wait it snows here?

Week 2 in Amsterdam was pretty cold, to be honest. But it was good we are still finding lots of people and being able to teach a bit too. We got rained on a ton the whole week and then it snowed about 3 inches yesterday so that was cool. I had fun riding my race bike in the snow with skinny tires haha. It actually didn´t do too bad. Also on Sunday, we had stake conference and the ward had rented a huge bus to take all the members here so we got to have about an hour bus ride to the conference with the members. It was a really good chance for me to get to know the members a lot better. There are some really cool people in our ward. Plus lots of Spanish speakers so that is fun. On Saturday a member took us out to eat for his birthday at this super fancy all you can eat place. It was awesome, It was super nice he took us there. We ate so much food haha. But other than that it was a pretty normal week, teaching lessons and talking to people about the gospel.  

Also here are some pics from elder Furniss and me with an investigator one of a street in the centrum and then us in our study room. 

Is there sun in this country

Hola, so now I´m in Amsterdam. It´s a pretty cool place. It is super old. way different than being in Rotterdam where none of the buildings are more than about 80 years. Here everything is way older. We aren´t usuaslly in the city itself much though. We work a lot more on the outskirts of ttown. There is a pretty good pool of investigators already and me and Elder furniss (My new comp) have already found a good amount more haha. The ward is pretty cool, tons of people were gone yesterday so I didn´t meet everyone but it seems like a good ward. There are lots of spanish speaking people in our ward too so it will be fun to be able to use my spanish a lot. We also have a couple spanish investigators here who I´ll get to teach in spanish, I am super excited about that. Also I can´t remember if I said this last week or not but we have a whole house now, A dutch house which is smaller than american houses by far. But still it is a house. Also there is another missionary companionship that lives there with us too. It´s a good time. In the mornings we all run to the church then play ping pong for a bit and run back. It´s great. It has been cold though haha. On saturday I think I had the coldest day on my mission so far. I don´t think I got warm again until I took a hot shower the next morning. I can tell it is going to get colder too haha. Normally it wouldn´t be so bad but as a misssionary we are outside most of the day and it gets a little chilly after a while. Also the sun doesn´t come up until about 9 and then it gets dark again around 4 or so. It is a bit strange. I can not imagine being somewhere really up north. Sometimes it feels like the sun never evn came up haha. It´s all good though. Anyways See you next week everyone. 

,Elder Harding

010 to 020

Sup homies, So this week was a really good week. We found lots of people and even got to set up a baptismal date with a couple investigators so that was super cool. I´m sad I don´t get to stay and teach all of the people we found, But elder dial will do a good job. I´m getting transferred to the city of amsterdam! I don´t know how many of you have heard of it but it´s a little city in north Holland that is famous for a lot of things that may not be appropriate for missionaries. But I will be moving there on Wednesday so exciting stuff. It did make this last sunday a little sad. I had to say goodbye to a lot of people I have really gotten to be friends with. But so goes it. Missions seem like they are just a whole lot of goodbyes sometimes. Sorry for the short emails lately, I always end up procrastinating this until last minute so I have not so much time. But I will send some pics from last week to make up for it. 

Tomorrow is P-Day (Explained) 11/20/17

So last week I forgot to explain my title, so in case anyone was wondering. Elder Dial and I have this saying that every single day we just say that time goes so fast tomorrow is basically P-day. So we always say that and it´s always funny on sunday because then tomorrow is actually p-day. Anyways this week was good. We found four new investigators so that was nice. Also we just talked to tons of people. I honestly feel like we did way better this week at being missionaries so that was nice. But other than that this week was pretty normal. Anyways I don´t really have anything else to say haha. have a good week anyways

Tomorrow is P-Day 11/13/17

Wow this week went by really fast, so we started off doing a service project on monday for about 6 hours, then tuesday to wednesday I was on exchanges with the zone leaders So I was in rotterdam south for 2 days, it was fun. Everyone always says south is the more ghetto part of the town but I honestly don´t really feel like it´s any different from where we live. Then thursday we got to go through the temple! That was super cool. It was awesome to go through it in dutch. I actually understood about 90 percent of what was going on so that was nice. then after that we had zone conference and it was good. It always is good to go to those. It helps me stay more motivated. Especially with how cold and dark it has been lately haha. Then on friday we were on exchanges again with our district leader. It was funny so elder dial actually went with the district leader and I just went with his companion who just got here from el salvador, So we were walking on the street trying to talk to people and after a while he just looks and me and was like "Elder, this is hard. No one here even stops for a second to listen to us" It kind of made me laugh because I felt like after a while I´ve just kind of gotten used to how the people are here, but I do remember when I first got here how it did kind of suck, but once I really got into it It becomes totally worth it when we actually find someone who is willing to learn. Also I gave a talk on sunday, that went ok. I didn´t have as much time to prepare as I would of liked so I feel like i could have done better. Oh well though there is always next time. Also this week I repainted my bike and stuff so I´ll send some pictures of that. 

Peace out, Elder Harding

Nov 6...No Group email.. portions of Mom and Dad's emails

So haha, elder Dial got hit by a car. That was crazy. We were riding bikes home and it was dark and the roads were wet, so I was riding behind and elder dial was riding in front and he was going kind of fast because he just bought this sweet race bike. It looks a lot like dads but it has automatic sram shifters, I have no idea how it works but it´s cool. anyways we both have lights on our bikes so the car totally could see uus because they are really bright but this car comes flying by us and then just pulls over right in front of elder dial and slams on its brakes. So elder dial brakes but can´t stop because the roads are wet and he slid sideways then just smahsed into the back of the car. He didn´t even fall over though. He like rode to the front of the car and glared at the guy then drove off hahahaha. He´s ok it was just crazy though. I´m glad it wasn´t me because I don´t have any breaks on my bike so I would have died haha. It´s cool though.

So normally fast and testimony meetings are awful in our ward. Basically everyone just gets up and tries to show how much better they are and tell everyone they need to repent. It´s hard to watch honestly. But this week was really god. Honestly it was the most spiritual fast and testimoney meeting I´ve ever had. Everyone just was up there talking about missionary work and how much it has blesed them to have the gospel. It was cool. I even went up and bore my testimony. (I know shocker) I also have to give a talk this week so I figured I´d practice haha.

Lately we have been having a difficult time finding new people to teach, we have 2 people who are progressing and doing well but other than that we don´t really have a ton of people. We had tons of potentials and stuff but now we have kind of sifted through all of the lazy people.  So now we should have more time to go finding which is nice because we have had zero finding time lately. But the 2 people we have who are solid are Erwin and Ray. Erwin is a dutch guy, kind of a recluse but he can for sure talk for hours. It´s hard to teach him sometimes because he gets off on weird tangents and it is hard to bring it back to the gospel. but he is sincerely interested and does want to progress further. Right now we are just having  a bit of a hang up with smoking. His excuse is that he thinks prescription drugs can be just as bad as smoking so he doesn´t see why he should quit. He also said he doesn´t know that the word of wisdom is an inspired law, but it was good he said that because then we challenged him to live it and pray about how he feels to see if it is insprired and we totally caught him where he couldn´t just argue his way around us. So we will see how it has been this week haha. Ray is a Chinese student who has been meeting with the missionaries for two years and he has finally decided he wants to get baptized. but then his parents were super not supportive and told him he just needs to finish his studies then leave back to china and get a job. But we are working with him still. It´s hard to tell him to just not listen to his parents but really if he actually wants to get baptized and fully understands what it means that should be more important to him tna anything else. 

te amo, Hijo

It's Dark

So this week we had the time change, before it wouldn´t get dark until around 6-7 in the evening. Well now it gets dark at around 4. So ya that is not my favorite to be honest. I feel like I never see the sun anymore haha. But this week was pretty chill. Just kind of a normal missionary week. My companion and I did a service project where we got to cut down a tree and then cut it into tiny pieces. That was pretty fun. Also we got to do a skype lesson with one of our investigators to soem chinese members in another city. It ended up being a really good lesson for him and I think it helped him a lot to realize what the gospel does for people. But ya sorry it´s kind of short this week but here is a before and after picture of the tree we cut down and also a picture from zone p-day a few weeks ago that I just got