member of the branch. "Hello elders, we just wanted to give you a quick weather update! There is a serious warning through the whole country for black ice tomorrow morning. So, be careful."

We did have to leave early the next morning to travel to Amsterdam for a meeting with the district leaders in our zone. While traveling to the Alkmaar station from our apartment, I looked at the canals and saw ice on top of them. It was the first time I saw them frozen over outside (the winters during my mission have been relatively warm, so the lakes/canals never froze). Yeah, it was pretty cold. Did I mention that we're on bikes? We're still waiting for Elder Neptune's driver's license to come, so for this past week and its beautiful weather, we've been traveling with buses and bikes. It's great. Looks like God wanted to make sure that I got to experience a little bit of real Dutch winter (and not from the inside of a car).

And our train was canceled - all of the trains until noon were canceled because the tracks were iced over or something. So, we bused down to Amsterdam. Don't even get me started on the kind of people you travel with while on the bus to Amsterdam...

And there was snow on the ground in Amsterdam.

Things are going really well, though. Elder Pouwer and I had a good last few days together -- on Tuesday, we had a really good lesson with some of the investigators we had found together a while ago - a Romanian woman and her Polish boyfriend. A few years back, I went on a pretty cool trip for a couple weeks to Romania to help build playgrounds, and the kids there taught me a little Romanian -- I have to admit, I never thought it would come in handy. (Given, the only things they taught me that I remember how to say are "I look like a monkey," "you look like a parrot," and "where is the bathroom." Also, a questionable way of telling a girl that she's attractive, but I try not to use that one...) Our Romanian investigator thinks it's hilarious. She's absolutely amazing -- she reads in the Book of Mormon every day and knows that it's true. Her boyfriend, though, isn't so sure. She remains a good example for him and helps him come to church -- they've been three Sundays in a row now. I think they'll go places. Arăt ca o maimuță.

On Wednesday, Elder Pouwer and I drove down to Leiden and ended our four month-long time together. I have to admit, it was sad to see it end. We were together for a while - all the time I served with him is now less than all the time I have left. I'm glad that I'll still see him around, though -- we're still in the same district.

I waited around in the Leiden station for a while, helping run transfers, and then Elder Neptune showed up. We finished running transfers, then took the train - leaving the car behind :( - back to Alkmaar. Since then, we've spent a lot of time figuring out how to get everywhere without a car. Besides our Saturday morning incident, things have gone relatively smoothly. We've rented some bikes, so that helps. We've also been spending a good amount of time preparing for tomorrow's zone training - Elder Neptune is a new zone leader and has never given a zone training before, and neither has our new sister training leader, and we only have had a week together to put it all together, but it should work out.

There's not much to complain about -- things are going really well. Life is good. And the winter won't get much worse...will it?

Arăți ca un papagal.

- Elder Bonney