Eli Mail 7/27/15 (Spijkenisse, Netherlands) Letter 49

Hey everyone! We now come to the conclusion of week two here in Spijkenisse. A lot happened this week, including very "wisselend" weather again, ranging from the mild "partly cloudy with occasional sun" to "is it really raining again?" weather patterns. It is quite funny; the Dutch people are never used to the weather and always love sharing their opinion about it. I like it, on the contrary, but like the Dutch I also seem to have a comment always at the ready.

On P-day, after the normal weekly, chores we took the metro and played soccer with our zone. The field is located near the church building in Rotterdam North, and because it is in the middle of the city it has a tall metal fence all the way around it with netting above, so that it is impossible to lose the ball. We had a number of 10-year-old kids play with us, who were really good (as European children are), and we just enjoyed a few hours of solid soccer with a light mist that cooled us off. Some of the Sisters in our zone played college soccer, so it was pretty dang intense.

Afterwards – exhausted, winded, and hungry – we all treated ourselves to a "kapsolon." Located on almost every street corner in the Netherlands you can find  "doner shops," which are basically a little stands where Turkish people who speak broken Dutch slice and sell meat off of a open rotisserie. In short, a kapsolon is basically a box of hot doner meat heaped upon an assortment of fresh veggies and topped with a number of spicy sauces. The meal doesn't feel too rewarding after a few hours of digestion, and you will usually have the after effects, which I call, "doner regret" or "doner burps," etc. But initial consumption is overwhelmingly tasty, and the aroma of a steamy box of goodness will overpower your senses. Well played, Turkish immigrants.

As for the work, we had a lot of great progress this week, including the mind bogglingly number of six investigators in church! It was incredible! I have also seen a lot of progress in a single woman we are teaching named Drucella. She has grandchildren back in the island nations of Aruba and other lands I don't know how to spell, and she is simply an honest seeker of truth. We teach her twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays, and her steady progress in the gospel really inspires me. As we have focused this transfer on Chapter 11 of Preach My Gospel, I have learned a lot about the importance of helping people keep and make commitments. And I have had the great opportunity to really apply that principle to Drucella. She always reads and is willing to pray and makes the time to go to church, which has lead to just her overall increase of happiness in her life. I have noticed her smiling more and just how much more joyful it is to be around the past few weeks, all because of her ability to follow through with things. I believe Satan tempts and leads us astray in more ways than we actually think, with feelings of laziness, boredom, or just lack of desire being his powerful tools. But as individuals with our own personal ability to choose, I have seen the rich blessings of overcoming the ease of laziness and just falling into bad habits or routines, and it has blessed my life as a missionary.

So, my prayer for all of us this week is that we can all find something to overcome. Something to personally work on. Because when we do we feel that refining power that the Savior can give us, and we feel those joyous feelings of the gospel described in 1 Nephi chapter 8 about the "tree of life."

Love,

Elder Eli Andrew

Eli Mail 7/20/15 (Spijkenisse, Netherlands) Letter 48

Hello everyone! Today marks the close of week 1 here in Spijkenisse, which is unbelievable. I could have sworn I was just here the other day sending an email at the computer. Another summer week came and went, and along with it we had the opportunity to finally meet the new mission president on Friday. On Monday evening, as 6 p.m. approached, Elder Drinkwater and I hopped on our bikes and raced over to our routine dinner appointment with a part-member family. The weather was strange for a summer day, complete grey skies and a heavy, steady mist falling on our heads. Returned missionaries from the Netherlands can fully understand what the experience is like. Imagine you grab your hose to water the garden, but instead of putting it on the "shower" or "jet" function, you put it on "mist" and you spray yourself in the face. Now, just take that function and imagine it falling out of the sky, nonstop, all day. (I kind of like it actually, it's very unique weather). But after the dinner appointment, we went over to another scheduled appointment. The lady opened the door and told us our potential investigator wasn't home. But to our pleasant surprise she opened the door all the way and said, "You can come in anyway." We taught the nice lady, who was just getting her kids to bed, a great first lesson, and my young companion confidently invited the woman to baptism. it was a great evening!

Most of our work this week has consisted of bike contacting/work on the street, and we've seen great success so far. It's kind of interesting as you go throughout your day, talking with people and initiating countless conversations, because the more and more you overcome your fears and just do, the more influence you feel from the Spirit. It's kind of like one of those "County Fair" games where you use some amount of exerted force from your body to elevate a ball or some other object up a measured scale. I have noticed the more I talk to people during the day, the more higher I feel on this "Spiritual" meter. The sad thing is, this spiritual meter needs to be refilled daily, so just because I do good one day does not mean I am covered for the next couple. It requires constant work, but it is very much worth it. It can also be related to our daily lives also; you do the things Heavenly Father expects of you – that morning prayer, receiving a new insight from a scripture – and you can build up that daily spiritual scale. It feels kind of like a shield of protection almost, and it can definitely help us to be in tune with God despite the noise of the world around us. So, don't forget to be working on your spiritual scale daily!

Friday, we headed out of the apartment to catch a morning metro. Side note, the Metro system is fantastic here: very clean, quiet and high in efficiency and accessibility. (Go, Dutch people!) So, after staring out the window as the crazy shipping port city of Rotterdam passed before my eyes, we arrived at the Rotterdam North Church. The conference was awesome! We finally got to meet our new mission President, which was a wonderful experience. President and Sister Bunnell are very "green," but they have awesome personalities and are ready to lead. They showed us an assortment of pictures of their home, family, going fly fishing, rafting, and all those other outdoorsy things Utah people do. I was very happy when President Bunnell stated that he will be backing up everything President Robinson did and go further with it. He is definitely different, but I am optimistic about it.

The stories and spiritual experiences could go on, but there was a tragic announcement made at the end of Zone conference. I am sorry to announce this, but as of now all Belgium/Netherlands missionaries will now be donning helmets. For further details on what the possible results will be in the bike-loving, non-helmet wearing country of the Netherlands, ask anyone who has visited or served a mission here.

Love and pray for you all.

Elder Eli Andrew

BULLETS from a separate email from Eli today:

·         More about President Bunnell: we all shook hands and had introductions, of course. It was super weird seeing him up on the podium in the Rotterdam chapel. I had seen his picture so many times in the missionary year book, but now he was standing right in front of me. He and his wife have pretty great mannerisms. He seems a lot more direct and obedience-driven than President Robinson. President Robinson trusted us as missionaries to do the right thing, which I liked a lot. President Bunnell is different. He will be doing things like area book checks, more accountability for clean apartments, and also district meetings will be in Dutch. I am actually totally in with the changes, but I was happy to hear President Bunnell state that he backs up and wants to go further with President Robinson's mission plan to build the 5th stake. Sister Bunnell is really loving, but I will miss Sister Robinson's strong teacher-like voice, as she could call us to repentance while still making us feel genuinely loved. Overall, I do have a very positive vibe with President Bunnell.

·         Spijkenisse is pronounced “Spike-en-is-ah.”

·         Oh man, living arrangements: I sort of miss Deventer's apartment. I have been spoiled up until now. Genk – nice, new apartment; Zaandam, also nice, spacious and still cozy; Deventer – big, expensive, and just a totally awesome building. Spijkenisse's apartment isn't by and means bad, just small or rather disproportionate. The bathroom is enormous with loads of room to shower and everything, but we have a super crammed kitchen – stuff like that. As mentioned previously, we live right above a member's lawyer's office, so to get in the apartment we have to lock up to three doors behind us before we climb the stairs to our actual apartment. But the members let us live there for free, so that's a blessing for your tithing. Last note: gas stoves are 100 times better than electric, I have discovered. I can whip up my breakfast egg, and a chicken and rice meal for lunch so much faster with an actual flame.

Eli Mail 7/3/15 (Spijkenisse, Netherlands) Letter 47

Hey, everyone! Well, here I am, emailing in a new city! My time went by very fast in Deventer, and I am afraid of how fast it will go here, too. For those who are wondering, the crazy day of transfers went very smoothy, or at least for me, and I am excited for what awaits in the future here in Spijkenisse.

I will start the contents of this week's letter with Tuesday. It was a pretty normal morning and afternoon; we had our last district meeting in the Apeldoorn church and then went out to Subway to celebrate. After a quick meal of a "centimeter sub" (European Subway, I tell ya!) Elder Tolman and I fast walked from the centrum area to catch a train back to Deventer for some appointments. We arrived at the station with a comfortable amount of time and got on the 1:48 to Deventer. About half way through the ride, the train slammed on the breaks, and we discovered there was a problem and we would be stuck on the train for a few hours. So, on my last day in Deventer I spent a good two hours on the train, and we had to cancel two appointments, sadly. But other than that it was a good day. We had a wonderful dinner appointment and a nice last lesson with Kenny to finish the night off.

On transfer day I packed up and shipped out to Rotterdam. Later that day after a few trains and a long ride in the public metro, I arrived with Elder Drinkwater to my new area, Spijkenisse! First off, we sadly do not live in a very odd-shaped building like in Deventer. We are actually housed by church members here. We do not live with them, but there is a living space above their law firm, where we live. The living quarters are a little small, but it's quite homey. It has been pretty exciting working with Elder Drinkwater, we have pretty similar personalities and likes and dislikes, which makes living and working with someone for 24/7 pretty nice. The members here are incredible, too. On Sunday I was warmly greeted with a handshake from the bishop and a number of other members. This is a very missionary-orientated Ward – super cool! We are also the only two missionaries in the Ward, which makes the first time in my whole mission that it is just my companion and I in a Ward. After church I was also checking the missionary eating list to find members checking it over, making sure there were no empty spaces! Perhaps I am gratifying myself or the members here, but how cool is that?  So, yeah, I am really excited to get close to the members here and investigators, of course.

We have had a pretty good amount of success so far here, too. Elder Drinkwater is pretty new, but he loves to try and gives a great effort at anything that's thrown at him. What I saw a lot of success from in the past – if doors can be ineffective – is bike contacting. Basically, you go about normally doing your work throughout the day – appointments, look-ups, etc. – except you just bike a little slower and stop people that you come across on the sidewalk. It can be awkward at first, but I have found just smiling and making the best of the situation makes people feel a little comfortable about a 19-year-old kid riding his bike trying to talk to you.

We have a very cool miracle person we are working with named Edwin who has a baptismal date and was referred to us by a member, but I haven't been able to meet him yet. Apparently, he is on vacation in America right now fulfilling his wonderful dream of going to Memphis to tour and visit all sorts of Elvis Presley related things.

More stories and other news are on the way, but that's all the time for I have today! This Friday we will meet the new Mission President at zone conference, so watch out for big mission changes! I love you all and keep you in my prayers!

Elder Eli Andrew

Eli bids farewell to President and Sister Robinson, out-going mission president and "mission mom."

Elder Selfie! (Deventer)

Dutch parking lot. (Deventer)

Eli Mail 7/6/15 (Deventer, Netherlands) Letter 46

Good morning fellow family members, family, and readers! After receiving a phone call last night, I have an announcement to make! This will be my last time emailing here in Deventer. It has been a wonderful three transfers here, and leaving will be definitely bitter-sweet.

Amongst many events, we got a bit of a heat wave this past week, which I thoroughly enjoyed. My hope is that everyone had a very enjoyable Fourth of July. It was unusually quiet here, as one might expect, but I still made sure the members we visited were well aware of the importance of the holiday. The weather forecast said it would be over 40 degrees, but us Apeldoorn missionaries still made plans to do our weekly sports activity. We invited a good number of members and investigators, and to our surprise no one showed up! Only missionaries! It was pretty funny, so we ended up celebrating the Fourth just by kicking around the soccer ball and playing a little basketball on a blazing hot afternoon.

I don't have much time today, but I would still love to share a few of the highlights from the week. Firstly, our good friend Kenny is doing awesome and still making good progress. We had a bit of an emotional lesson early in the week. He told us that he had stopped smoking (almost a week before the date we had set for him) and the mental and physical symptoms that accompany quitting a bad habit were pretty obvious. We had planned to go further with teaching him commandments that day, but it was apparent that he needed our motivation and help more than anything. We rocked his world with inspirational scriptures, promising that Christ would help him through this struggle. A scripture came to my head during the lesson, Alma 36:3, and when I turned to the scripture I was pleasantly surprised to see that the scripture expressed the feeling and motivation I wanted to portray to Kenny. I replaced the name "Helaman" with his own name and read the verse. The scripture talked a lot about putting your trust in the Lord, and for me it was just a cool experience to recognize one of the gifts of the Spirit, enlightenment.

In the evening on the Fourth of July we had a baptism, a Spanish lady that we (Deventer Elders) found but the Apeldoorn Zone Leaders have been teaching. Early in the transfer Elder Tolman and I were just walking around our normal contacting area, doing our usual walking and talking, when I saw a group of about six people, all separate parties – not a group of friends. In this close cluster of people, I knew I would only be able to talk to one of them, so I just picked one. The lady I ended up stopping is named Meralys and didn't speak much Dutch. I probably attempted a Spanish intro (from those years way back in high school Spanish!) and, to my surprise, she stood on her tippy toes and gave us both kisses, along with all her contact information. Long story short, Elder Argueta (the zone leader in Apeldoorn) and I taught her, and she told us all this crazy stuff, like how she had a dream about how God was going to call her and all this incredible stuff. What was really cool for me was not necessarily the fact that she was baptized but the feeling I received afterwards at home, realizing that because of such a small little act I had been able to help change someone's life. The crowning moment of the baptism was when the first talk was finished and Meralys wanted to get up to say a few words. She said that 20 years ago she had a dream she was dressed in white and by a riverside. She knew that this dream was far off in the future but said this was the fulfillment of it. (And no, we did not baptize her in a canal – it was definitely in the baptismal font). On a side note, we didn't plan properly for the treats, so we ended up only having bags of chips and juice brought by us missionaries. It was a classic Elder move.

As I said at the beginning of my letter, I will be leaving Deventer to Spijkenisse in the Rotterdam area. I am excited, and my new companion will be Elder Drinkwater who is on his second transfer. 

I love you all a lot, and don't forget to shoot and email every once in a while. I love hearing from everyone!

Elder Eli Andrew

The above map shows Eli's four areas so far.

Eli Mail 6/29/15 (Deventer, Netherlands) Letter 45

Hello everyone! We had another solid seven days here in Deventer, a lot of good contact with investigators, including some of our Chinese investigators that seemed to disappear, having a month of exams, and I think Elder Tolman and I have also just been taking full benefit of the amount of sun we are receiving lately. Oh, and how could I forget?? My one-year mark!!

Among other events, we had great contact with our investigator, Kenny. The great thing about him is his open willingness. He struggles a little putting the willingness into action but is completely receptive to the Spirit. He has kind of a rough background too, as he opened up to us this past Saturday during our lesson. Towards the end of the lesson he told us how he wants to look good when he comes to church with us, because of the obvious difference with everyone else wearing their “Sunday best,” but that he had never worn a dress shirt or tie in his life. His statement took me a little by surprise, and he told us further about how after the age of 15 he had to take care of himself; no one ever told him how to dress or anything – he just simply learned on his own. He got involved with the wrong crowd when he was young, just swept away in the breeze, although always knowing it was bad for him. We went through a few of the baptismal interview questions with him and later discussed about discerning between light and darkness, and it became very apparent to me that he has definitely had help from the Lord, in one way or another. And I believe that qualifies for all of us, too. Just not everyone recognizes the source. Another touching thing he said was about how “it is really painful to make a mistake, and then make the same mistake repeatedly, over and over.” He was referring to smoking here, but it has been remarkable to see Kenny recognize the light of the gospel that has been increasing in his life. We had him on date for baptism for the 4th of July, but we instead replaced that date as the date to stop completely with smoking, which felt much more comfortable for him rather than squeezing in a load of material and commitments in such a short time. To keep it short, Kenny is remarkably sincere and has, as the Book of Mormon describes, “no desire to do evil,” which I admire greatly.

Other than Kenny, we have also had a number of other cool miracles, one of which took place this past Thursday. We had planned to meet with our two Chinese investigators at about 7, but after a number of texts throughout the day the lesson kept getting pushed back later and later. I was a little doubtful of the whole thing, but it turned out fine when we turned the corner to the student housing at the newly appointed time, 8:30. To our pleasant surprise, Zhou, our sassy Chinese investigator who refuses to use an English name, brought along another small Chinese person with him. As we walked up the stairs of the student housing, he quickly informed us he had a lot of questions for us and was wanting to become Christian. How cool is that? We didn´t have much time to start diving into a full lesson. I always struggle knowing whether or not to do the first or second lesson with Chinese people. It’s a matter of answering important, relevant questions but equally requiring lots of explaining and some amount of crisscrossing into the other lesson. So, we just had small talk and talked about some of his questions. It was amazing! He started throwing out these questions, no Joke! “Where do we come from?” and “Where are we going after this life?” and “Why do we experience so many hard things in life?” and “Why are there so many churches today?” Elder Tolman and I smiled at each other in pure excitement and utter surprise when he started rattling through his very deep, soul-searching questions and listening for our answers.

Other than that, we worked hard – did a lot of street contacting and contacting people while riding our bikes. As mentioned in Week 14´s letter, the Apeldoorn Zone Leaders have been teaching a Spanish lady here in Deventer that may or may not have a very cool story attached to it involving us Deventer Elders! Surprises!! But, that will have to wait until next week.

Love you all and have a fantastic Fourth of July!! It will be my first and only Fourth of July not in the States! “Gelukkig!”

Elder Eli Andrew

Eli Mail 6/22/15 (Deventer, Netherlands) Letter 44

Hey, friends and family! It's super exciting to have summer really starting to roll, now. It's been surprisingly mild here, but I'm okay with that since this country doesn't have air conditioning. We had a pretty successful week here in Deventer filled with lots of bike riding, a solid amount of teaching, and also very healthy eating.

We had a number of cool things happen this week, one of which was being taking a train ride down to work in Zutphen, a city comparable in size, and also beauty, to Deventer. I have barely worked there at all, which is kind of cool because it just opens up a whole city 1for missionary work. We walked around, had a few decent conversations with people, and eventually resorted to belling or buzzing people up – nothing too special. I have seen a surprising amount of success from it (bell-ups), and when we push the little button in we generally have a 40% chance that we will hear the click of the front door, indicating they let you in the building. It sounds sketchy, and perhaps it is, but you generally climb a few flights of stairs and meet the person and introduce yourself right at their apartment doorstep, and then it just turns into a normal door approach. The beauty of it is that you contact people who generally have not been contacted before. It is a double-edged sword, because you may climb about five flights of stairs for someone who sees the nametag and immediately has no interest. Overall, we get a few great potentials just from doing these "bell-ups" every once in a while.

See Zutphen in relation to Deventer.

This past Friday we had the Assistants to the President over for a short, five-hour blitz, in which both companionships exchanged and worked with each other for a few hours. Elder Amos and I were in the car, but we discovered that the electronic way of paying for parking in the Netherlands wasn't working for us, so we spent almost an hour just trying to find free parking. It was quite funny. We had a very good exchange, and I learned a lot from him, just from the style of how he works and conversationally. This week we also met several times with Kenny, who still has a baptismal date for July 4th. We had daily contact with him, whether it was texting or a lesson, so that made it especially meaningful to him. We taught him the word of wisdom with the Deventer senior couple, and we discovered he has started smoking again since he arrived here in Deventer around three months ago. I, being a little inexperienced in how to go about a problem like this, was very pleased with the advice the senior couple, the Kleijns, gave him. They spent time also as "addiction recovery missionaries" so their advice and testimony was crucial and really had an impact on Kenny.

Other than that, things have been pretty normal here. We have a large number of new Elders coming in these next two transfers, along with the new mission President, so we have that to look forward to. I have loved my time with President Robinson. He and his wife have shaped and influenced me in countless ways. I will never forget the advice Sister Robinson gave about always having a strong testimony about the Book of Mormon, how we need to spend at least 15 minutes a day in it, along with many other precious things I have learned from their example.

Have a great week, everyone!

Love,

Elder Eli Andrew

Eli Mail 6/15/15 (Deventer, Netherlands) Letter 43

Hello, everyone!! The sun is shining this beautiful Monday morning, and I am excited to write to you guys about this week's events.

I have to start with the most exciting part of the week: we had an investigator in Church! It was super awesome. We met twice this past week with him, Kenny, and we got the help needed from a member to give him a ride. When we met with him this past Friday, we told him it would show his willingness to Heavenly Father, along with reading and other commitments, and he gladly agreed. We were a little set back, though, when he told us he had no means of getting there. Despite living a 30-second walk from the train station, he didn't have the money or means to get a train ticket. We told him we'd work something out (I was personally willing to spend my own money to buy a ticket) but it all worked out when a willing member agreed to give him a ride. What stunned me also was to see how the service and talks given seemed to be almost exactly directed toward what he needed to hear – messages centered around repentance and faith in Christ. After church we had a brief discussion together, and I'm positive he had a Spiritual experience, just because of the number of times he would tell me things he liked from the talks. Right from the start this guy's intention has been to follow Christ, and he's definitely feeling the joy and warm feelings that go along with becoming a disciple of Christ and a willing heart. I'm just super grateful to be able to see people change. "We have a front row seat at the Atonement of Jesus Christ" as one missionary booklet declares, and I affirm that statement.

Elder Tolman and I after a rainy day!

Going along with great and rewarding experiences, about two weeks ago Elder Tolman and I stopped a lady while walking over a bridge. We quickly found out she spoke very little Dutch and was from the Dominican Republic. This little, dark skinned woman excitedly gave us her phone number and address and stood up on her tippy-toes. I instinctively bent down as I received a big old kiss on the cheek. It was super funny and unexpected at the moment, and Elder Tolman just accepted it also and bent down as she went for the kiss. We called later and set up an appointment for this past Friday, and Elder Argueta and I (he is the zone leader in Apeldoorn and, helpfully, speaks Spanish) taught her on an exchange. After I found out what happened during the lesson, it was incredible! She said she had been praying and had a dream in which she knew God was going to call her soon. And a couple of days later, my companion and I contacted her. She said she felt very strongly that it was from Christ and no coincidence. She even called us that evening to tell us she had been reading in the Book of Mormon and was almost crying and she didn't know why! Best of all, she came to Church this Sunday, also.

This week has been a real blessing, and I've been enjoying the sweet pleasure of hard work and noticing Heavenly Father blessing us in seen and also unseen ways. I've been taking more time lately to reflect. And what I have noticed from times of reflection is that we are better able to see how God has blessed us in our daily lives. I have a strong testimony about the importance of finding ways to remember and recognize the hand of the Lord in our lives. It will make us more grateful, and trying to remember will allow the Holy Ghost to bring a lifetime of blessings back into our remembrance. So, my challenge for all of you this week is to find a way or spend time to notice and remember the hand of the Lord.

With love,

Elder Eli Andrew