Sinter Klaas

Synagogue

On the evening of the fourth we had dinner with a member family and afterwards sat in the front room, sang some sinter klaas songs, and waited. We heard a knock at the door and the kids ran to see what there was and inside the door was a couple large bags full of gifts! Later after opening the gifts adressed to us came another knock at the door and three Zwarte Piets (black petes) came in and gave us a bunch of pepernoten and a few more gifts from sinter klaas! Sinter Klaas had visited all the kids at school earlier that day. We got some pictures with them that we'll send later. The next night we spent at familie Spijkerman and had a nice meal with a big group of family and friends and then we opened our "suprises", cleverly wrapped and adorned gifts from sinterklaas, each with een "gedicht" or poem that is sinter klaas's special note to each member of the family. Our surprise was a bike with gifts inside, I'll send a picture of that too. 

Last holiday practice (zelf bedacht or one I've come up with myself) is filling a cup with pepernoten (also called Kruidnoten or "spice nuts") and then filling in cup with milk, letting the pepernoten absorb the milk and eating it with a spoon. Super good! We keep being given more kruidnoten, we still have 1.5 kilos or almost 3 pounds. On the day of sinter klaas we visited Bob the less active from america. It was nice, he's a good guy. Then we visited a former investigator (hopefully we can get him to church) and for the rest of the day (only about an hour and a half) knocked doors. 

I read a Liahona article by Jeffery R Holland about his first Christmas on his mission in england. He was quite new when he was called to an area with one known member. They had nothing to work with so for all of Christmas eve day and Christmas day they knocked the whole day through through pouring rain. No one let them in but he said it was the sweetest Christmas he had ever had until then, he said that he learned what Christmas really meant.

That was me dressed up, the Sister de Jonge had a costume temporarily. There were no ward activities, but there is one for chirstmas plus a concert in apeldoorn. The members are really nice and I hope I can stay here one more transfer even though it's really unlikely,