So it's about time I sufficiently answered all of your good questions! First one is tough, how to say ponderize. To ponder is "nadenken" which literally means after to think and to memorize as far as I know so far is uit jouw hooft leren which means out of your head to learn. There's probably a better one for memorize, I just haven't learned it yet. It's interesting which words you can go without. I haven't made much of an effort to increase my vocabulary, lately I've been trying to learn the pamphlets a bit but mostly just listening closely to and taking notes from hearing native speakers to improve comprehesion and pronounciation. I'm also reading that book grandpa sent about grammar. I've been feeling lately like my studies haven't been very efficient and that I should be learning more, so I'm trying to work on that and speak more dutch with my companion so we can both improve. There's so much to do in missionary life that it's still really hard to do it all efficiently and on time. I've still been struggling to make goals, I tend to overthink, try to do to much or do too many things at once. But I'm progresssing, just need to clear my thoughts and intentions up some more. Hopefully my conference notes will help. I saw the sat morning, priesthood, and sun morning sessions all live. They were really awesome, I want to go back and study them. I watched two at member's houses and the priesthood session in Apeldoorn..
Okay back to the questions
We usually contact an average of ten random people a day, not a whole lot usually because of all our studies appointments and travels. Also I'm really terrible at making contact with people, it's fear that yields inaction or excuses why not to talk to people. But my companion is really good at it, he just goes up to people and starts talking to people and the results are usually wonderful! We've talked to a lot of muslims, I'll have to talk about them more some other time, but 95% of them are not willing to even consider learning about our church. It's really unfortunate. There are endless philosopies of men that although sometimes have the appearance of Godlyness, fall infinitely short of the truth. So many misunderstandings of the gospel that are bred by the absence of a prophet who leads and recieves revelation.
We've met some pretty good potential investigators recently though. Dang running out of time. Here's some dutch. En hij zal uitgaan, en pijnen en benauwingen en allerlei verzoekingen doorstaan. En wel dat de woord wordt vervuld die zegt dat hij de pijnen en zichten van zijn volk op zich zal nemen. That was Alma 7:11. Couldn't think of anything else to say, I have so much to learn. I think I'm at least learning a lot about how to really express things in dutch instead of just translating english thoughts into dutch words. I'm not making a whole lot of concrete progress (need to study more and better), but I think it's coming. My companion has been giving me responsibilities like calling people and arranging appointments and he wants to give me more responisiblities in lessons this week to make me grow more. I do quite a lot of talking in lessons though and I usually understand most of what everyone is saying, but producing the language back is slower. I definitely think the gift of tongues is helping and that the more I study for my investigators to fulfill my purpose, the better I'll get and continue for a couple years until it becomes like english. It's a really high goal, there's so much that goes into languages, but if I can keep my focus and heart in the right place, I"m sure the Lord will bless me with my desires.
I love you and love getting your emails! Until next week!
Elder Knaupp
Elder Knaupp helped some of the senior missionaries hang curtains...he didn't need to stand on a chair.
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