Billy's Mission: Ja, toch? Of niet? Ja wel!

South and I had a very cool week. We had some awesome lessons; people are coming along well for the most part. The sad bit is, WE CAN´T FIND GULIA! She hasn´t responded to us and hasn´t been at church. We don´t know what´s happened! UGH!!! It blows.

But Eliza brought a friend to church! That was really cool. I had to translate for her. I did okay! It´s kind of weird though, because translating directly into English isn´t hard, but trying to translate into simplified English while defining unfamiliar gospel terms is REALLY HARD.

If you can´t tell by the many phrases of capital letter screaming it has been an emotional week. Ups. Downs. Shake it all arounds.

Do things like Dad? I dunno, Dad, what did you do? I make it an effort never to mix my Dutch and my English, especially when speaking English. We refer to that as Nederengels. Missionaries are notorious for doing it, but I´ve noticed that all the people truly good at the language never do it. SO! I have made it an effort not to do that! I get sick of hearing about how "Lekker" things are. Or people talking about how many "Doop"-dates they have. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Most fun moment of the week? Well, we did some service for a member this week. He had all of the missionaries there. So we all sang a bunch of songs and had a really great time while helping him get his new house ready to be moved in. It was definitely fun.

Well, the big thing to say about Dutch holiday traditions is a big topic of debate over here right now. They have a very catholic Santa Claus, and then his helper, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Black Pete is always a white person, dressed in black face, with very red lips, and he´s Santa´s little helper. Thus, the country is caught in some civil war over whether or not it´s racist to keep a children´s holiday tradition around because it has to do with race. I´m really tired of hearing about it, and it´s ALWAYS in the freaking newspapers. Dumb.

Here are a few pictures!