Climbing Windmills!

Hello Wonderful family!

What a great P-day we've had today! I just got back from climbing around on a windmill- literally! One of the members here owns a windmill and let us have a little tour and gave us some baking mixes to make some authentic Dutch breads- very cool! (too bad we don't have an oven...) It was so cool to get to see up close one of the national monuments here in Rotterdam (actually, all windmills are national monuments, there are just not too many left here in Rotterdam). Fun fact- There are enough windmills in the Netherlands that if the modern water pumping systems ever stopped working, they could start the windmills up and keep the land above water. It was so fun. We are TOTALLY out of time this p-day, but next p-day I"ll print some pictures and send them!

Well, the highlight of the week was one of our bikes getting stolen. I was using my trainer's bike while mine is waiting for me to put a new light on it, and we went into a discussion and came out and my trainer's bike was totally gone. It was really sad, and I felt really bad- we had been lazy and not locked them all together like we usually do. Luckily I still have my bike and now we have learned our lesson- Always put 2 locks on a bike in Rotterdam. We were at one of our investigator's houses and he is a huge Ghanaian man (formerly a sky marshal) and once he found out, he was on the phone with some of his "connections" and had found me a new bike. We explained we didn't need it, and later decided that was better because the bike he would have given us would probably be a black market bike stolen from some other missionary anyways :) So we all learned our lesson, and thankfully, we all still have a bike to use.

The work here in Rotterdam is going great- we are actually more busy than we can handle at present. We're going to ask permission to not do any finding for a week and just visit our investigators to try and catch up on them all. Currently we have 3 people preparing for baptism and a ton of others we're teaching when we can. Last transfer, we found 33 new investigators and taught something like 130 lessons. Pretty Crazy! Even my senior companion is overwhelmed with the work. It is stressful, but so rewarding! I am finding true joy as I work to bring this beautiful gospel to all of the people I meet every day.

Yesterday, we all went up to Zwolle to hear Elder Oaks speak. It was a very cool experience. Of course, all of the missionaries were about 2 hours early, so we were all there to greet him when he came in. It was really awesome. We all lined up to shake his hand, and I was at the end of the line. He went down the line greeting each missionary and saying a few words to them. I was really excited to meet him, kind of like just before Christmas. Then, half way through the line, he got distracted, and then I guess thought he had already greeted all the missionaries, because when he finally shook my hand, all he said to me was "oh, hello... again" and moved on to the next person in line. I was kind of caught off guard, and then just thought it was quite funny. On the train ride home everyone talked about their awesome moment meeting Elder Oaks, and my story was quite comical in comparison. Ahh, life is just funny sometimes. Of course his talk in the stake conference was awesome, and it was fun to see all of the missionaries.

The missionaries a transfer behind us in the MTC are here now, so it was fun to not be the newest ones for a change. Oh, my MTC companion Sis. Bennett was transferred into our zone, so we have a grand old time now whenever we see each other. We have to head down to Brussels this week to get our Belgian legality, so we will spend a whole day as "companions" again, which will be really fun.

Well, my half hour is almost up, which is actually good considering P-day is almost up and we've still got to go shopping :) I love you all so much and pray for you every day! Keep me updated on the happenings- after all, I have been gone almost 4 months if you can believe it! I love you all tons!

Love,
Zuster Gulliver
P.S. Ik houd van jullie