Scary stories and pannenkoeken

We have a lot of things to look forward to this week! Temple trip on wednesday, after which we will spend the night in Leiden so that we can run the mission office on thursday while the office elders and senior couples are in the temple. We will be fasting on tuesday to prepare and I will be doing an endowment for a dutch ancestor of mine

I've mentioned that since five or so weeks ago, our mission has been reading the book of mormon with a goal to finish by the end of the year. I am still a ways behind, I'm in 2 Nephi 9, but I'm enjoying it. I've spent the majority of my study time on my mission reading the book of mormon.

It sounds like everyone had a lovely halloween, knaupp homemade donuts and fresh pressed cider are fantastic! That missionary joke is pretty funny! I don't have the guts to think of that, but I would definitely go along with it! There was one time back in breda that we somehow accidentally rang one man's house bell three times, all of which were met by him delivering an angry outburst. Things like that are often pretty funny. That time it was just particularly funny that we somehow rang his bell three times (his bell was on a board of about twenty others).

Sander is doing great, this last week we taught the plan of salvation and met on sunday afternoon to answer any questions. We had a great discussion with him about some other things. First we talked about repentance and forgiveness, which was prompted by a question he had. It's really great how everything we teach has been in direct response to his direct inquiries. That's the only way teachings can be recieved, if the investigator wants to know the answer. He wants to be baptized and pick the right church, and he asked us what he should do. He was very humble and honest and told us the perception he has of the leaders of our church, which was only based on a bit of research on the internet. We said a few things to clarify how our church is led, and how the apostles are chosen and what they do. He was totally open and therefore his understanding of the prophet and other leaders of the church is much more accurate. Although we would love to say a bunch of things to the credit of Joseph Smith and the prophets, we instead encourage him to seek an answer from God. The other church he attends is having a baptism service on the 20th, he said he wanted to talk to the pastor about getting baptized. I'm not worried for him, the choice is up to him, and from the signs he's giving, he really wants to follow Christ and therefore he will take the decision to be baptized seriously, most like he will not be able to forget what we've told him about priesthood authority.

I haven't had any difficulty here with money. We've also had tons of dinner appointments, Elder Solomon is a pro and getting them, he even got a couple last week with some particularly tricky part member families! I'm really glad that he's my companion, he's filled in where I come short, that's how a companionship is supposed to work! Thank goodness though, it's nice to share the load and fill in for each other.

So this is my first transfer being a district leader. My responsiblities include working with the elders in my district on exchanges (we only have one other set of elders in our district other than the zone leaders), collecting the weekly totals of key indicators and talking to each set about how their week went, leading district meeting and giving a thirty minute training in it. It's not super challenging and I enjoy it.

Here's something pretty funny that Elder Solomon spotted: It says "Thief, bring my plant and pot back.". The 'e' on the end of "mijne" is a funny grammatical error people here make all the time, although it may or may not be left over from older dutch, I don't remember. The main funny grammar error is that most people throw n's on the ends of words that are supposed to end in e, so they say den, dien, ietsken, meisken, all sorts of funny stuff. There are dialects everywhere which have all sorts of quirks and often different words. "ulder" means your but only in plural, gulder or gunder means you also only in plural. Ginder means over there, like the english Yonder. It's a lot of fun to hear people talk and figure out why they sound different, a very common accent is that the long "aa" sound (like in the english 'dog') is pronounced "oa" (oh plus ah). So straat (street) becomes stroat (not usually written that way, although they do occassionally for the expressive value spell their words like they pronounce them in their dialect). It's comparable to a really dramatic southern american accent. I could go on an on about the huge variety of variations in the way people talk, but I've gotta go, I'm glad I could write more this time, I kept focused and it feels much better that way. 

For halloween we told scary stories around a fire with the youth while eating Pannenkoeken which are the typical dutch pancake, although they're a lot more like crepes. Love Elder Knaupp

Grammatically incorrect sign telling a thief to bring back their pot! 

A new member and a reactivated member, both wonderful guys, great friends too. Maartin and Rigobert