Week 92: "Elder, are you dead?"

March 16, 2015

Before I forget, like I have the past two weeks, here is my new address:

Burgemeester Brokxlaan 1950
5041 SJ Tilburg
the Netherlands

Now that that’s out of the way… Well, while I’d love to say that I’m pretty sure I have the plague right now, I’ll have to tell the truth and admit that it’s probably just a bad cold. Being sick on a mission is not the most fun thing in the world; being sick at home is bad enough, when you can sit back and watch TV, or go on Facebook, or read a real book – all the things we do when we’re sick to pass the time without expending too much energy. Out here, it’s different, because…you don’t have the option of doing those things. Instead, you can…read your scriptures, or watch a church film (for the umpteenth time), or the never-failing solution: sleep. I’ll admit, though, as a missionary, whenever you are inside, you feel the urge to go outside and, well, do missionary work. Which, I’ll admit, I have been giving into – and that’s why I have a bad cold instead of an almost healed cold. A member at church yesterday was talking to me, and he asked, "Elder, are you dead?" I thought he was referencing the way I looked, and I was...a little offended...but it turned out, he wanted to tell me about how he felt dead tired his last 2-3 months of his mission. But yesterday, I did feel very dead.

Life goes on. Even though this sickness is trying to stop it, the work in Tilburg is picking up, slowly but surely! Elder Matos and I worked hard this past week, and we were able to find some new people and teach some of them the message of the restoration. It was great. However, I’m constantly surprised at the number of people who aren’t home when we come by for their appointments. Or, even better (this is my all-time favorite), when a woman will make an appointment with us, so we show up with a member to teach the lesson, and then her husband comes to the door to inform us that they aren’t interested. Sigh. But hey, we don’t let that stop us from knocking more doors and finding more people.

Knocking doors to find people is almost like an interesting social experiment. Seeing the way people react, or the things they do, or the different types of people you meet… I’ve been out here for over 21 months now, but it still kind of fascinates me. Apparently, the Jehovah’s Witnesses hit Tilburg pretty hard pretty regularly, so a lot of people assume that we are them and immediately slam their door right after opening it and seeing us. (Those poor Jehovah’s Witnesses…) Once you get beyond that, though, these Tilburg people are pretty nice.

We knocked one door this past Wednesday, and a man opened his door. Right after he opened his door, his dog ran outside, and he came out to chase it. Right after he ran outside after his dog, the wind blew, and his front door shut. Now, don’t ask me why, but most Dutch front doors don’t have a front door-knob to open the door. They can only be opened from the inside, or from the outside with a key. His keys were in the keyhole inside. So, within ten seconds of us knocking this guy’s door: dog out, man out, door shut, locked out. He comes back to the front door and yells out of frustration to himself something along the lines of “why now?” Apparently, though, this had happened before, because one of the windows on his door was broken, and he busted it up a little more and let himself in. Poor guy. Needless to say, he wasn’t too enthusiastic to hear our message after that.

The weather taught me an important lesson this past week. The weather from last Sunday to Thursday was pretty great – blue skies, not too cold. Spring was definitely in the air. Great weather for missionary work. Then, on Friday, the weather started getting bad. The infamous grey skies returned. It rained a little. While we were biking somewhere, with the wind blowing in my face and rain starting to fall, I thought to myself, “Heavenly Father wants us to see success and enjoy the work… Why can’t He just bless us with good weather??” And then, I realized… He had. For five days in a row, it had been just about the best weather of the year so far. Instead of being grateful for that, it took me a grand total of something like a day to stop being grateful. I kind of laughed at myself and started enjoying life again, remembering to be grateful for the good things. Life’s a lot better that way.

Two days later, I woke up sick, and it was hard to be grateful again… I guess God’s trying to get me to work on my gratitude. :)

One last story before I go. So, Tilburg is a small branch, and so there aren’t a lot of members to feed us. We ended up having a lot fewer dinner appointments this past week than I had been used to. When Elder Matos and I went shopping last week, though, I still shopped like we would get a lot of dinner appointments… To make a long story short, yesterday evening, I woke up from a nap, feeling…well, the way you feel when you have a bad cold. I wanted to make myself some dinner, and when I looked at what food we had, we had: rice, beans, and eggs. I felt like I was back at college, trying to create some weird recipe… I ended up making something I like to call Elder Bonney’s rice, beans, and eggs. (I basically cooked them all up and mixed them together. But don’t let the secret out.) And I threw some weird spices and stuff in there. It started smelling, well, not super great. And the pan I was using had no handle, so I had to hold it with a cloth while I stirred the concoction. I was holding the cloth a little too close to the stove, and it caught fire. (All while Elder Matos was sleeping…) I put out the fire. At that point, I could empathize with the guy we’d talked to earlier: “why now?” I guess I need to work a little more on my gratitude.

And yes, we bought more food today. It should be a good week.

Keep calm and be grateful. Until next week! ...and please, pray for me. Haha.
-a cold-infected Elder Bonney