Did I Mention It Rains Here A Lot!

So last week i think I said something about the rain. Well just so everyone knows it hasn't stopped. I have gotten caught in the rain more times in the past 2 weeks than probably my whole life before. It's always funny when we go knock and peoples doors and it's pouring rain, they give us some pretty strange looks haha, some of them even talk to us. This week was busy though. I went on exchanges with the zone leaders for 2 days, so that means Elder Dial went to another area and one of the zone leaders came here for 48 hours. It was good. It helped me realize how much more I have to learn and how much I can improve. Especilly in my language skills haha. I have gotten to the point where I can explain most things I want to say and be understood, but i still say things totally wrong. Then on Friday Elder Dial went to Brussels for some paper work stuff so I got to work with another random missionary for a day. That was pretty fun. We actually found someone too so that was sweet. There are always people out there who are ready to hear the gospel. Even if they don't know it yet haha. Sorry this is kind of short, Also I forgot to take pictures this week. Oh well.

Sincerely Elder Harding

it rains here, a lot

So this week was very rainy, I think I have seen the sun maybe 5 times for a brief moment since tuesday. Other than that it has been raining fairly hard pretty much the whole time. So that has been fun haha. I also am training now so I have been 'in charge'' everyday. That has been pretty fun. A little stressfull sometimes but it's all good. My new companion is pertty cool. he is from idaho, so still a mormon state, But so far so good haha. He said it's hard to understand the people here because in Belgium they talk so differently, So I have to pay really close attention to make sure I understand everything haha. it has helped my dutch a lot though. Also Elder Lowder is gone so I have to translate for one of our investigators who doesn't speak dutch during the gospel principles class, That was pretty cool. It is super hard. But ya this week was good. Just more teaching people and trying to help them come closer to christ, you know, the usual missionary stuff haha. I sucked at taking pictures but I do have a couple, these are from the past little while that I havent been able to send. anyways till next week

Elder harding

"Hippos can run up to 40 miles per hour" -your Irish Grandaddy

Well well well, Fancy meeting you all here on this fine monday evening. Normally it´d be morning but we had some lessons then so our schedule is a tad bit weird. This week was crazy. We had 2 exchanges and a zone conference so that means that I was not in rotterdam working for 3 whole days this week. It doesn´t feel like I was even here at all. But it was good. The Zone conference was really good. We had Elder Saban our area 70 come and talk to us. He is a really cool guy. He seemed super genuine and just like he knew what he was talking about. It´s nice to have that sometimes. The main thing I got out of the conference was that as long as we are working hard and doing our best work we will be blessed. I feel like that sums up just life pretty well. Sometimes there are trials but we just have to do our best everyday. Also, We got our transfer calls this last saturday. That was crazy. So I will be staying in Rotterdam and finishing the training of Elder Dyle who has been here for one transfer. I have only been here for 2 so this should be and interesting little while haha. Elder Lowder will be going up to gronigen and co training a brand new elder with someone else, He will also be a district leader there and none of them have ever been there befor eso that means that they are whitewashing the area. which is also crazy. We have been looking up lots of people since Elder Lowder is leaving. One of them is Billey. He is a 65 year old irish guy, he has been drinking a lot for most of his life, sort of a functioning alcoholic. But we have still been helping him get his life together. His househas gotten 10x cleaner since we last went there so that is a positive sign. He is a bit of a ranter though. Today he got going off on animals for a bit. one of his quotes was that hippos can run up to 40 miles per hour. He also always tells me that he is like my irish grandaddy because he is the age of my grandfather haha. We do talk to him about gospel stuff too, he just gets sidetracked sometimes haha. (P.s. I don´t think Hippos can run that fast) But ya. This week was pretty good. Crazy to think I´ll be the one in charge of rotterdam here pretty soon. I guess I am ready haha. I understand most of what is said. Still not all by a ways, but most of it. I´ll let you peeps know how it goes next week haha. 

Peace out, Elder Harding

Also Elder Lowderturned 20 a couple of weeks ago, we baked him a cake today and it turnedout amazingly. Also a picture of Elder Lowder and I at church with this guy Ricardo who recently became active again. And some pictures of my bike and I by Erasmus bridge. 

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