Elder Hayden Bishop Belgium/Netherlands Mission: We each bought a raw, stinky fish with the tail still attached and onions all over.... LEKKER! IT WAS TERRIBLE!!!!

Hey everybody!!!! It doesn't seem like so long ago that I sent you an email. It was only 5 days ago, but soooo much has happened since Monday. It sounds like a lot has happened for you as well. Dad in the hills again, Mom working around the house, Meleese going to birthing classes, and Ross and Lainey with friends. It sounds like a good summer and I can't believe how fast it is going! Like I said though, a lot has happened this week so I better get started...

Apeldoorn District

Monday after emailing we spent the day with the missionaries in Apeldoorn and one of the members who is waiting on his mission call. We did some shopping and walked around the centrum. Elder Lee and Sister Jones had never had Haring before, so we went to the Monday market and found a fish stand with raw Haring. They didn't want to do it, so I told them that I would do it if they did it. They agreed andhaha I went first. I grabbed it by the tail and put more then half the fish in my mouth and started chewing. IT WAS TERRIBLE!!!! I threw it up on the ground haha. I took a smaller bite after that though and managed to swallow it. It was stinky and slimy and disgusting! The other two followed with similar reactions. M, the member waiting for his call, could not believe it! He loves haring and thought we were all babies haha. After we finished, sister Frandsen stepped in the Haring that I spit out hahaha it was classic. I got home and washed my hands 4 times and my fingers still stunk for the rest of the day. That night was family home evening in Deventer. It was a great turn out with 3 investigators and J, the guy we reactivated. Holland was playing Chile and a lot of the YSA were watching on their phones. During the middle of the lesson, Holland scored and everyone started freaking out haha they scored again 10 minutes later and beat Chile 2-0!!!! We played games afterwards and had a fun night.

Tuesday was a miracle day. We had district meeting in Deventer and then had a couple lessons there. First we taught R and T. They are two brothers from Tanzania living here in Holland. They speak Dutch, French, and Swahili, but they really want to learn english, so we are teaching them english. We also gave them copies of the Book of Mormon and have been teaching them about the Restored Gospel. They committed to come to church tomorrow, so hopefully they do! Afterwards, we looked up B. We have been trying to contact him this whole transfer, but he has never answered the door. We have a good relationship and I wanted to try one last time since it was my last day in that area. We knocked and waited for a while and right when we were about to leave, he opened up the door! We talked to him for a while. Last time I talked to him, he was considering writing himself out of the church. We talked with him again, and he is doing SO much better! He explained to us how he knows the church is true. He told us that Satan has been hitting him hard lately, but he is working hard to overcome those trials and come back to church. I told him I go home in December and he promised me that he would be going to church before I go home. Hopefully the missionaries will still be able to keep contact with him and help him come back to church, because he is such a good man. That evening we had time to visit one last member before I needed to start packing. I decided to visit the P's. He is from Norway and she is dutch. He is a concert pianist and they are both so nice! I have always wanted to play the piano with him and visit with both of them, so we decided to go visit them and say goodbye. We showed up unexpectedly, and they were so happy to see us. They let us in and we visited for a while. I wrote them a card and they opened it and read it. He started crying. He started to tell us stories of his mission in france and all the great experiences he had. After we were done visiting, I asked him if he could play me something on the piano. We walked over to their living room and he sat at his nice big grand piano. He started playing Clair de Lune!! That is one of my favorites of all time and he played it SO well. it was flawless. It made my night listening to that. He asked me to play afterwards and we had a lot of fun playing for the next 20 minutes. We prayed with them afterwards, and they explained to us how we carry a special spirit with us and they felt it in their home and they were so grateful that we came. I am glad I went over there before I left.

Wednesday morning we woke up at 5:30 because I had to be at the office by 9 am. I was nervous driving to Utrecht and then catching a train to Leiden. I walked in right at 9 and right when I got there we started giving a training to the 2 new missionaries. Luckily they had bullet points and I was able to follow and give the training, but I literally got thrown into it. The trainers came at 10 and then we gave another training to the trainers. It wasn't too bad though and we made it through fine. Both of the Greenies are serving in Amsterdam (One elder and one sister) so I will see them fairly often. Afterwards, we waited in the office for the 4 Elders to come in who were going home. During that time, we found out that a guy jumped on the train tracks between Rotterdam and Antwerp, and there were no trains going to Belgium for the rest of the day, but we had 5 missionaries who still needed to get down there. We got some of the zone leaders to give them rides and got it all figured out. That is one of our biggest responsibilities as Assistants is to be problem solvers. It is actually kind of fun though haha. That evening we drove the 4 departing missionaries to the mission home and hung out with them there. President and Sister Robinson were in a meeting with President Teixeira from the 70. it was about the facebook project we are doing in this mission. We have seen a lot of success from it and President Teixeira interviewed a few missionaries and will be sending the interviews to the Quorum of the 12. He is pushing to run this project throughout all of west Europe! The interviews went great and he was very pleased, as was President Robinson. After their interviews, President and Sister Robinson showed up at the mission home and we had a departing devotional and testimony meeting. It went really well. We always send home our best missionaries. Afterwards, president and sister Robinson went to bed and we watched the Princess Bride haha. It is a tradition that the missionaries who are leaving can watch a movie the night before they go, and we are lucky and get to watch it with them. We stayed up til about 1 am and them had to wake up at 4 am to get them to the airport. We took them to the airport the next morning and sent them off. It was a really weird experience to do that and then to go back and get back to missionary work that same day. We had a lot to do that day though to prepare for the coming transfer. After a lot of planning, we were able to go to Amsterdam and get to work. They actually have quite a bit going there right now. They have 2 positive investigators, a mother and a daughter, who are planning to be baptized on July 27. We will be working with them to help make that happen.

Friday we had the day to work in Amsterdam. It is totally different working there than anywhere else I have worked on my mission. I have been only in smaller cities with no more than 100,000 people. Amsterdam is a city with more than 1,000,000. There is such a cool vibe there though and a ton of people are willing to listen and try out some new things. it is a lot of fun working there. We taught some lessons and found 3 new potentials in just a few hours. We had a lunch appointment with a lady from Ghana. She made us some african food called red red. It is mashed up beans with some onions and stuff like that, but africans don't use silverware while eating so we just picked it up with our hands and ate haha it was a lot of fun.

I have been praying a lot and thinking a lot about what I can do to be an asset to this mission. I thought about my strengths and weaknesses and what I can bring to the table, because, honestly, I feel pretty inadequate right now. Elder Eastmond is a killer missionary and great leader. But I feel like I can do a good job at helping others feel the Love of God by showing them love myself. I have studied charity and love a lot on my mission and I feel like that is one of the attributes I have developed the most since I have been out here. I studied Elder Scott's and President Monson's talks they gave in the last General Conference, and I have found some good ideas on how I can do that. I am excited for this transfer because I am going to learn more than I ever have before. It will be a lot of fun working witha lot with other missionaries, working with President, and helping this mission see success.

I am so grateful for all of you and I love you so much. I hope you have a great week and please tell everyone I miss them and love them at the family reunion!

Veel Lief,

Elder Bishop