Heerlen ....week 5

Hoi Familie!!

So.. yeah.. it's wednesday.. ha ha whoops! Nah actually it's not my fault. You all know the great ol' party in louisianna called "marty gra"? Well here, in south holland it's called "Carnival" and it's a week long party here where everyone get's dressed up and drunk.. and well.. all the stores were closed monday, which inclueded the library where we do our emails =0 And nobody was home member-wise that we tried calling so couldn't email on monday!!... and we travelled to Antwerp on Tuesday so had no time there.. so you all get my email today!! So hopefully you weren't having silly thoughts about me forgetting to email.. There was and would always be a reason!!! =)
So Carnival.. I guess ít's a catholic tradition? No idea how or why? Same with Marty Gra.. and also they have it in Rio also.. but it's a week long.. party I guess you could say.. Started last thursday and yesterday was the last day. People just dress up in funky costumes.. mostly clowns.. but saw a lot of pirates and weirdo costume that looked straight from a dr. suess book.. so pretty much halloween.. and they dress up all day, every day.. and starting on saturday they have parades in the different cities in the area, and it's just funky floats with people in funkier costumes, drinking beer while dancing and singing to "carnival" music. Horrible stuff... you have to be drunk in order to like it.. So crazy though, on sunday we were getting out of church and Heerlen was having there parade, and to go to our bus stop we had to walk through it.. nuts. I've never seen crazier people in my life. I was seriously in loony toon land! We saw a couple of members who ditched out on church there at the parade, ha ha they were pretty suprised to see us.. interesting how people make excuses to ditch out on church! =P But on Monday we were able to go to another parade with a member, His name is Bro. Mazurik.. don't know if I told you about him.. he's from poland.. knows Josh Wilson really well.. but that was pretty fun, seeing the parade, and expiriencing the cuture.. even if it is crazy! They throw out bags of tortillas from the floats.. no idea why.. but we have a nice supply of tortillas now! I think the weirdest part of the parades for me, was seeing the people in the parade all dressed up.. dancing and drinking while they march.. and then seeing the people watching the parade also all dressed up... Everyone dresses up!! Last night, as we got back from antwerpen, we had a lesson fall through.. which was kinda a bummer since we asked Bro Kitchen, a member who just arrived a few weeks ago come as a joint teach for us.. so he arrived and took us out to dinner.. really cool guy.. but as we were eating in this resturant we start hearing this carnival music again! We look outside and there's another parade going on!!! A night parade.. I guess one last one to top off the week.. It was crazier then any of the previous ones.. techno lights.. the floats were bigger and better... craziness.. glad that week is over.. made finding pretty hard, as you can imagine.. had a few times we knocked on doors, and have someone in a clown outfit with a beer in his hand answer the door.. strange is a simple word to describe it!
As for the missionary work in heerlen, we didn't have much fire this week.. had a few people drop us, including bobby who I talked about last week, that was a bummer as he was our most positive person.. just didn't want to change, used his free agency =0.. had others say they want to meet in a couple of weeks which would include Grace the other one I talked about =0.. but we were blessed in other ways.. we got a baptismal date, first one that heerlen has had in a long long time.. and then we got a lot of referalls from other missionary's in our mission.. which doesn't happen very much.. so had a down week.. but.. we got other things that we can build on... interesting how things work out like that..
Really enjoying the ward here.. we get to eat out at member's homes about 2 times a week.. so not much.. but the families that have had us over are amazing.. this past week we ate at an English families home.. and a half american and half canadian family.. awesome people.. it's so neat to see and get to know people from other cultures and countries.. something that really doesn't happen much in utah!
But a couple of stories from this past week, we gave a turkish book of mormon a couple of weeks ago to this muslim woman, who said her husband was depressed.. we went back about a week ago and met the husband for the first time, and set up a lessen. We taught him, and although nothing came out of it, we were able to give him a blessing.. not often that you can say you gave a muslim man a blessing.. but he said he enjoyed christian churches and said he would like to come to ours.. so hopefully down the road something will happen.. but it was neat expirience nevertheless.. so i've been itching to play basketball or any sort of sports for a while now.. months!! And I found out that there was a basketball court right by our house, so I bought a cheap basketball from a sports store, and we've been able to play a few times.. On monday after the parade we were able to play for about 3-4 hours.. so nice.. but interesting experience with that on monday.. there were a few moroccan kids playing soccer.. (the hoops are on this miniature soccer court) so we were just shooting, and they didn't pay any attention to us, same with us to them.. and then as they were playing this soccer game, the oldest one kicked a ball and it came really close to Elder Robert's head.. He just said "pas op" which means "watch out" because well.. it almost whacked him.. they freaked out.. the kid who kicked it started swearing under his breath.. some little tiny kids who were watching, started making fun.. saying "pas op.. pas op.. pas op.." being really annoying.. swearing at us.. saying there going to blow us up.. blow up america.. making fun of america.. vulger things.. swearing constantly.. never.. in all my life have I heard stuff as bad as what these little kids were saying, just the disrespect to complete strangers.. it was crazy.. I couldn't believe it.. we ignored them, just kept shooting.. after about 5 minutes of non-stop garbage from these kids, we finally just asked if they wanted to play basketball with us.. and so we played them in basketball.. owned them.. they had no chance.. no one here can play a sport other than soccer... but it shut them up and instead of trashing us constantly they ran there mouths about other things.. we said we'd play them in soccer since they played us in basketball.. so we played soccer with these kids, and actually didn't do too bad, but even then they were running there mouths.. But they said after we were through we were welcome any time to come back and play with them.. I dunno.. maybe we'll go back sometime.. =P Me playing soccer.. who would have thought =P
I can't think of anything else exciting that happened this week.. thank you all for your emails.. really glad I was finally able to read them!!
take care, can't wait to hear from you all on the normal day, monday!
-Elder Mohrman

p.s. Yeah, haven't heard much about the phillipines living condition wise.. so nothing to share on that regard.. all I know is that The phillipines is a blessed country.. a country that the church is growing so much in.. She's (Stefi)going to see lot's of success on her mission, and really see the gospel touch many peoples lives.. I can't remember if I put this in one of my emails or not, but I have listened to a couple talks from Gordon B. Hinckley and he talks about him opening up the phillipines to missionary work.. and how much it has grown in such a short time... and how it is still growing.. beautiful temple there.. =)
Thanks for all the updates.. don't know if I have shared this but one of the assistants played basketball at timpview.. his name is elder brockbank.. He worked out with Tyler Haws and Brandon Davies.. all them.. so I get to talk basketball with him everytime I see him, it's pretty sweet, he's a nice guy.. crazy to think I played against him.. which I did.. he started for Timpview in 08 and 09.. there's also a elder in my younger group that I've played against in basketball he's from "sugar salem"don't know if you rembember that team.. so pretty interesting.