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

Letter to Mom

Everyone is curious about your living arrangements if you want to share that with us.So I have a video tour I did of my apartment that I will send in a while stuff takes forever to upload here, but it is small haha. Also it is on the top floor so it gets super hot.

How are you and elder Lowder getting along? Sometimes a week isn't really enough to say. Maybe two weeks is a better picture of how it's really going to be.We get along great on everything but food and budgeting haha.. Those are kind of big things to not get along on. But oh well it all works out. He is a good missionary though and knows a lot more than me so it is good to have someone to teach me and that I can learn from.

Let's hear about the Dutch. Is it getting better now that you are emerged in it?I know that I am improving and that it is getting better. But some days I feel like I know nothing and am not leanring or progressing at all. But I have noticed that I understand people waaaaaay more now that I did before
Did you meet any of the other investigators this week? Tell me about them. Should we be praying for any of them?So I met Richard, he is like almost 70 and has a baptism date. He only started coming to church because he had a crush on this mormon lady from Mongolia that lives down the hall from him. But now he is actually intersted and wants to be baptised. Then there is This guyNamed Miguel who´s "wife" is a member but he isn´t and she is illegal here so they can´t get married and they live together. Soooo otherwise he would get baptized but they need to be married first. Also his house is like sinking into the ground so he got giant rachet straps and tightened them up in his crawlspace to hold it up haha. I dont know how well that will work. Also there is Abel, he just became an investigator this week. He is from some country by Ethiopia and has had a crazy life as a refugee. And then we have been meeting with Qira a lot because we have a lot more lessons she needs to get before she gets baptized on the 15th. 

How are you doing spiritually?  I feel like I came off this big spiritual high after girls camp and it feels like a lot of work to keep the spirit with me now. I need to step up my game a little. I wondered if that happened to you after leaving the MTC and entering back into the real world.

Pretty good I think haha. It has helped my testimony a lot to see god answering my prayers so much. Everytime I have prayed to find someone or that an appointment will work out or just something I get some form of an answer. So that has been really cool. It is hard though when we knock 30 or so doors in a row and maybe 5 people talk to us more than to just say not interested and out of those five all of them have their own religion or are atheist. But ya things are good here. 

Let's hear a spiritual experience from the week and just another crazy story too.So Spiritual experience, We found Abel last week and then followed up on him this week. He is a refugee and told us this story about how he was in an underground prison for 2 years with no sun ever and he tried to cross the meddteranian sea 2 times in a rubber boat but it got a hole in it and he thought he was gpoing to die so he prayed and someone saved them and thenthe third time he made it over. But we gave him the restoration message and explained joseph smith and the book of mormon. He seemed super interested and I know he could feel the spirit super strong because I for sure could haha. 

Do you need anything? I figured out the amazon thing and can ship you things. A pillow? Toiletries? Food? What would you like?Ummm no I am pretty good on things I think I can only get packages at zone conferences once every six weeks so that is kind of a bummer but we have one on wednesday so I will get my b-day package then. If you want to send me more cokes that would be super awesome. Or like chips and stuff.

I'm sad your package didn't make it for your birthday. I hope you had a good day. What did you do on your birthday? I also hope you get it soon and enjoy your gift.

Ehh haha My birthday was kind of lame actually. We didn´t do anything cool just shopping and cleaned the apartment and emails so ya... That actually sucked but oh well. I did get a cake at district meeting the next day that one of the sisters made so that was nice. But wednesday I should get your package and that will be super nice. Did you ever get the other camera and stuff I send home?

The weather has been hot. Also Humid. I have been dying of heat actually. The past few days have been better though. It rained one day when we were knocking and that was super nice.Some lady did tell us to take a break and go get some beers though haha. I guess I can legally do that here, So that was funny. 

I am missing being able to do good workouts and long runs and swimming a ton. I wish I could go do a triatholon or a marathon again. It is cool to see your guys acomplishments. Also to hear about everything that has been happening I Love to hear about it. Also that is way nice about cliff. Hopefully he is on the better end of it now. 

I Guess I'm a Real Missionary Now

So week two here has been much better. I feel like I am settling in more to missionary life. We have been teaching lots of people andwe even found a new Investigator. He is from some country by Ethiopia and came across the medditeranian in a rubber raft and for sure has had a crazier life than anyone else I know. Also it finally cooled down a little bit this weekend. It had been super hot here. Also our 3 people with a baptismal daate have been progressing well. It is just a busy life as a missionary. But ya Till next week,

Elder Harding