Heerlen....Week 1

Hallo Familie!

Hard sticka bedankt for all of the wonderful emails this week! It’s always great to see how everyone is doing and what’s the updates with everyone’s life. Bummer again for Stefani.. man.. all this waiting.. you just got to know your whole mission is going to be just as crazy!! =) Maybe you’ll be a solo or something also?

My address for Heerlen

Zeswegenlaan 295
6412 HK Heerlen
Netherlands

I left last Wednesday from Den Haag and what of course happened? The package you sent me arrived.. luckily my new companion is a district leader as well as my last one, so he can give him the package at a district leader training but that won’t be for a couple of weeks. Really excited though, do love mail. So let me tell you a little about this place.

It’s in the middle of no where and there’s tons and tons of hills. Yeah… fun.. I was blessed though, the ward missionary leader in the Den Haag ward let me have one of his bikes so I didn’t have to buy one. Only problem was that it was stuck in the hardest gear.. fine for a flat city of Den Haag but for a hilly place? But we knocked it down to a couple of easier gears, and the bike is holding up the few days I’ve been here. It’s really different being in a 2-man apartment though. Amsterdam and also Den Haag were 4-man’s.. 2 man’s definitely a little more quieter. But my companion Elder Robert and I have gotten along just great so far.. It’s a pretty interesting situation though, Elder Robert just turned… 25 in January.. graduated in 2004.. the guy is older than Tiffani!! Ha ha He can’t believe that I graduated in 2010.. We’ve had some good jokes about our ages.. I call him grandpa or old man, and he tells me I still have baby fat on my face =P IT’s going to be a fun transfer I’m sure =) Heerlen is a beautiful place.. I guess a lot of people retire here because of the beauty.. Very green, and the hills are very nice to see from all the flatness of the big cities. The three corner mark is in my area, and they have a monument there, for a p-day were going to go there, and I’ll be able to be in 3 countries at once! And most of the members actually live in Germany, so I get to be the rare exception and cross the mission boundaries and travel into Germany when we go to member’s houses. In fact tomorrow on Tuesday will be the first time =) I’ll take pictures for ya Stef ;)

The ward is mostly American… it’s pretty nice to talk with Americans again.. American English!.. and it kinda has that feel of a ward back home.. But there’s still plenty of dutch people as well and I’ve met some pretty amazing people here. My first dinner with members was with this polish family, who knew and are friends with Josh Wilson quite well. Small world.. but it get’s smaller as my second dinner appointment was with this dutch couple who are extremely good friends with this older couple in payson.. pretty close to where we live too.. we were able to talk about different land marks in payson and the wife was just there this past march.. Extremely small world! The dutch couple were amazing, the man is a artist and he actually has two pieces in the church art museum.. one of the pieces is a statue of Job, and he still has a few limited editions left and after I said Job was my favorite story in the bible , they gave me and my companion a statue of it.. really really cool! There’s only 150 of them in the world, and like I said it’s in the church art museum in utah.. only problem is I don’t know how I’m going to send that home because it’s so fragile! I have a lot of other stuff I need to send home as well.. it’s pretty sweet that we have American bases so close because I can give my packages to american’s and they can send them off and I’ll get American pricing.. that’s going to be super nice! But on sunday I was able to bare my testimony to the ward and introduce myself, I shared my experience from Amsterdam, where it was my last day and I felt we should go to the old woman’s house and it turned out she had been praying for us to come. It was pretty special, I hadn’t shared that story with people before at least not over a pulpit. I’m really excited about my opportunity to be here in Heerlen.. Unlike Den Haag where I came in and had a lot of investigators already there.. Heerlen is really different, there’s hardly anything going on. But I think that there could be… hearing from my companion who’s starting his second transfer, there’s some really positive people here.. and if we involve the ward more in missionary work, this place and really any place I think could just explode. It’s going to be a challenge, but my goal is to be having the same numbers in Heerlen as I was in Den Haag, (the most productive city in the mission) I listened to a talk by Pres, Gordon B Hinckley this morning actually and the title is “A true successful story” or something like that.. he gave it in 1985.. it’s all about missionary work, and the miracle of it all.. and how if we just put a little more effort we could double our convert baptisms.. it was a really good talk.. one that made me think, and so all morning I’ve just been thinking that yeah.. I just need to put a little more effort to what I’ve been doing on my mission.. and then the work will improve in Heerlen.. It was neat it’s what I needed to hear.

Last thing I’ll say before I wish you a very happy week, I’ve been spoiled with dutch in Amsterdam and Den Haag.. the dutch there is clear.. and for a person learning dutch that’s the perfect place to go.. Here they have this funny accent, and they guttural there R’s along with there G’s.. First time I heard I had to take a second and really concentrate because all the guttural sounds flying out was confusing me! It felt like I was hearing words I’’ve never heard before!! But actually in reality it’s not too bad.. just different, I know a lot of people think that the Dutch language is an ugly language, but I’m in love with it.. I’’m already making plans on how I’m going to keep it up when I get home.. So.. okay.. have nothing really left to say.. Success met de week.. en.. Tot Ziens!

Liefs,
Elder Mohrman
p.s sad day for salem