Close to year mark? Seems about right

big ole burger we made

​Some food! Pannenkoek with spek (bacon), kaas (cheese), and ei (eggs)

Super cool that everyone got to spend time with Mallory (Everton from Studio C)! Man she must have it busy, but great for her for doing such a great job. She and Bronte are blessed with the same beautiful hair. Also, what a cool activity going to Portland! I used to be averted to Portland, it was so big and busy, but now I think I would enjoy exploring it more. Still, I love forest grove the best :). I got an email from chase and told him how it's going. 

Woo hoo Jenna! Also trek must be exciting, I loved it. We had a great zone conference and I got the package with the music and journal from YSA, also the letter from Aunt Dianne. All great gifts, thank you! 

Dutch is starting to become second nature in some ways, I can tell my brain sometimes turns up certain dutch words when they are better than the english word. Dutch has some virtues, I like it. Last night I noticed I was particularly enjoying speaking it, I kept it up for the rest of the night. I'm getting closer to developing my dutch to the point that I can speak naturally and authentically with more ease, which isn't easy, the pronounciation requires your mouth to learn some new tricks. I can foresee that dutch will become a very enjoyable skill of mine, but only if I can get to the point where it is as comfortable and natural as english. I think I'll get there. 

The following was part of the email I sent to Chase:

"We've had a drought of serious investigators for the past two transfers, except for one eleven year old girl who's the daughter of a lady that is now recently active. She's special, she felt the spirit last lesson, the spirit brought her to tears as we asked her to think on her grandad who died last year. Her mom texted us later to thank us for the lesson and to tell us that Milene had felt the spirit. I suspected it was more than just emotions and her mom confirmed that. So that was really special.

For the rest of the time we've just been knocking doors and talking to people in the centrum, we've been improving our actual working time, which I'm proud of. My comp now is a good worker and we've been feeling more fulfilled by following the mission schedule and filling in the rest of the time with finding and the occasional lesson. 

I've been thinking lately, the scripture says that the field is white all ready to harvest. That means that we're not here only to plant seeds, we need to find people whom the Lord has prepared to harvest.  So, we must simply talk to a lot of people in order to find those prepared people. Also, we must learn the doctrine more fully, the Lord won't send these wonderful, prepared people to us if we don't have anything better to tell them than what they already know. The message of the restoration in quite simple, but to deliver it properly, purely, and personally to any sort of potential convert with any sort of background is difficult. We have to follow the Spirit to get accross to them the love and truth in our message. I've tried to explain the restoration to everyone that will listen, but very few have been able to recognize it's beauty and truth, and at least part of that because of the way I attempt to explain it. 

So there's a little glimpse of how it's going. Althought I like to comment mostly on the difficult things, I am enjoying an overwhelmingly valuble experience which keeps getting more wonderful."

Elder Packard loves cats. I hope Jenna can have some more contact with animals. 

I've forgotten where those temple cards went, I'll have to dig around. We did a lot for family history for zone conference. We are now inviting everyone to do their own. People are willing to give it a try, but they don't want our help. THey often ask why we're giving this to them, if there's a catch, we just tell them about the importance of the family. They will talk about it with us a little so that's nice.

Today for Pday we mostly just watched church videos, we watched a couple in German with Dutch subtitles since for dutch they only have subtitles and German sounds cooler and often follows dutch word for word except with different pronounciation and spelling. I really like German from what I've experienced of it, but I'm going to try and hold my attention completely on dutch until I go home because that's my duty and it's just wiser. I heard the Hoffelings are both going german speaking, right next door to me! That's super cool.

Love, Ammon