Groetjes Familie!
Hopelijk alles is steeds goed met jullie!!
Thank you all so much for all of the emails!! Wow.. it was like christmas.. but with emails!!! =) Definitely do appreciate everyones emails, and updates on life and questions (that I'll probably forget to answer) ha ha So dad, crazy traditions the netherlands do have.. however.. nothing quite like your story with the cake. They do love ollie bollie like I explained on the phone.. or tried to actually, they only have ollie bollie's during the month of december, and they eat a bunch of them on new years.. we got a bunch from different members of the ward.. close to a 100 or something insane like that.. but that's really there only food tradition that they have.. there other tradition is to go completely insane. And I mean.. literally insane. The country of Netherlands bought somewhere close to 65-70 million fireworks this year. All for New Years. I don't think I can ever truly appreciate fireworks again after being here for a new years. For a couple days leading up to New Years, You would hear little pops and booms every 5 minutes or so. And ít's just exploding fireworks that people throw around as there walking.. as it got closer and closer more and more fireworks would go off at a much higher frequency.. then on Dec 31, starting around 10 it was non-stop.. just a constant stream of fireworks going off.. it sounded like I was in a War Zone.. on Dec 31 we had to be in our house by 4;00 pm because it get's so crazy here.. but we still had a couple of appointments throughout the day, we'd pass groups of people, mostly teens, and they'd just be walking and chucking fireworks at everything.. As we were riding by the center of the city, we say something on fire.. had no idea what it was.. a houseboat was on fire that we saw.. and this is all during the day!! At around 6;00 that's when the fireworks that you usually see at special events, the ones that go up into the air.. that's when people started lighting those off.. anyways around 11:30 pm between 200 am was the climax of all this, were in our home, in a pretty nice area, and things just went chaotic!! Fireworks were going off everywhere, in probably 5 minutes flat, they had set up a bon fire in the middle of the street in front of our house full of boxes, christmas trees, old furniture.. whatever and lit that on fire.. people were blowing up the street signs and putting that in the fire.. throwing fireworks into the fire.. oh wow.. I got some videos but geesh.. it was the most craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. I doubt if I'm even describing it very well.. Oh well I tried.. ha ha it was a pretty unique thing to witness that's for sure! The next day, there was hardly any snow left on the ground.. the smoke from all the fireworks had completely melted most of it.. Every couple of blocks there were ashes of bon-fires people had made with all sorts of stuff in them.. there was a bike in the one outside our apartment.. trash cans were blown up.. just insane.. absolute scene of choas!
But before New Years, I got to see my second baptism since I've been here, first one was the day I arrived in Den Haag actually, and this one was the other Elders, Her name is Barbara, and she's an awesome lady.. had a rough life, but the gospel has really changed her, and healed her.. really classic story you hear so often, pretty neat to be able to be there, get to know her..
Last P-day I bough Kung fu panda in dutch.. pretty stoked about it.. all the disney pixars you can get in dutch.. I"m also trying to look for books to buy in dutch.. like the Harry Potter books or something.. I was thinking those would be pretty cool to have after the mission =)
Anyways, that was pretty much my week.. the main thing was new years.. Still going great love where I'm at, language will come.. sometime.. but it will come!! Keep the emails coming.. love them.. and okay, tot de volgende week!!
Liefs
-Elder Mohrman
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