Ik was vergiftigd

Hola or hoi as people say in the Netherlands, The weeks just seem to go by faster and faster each time. This week was good we did quite a bit of service. First we did service at a food bank which we do most every week, there we make crates of groceries and then they give them to low income families and stuff like that so we were there, Then we helped this guy Billey paint a room, His life is kind of a mess. He had some accident 30 or so years ago and now he just lays at home and drinks and all that stuff but we are tring to help him get his life together and help him fix his house up at the same time. It is filthy, but it gets cleaner everytime we go over there so that´s good. He said we are the first people to come in his house for 14 years. I don´t know how true that is but it does look like no one else ha been there but him and his cats haha. Then on friday and on saturday we helped this guy Miguel move. He has a crazy situation, So he is kind of an eternal investigator. He does want to get baptized but he can´t because he lives with his girlfriend who is actually a member and they want to get married but they can´t because she doesn´t live here legally. So what he is doing is paying a lawyer to help her get legalized but he has like no money and his old house was littlerally falling down. The dining room was about a meter below the rest of the house on one side and their bathroom was also way lower than the rest of the house. But he also hadn´t payed the rent on his house in over a year so he was getting kicked out and didn´t know where he was going to live. We were over there for dinner and told him about fasting and told him we would fast with him to find a house so we all fasted. The very next day a wardmember called him and found him a house that was wihin his price range and everything so that was totally awesome. So then we helped him move and he has a ton of stuff, but not really useful stuff just lots of junk and knick nacks. But we were super happy he found a place to move to. He has fed us every single week since I have been here and he even gave Elder Lowder and I each a tie this last wednesday so that was super cool. Other than that this week was pretty much normal, Just lots of teaching the gospl and knocking doors. I did get food poisoning on sunday so that was fun. I only threw up a couple times and felt like I was dying all sunday but it´s ok because I feel much better today haha. But ya that´s most of the highlghts from this week. Oh also on monday we had zone P-day so we went and had a BBQ at the senior couples house and went and played soccer and stuff. It was pretty fun.  

Till next week,

Elder Harding

Who Needs the Metro?

This week was pretty good, not too much different from every other week I have had here as a missionary haha. we did some lekker knocking and taught a bunch of lessons. It´s been a little annoying lately we find investigators and have a super good first lesson with them and then they just dissapear and we can never find them again. We had proabbly six or seven lessons fall though this week and that was a little frustrating though. We did have a super good lesson with this guy Mohamed though (we actually have 2 investigators named Mohamed right now) But he speaks hardly any dutch and no English. He mainly speaks arabic but we gave him an arabic book of mormon and an arabic pamphlet and went through it with him and answered all of the questions he had. He seemed super interested and really liked the idea of modern day prophets so that was really good. I also got to go down to Belgium and fill out some more paperwork so I could live here. It was cool because all of my MTC people were there and it was fun to see them again and see how they´re doing. Plus I got this awesome sandwhich and waffle. So that was good. But anyways on saturday we deided to bike to our dinner appointment and then to a lesson. We knew neither of them were very close but we still wanted to bike because it normally takes about an hour on public transport. Well we just mapped it out on the computer. Turns out we biked more than 30 miles pn saturday haha. So that was way fun. I love biking here it is just flat the whole time. There are litterally no hills in this whole country. Anyways here are some pictures from my week. Remember the church is true and all of that fun stuff.

Peace,

Elder Harding

The 010

Hello Hello, How is everyone in the real world? Our week was pretty good here in the north part of Rotterdam. This week we went on exchanges, So I got to go to Gouda for a day (yes like the cheese) That was pretty cool. I was with Elder Calmez who is from Aruba. He speaks spanish, dutch, englsih, and papiementos. So that is pretty cool. At one point we were on the train and every single one of those languages were being spoke at the same time and he could understand them all. So that was pretty cool. Also when I was on splits with him we gave this german guy a blessing. But he didn´t speak dutch so we did it in english and since I had the best english I got to give the blessing. It was actually a pretty good experience and I was happy I got to do it. It is crazy to think that we get the oppertunity to give people revelation from God and tell them things from him. Pretty crazy once you actually think about it. We also had a lesson with this Older Jewish lady, Her name is Marcella. She kind of reminds me of an older female captain jack sparrow haha, But we met with her and her husband and her husband was a pretty funny guy. I will quote some of the conversation for you people 

Marcella speaking to her husband "See I told you these were nice boys!"

Husband "Well what did you expect me to do, kill myself?" 

Later he started making jokes about hitler and me and Elder Lowder weren´t sure how to handle that because theyre all Jewish and stuff. Also Elder Lowder and I cooked some pretty good foods this week which I will send pictures of in a bit. Saterday was kind of a bummer, We had 3 lessons planned and all of them fell through, Then we found this one potential and started talking to him, It was all going good until his father came out and yelled at him in arabic then pulled him inside and slammed the door on us, So that was a bummer. Also someone threw a water balloon at us from the top of a building, They missed of course. But ya we left after that haha. All in all not too bad of a week.

Peace out, Elder Harding​​​​​​​​

Here is a picture of some Hebrew Candy Marcella gave us, some food we made, Elder Calmes and I, and a picture of my bike I made I can´t remember if I sent one last week

August 7, 2017 America The Beautiful

Hello hello, 

We have had an awesome week here in Rotterdam north. This week we had four new investigators and taught tons of lessons, but still had time to go finding so it was cool to see everything work out. This week I got a new bike and put it all together, that was super fun, I love my new bike haha. We also talked to a lot of less actives this week. A couple of them we have met with before and they are working on coming back to church. It is awesome to see their lives change as they come back to the gospel, no matter where anyone is they can still come back to the gospel and become clean. That is something I have seen a lot on my mission so far. 

Cool experience this week, We had a lesson with this eternsal investigator and we were actually going to give him a drop lesson, but he had his friend there and so it turned into a restoration lesson, Well his friend was sarting to try and bible bash us and say we worship Joseph smith and the bible is all god will ever give us and all this stuff. But then Charles (the eternal investigator) was like hey man listen to these kids. They know what they are talking about them and you aren´t listening to them. So then after he started really listening and it turned into a really good lesson. Anyways that is my week.

Sincerely, Elder Harding

The Restoration July 31

So this week was pretty cool, like about eery week so far. They all kind of blend together with each other haha, but cool thing I am going to do today after 9:00 pm I sold my bike that I bought at the beginning of last transfer and then bought an older bike.  It sounds not very smart but it'll be cool once it is all done.  I am going to make it a fix bike and put some new parts on it but I will buy all that today.  Anyways last week on monday we had a super cool lesson with Richard, (he got baptized two weeks ago)  He showed us cool pictures of his family and where he lived growing up so that was pretty cool.  Then Tuesday we had district meeting and went out to this italian place for lunch, it was a good last district meeting with that district.  Nothing too crazy happened the rest of the week just a couple other lessons and some knocking.  Oh we did go to service for this guy named Billy.  He is about 65 and his house is pretty filthy.  He is a bit of a harder and has 2 cats living in his house.  But we helped him take down some wallpaper and it was a bit of a mess haha.  He did give us a chess set so that was pretty fun.  We have been playing a bit of chess in the evenings.  I will send out more pictures in a bit once they finish uploading.
Till next week,
Elder Harding

July 17-23 (Letter to Mom)

Hello Mother,
Sorry I didn't send you a real email last week, we didn't get our whole time to email. but this week I should have more time. Anyways, this week was pretty good. It is kind of weird sometimes the numbers we report don't reflect how I felt our week went. Because we found a couple really good potentials this week but no one reports potential investigators, also we got another person on baptismal date for august 19, funny thing.  His name is Konsuil (Con-Swell) he is like 70ish I'm not exactly sure how old he is. He is old though haha. He is from Suriname and his sister is a Catholic nun haha.  but we put him on baptismal date on Wednesday and then Sunday he said he couldn't come to church.  But then Sunday night we called him to see when we could make an appointment with him, turns out he went to a catholic church that day...but on the bright side he said he didn't like it as much so that was super cool to hear haha.  Also we had a lesson with this girl Natalie who is also from Suriname, she just had a baby 4 weeks ago too.  But we went and had a lesson with her and she said she had gone to lots of different churches and non of them felt right so it will be awesome when she comes to our church.  She said she just wanted to wait until her baby was a little older before she took it to church. She also has some older kids that still live in Suriname but are coming here in like December, they also want to get baptized but just haven't found a church they want to get baptized into yet.  So I bet her whole family ends up getting baptized, just maybe not while I'm still here.  Also ya crazy to think I have been out for almost 3 months.  That is a long time.  Almost an eighth of my mission.  But time goes by super weird here.  I feel like I have been out for barely a month but then I also feel like this has been my whole like forever and nothing before even happened.  Sometimes I wake up in the mornings and expect to just be in my bed at home but instead I am here so that kind of freaks me out.  Oh also on Saturday we did splits with zone leaders again and I went with the same Elder from Peru, we went to a dinner appointment with the family from Argentina again but this time the whole entire night was in Spanish, I think I spoke Dutch like 2 times the whole night.  So it was way fun to practice my Spanish again, plus it helped me remember a lot of words that I had forgotten and stuff like that.  But it was for sure harder to understand.  I liked it though, I miss speaking Spanish haha.  It sounds so much prettier than Dutch.  Also that is pretty mean sending me a picture of my favorite meal.  I have been searching everywhere for some corn tortillas here but haven't been able to find any so far.  I did hear they exist over here though so there is hope.  This week we cooked some cool food though so here are some pictures.  Also I have eaten Greek yogurt with chocolate sprinkles and granola like everyday.  This day we had strawberries so that was nice.  Anyways glad to hear it is going well for the most part there, minus missing me and all haha.
Love, Elder Harding

Null Null July 17

Week 4 or 5 I actually don't even know which is pretty good. We just had three people get baptized on Saturday.  All of them were from our investigators so we were pumped to see them all get baptized.  The baptism went well and nothing too crazy happened.  Just people becoming clean and coming unto Christ. All that fun stuff.  Also we had exchanges with the district leaders so that was way fun.  We all crammed into our tiny apartment and had a party.  Not really but it was fun.  Also we found two new investigators on tuesday or wednesday.  One is a mom from cabo verde who just had a baby like two weeks ago. Then the other is Monique, she is the wife of the dude who invited us over for drinks.  That actually went pretty good and they were fine to just give us water.  Haha.  But ya we had a pretty good week.  Here are some pics of random stuff from this week.  Hope everyone is doing well.
Peace,
Elder Harding