Bak het! Bak alles!

Where do I begin? This week was hectic! Bike crash, cool lessons, brownies, smart people, college parties? It's all been here.

I'll start with cool lessons/smart people. They tie in pretty well. We are still teaching a ton. YEAH! This week we found a bunch of new people.... all of whom are incredibly intelligent. I sit there and twiddle my thumbs during lessons thinking "Oh yes, theology..... sciences....... history................ Math?........... science again.......... oh, I understood that bit!...... wait...... no, I'm lost again."

Okay, it isn't really that bad-- but they are quite intelligent, which does pose a new challenge for me as a missionary. I'm no longer trying to dumb down gospel subjects so that people with no religious knowledge can understand them; I'm trying to cram as much information in as possible to hold their attention. I think it's working, but I haven't asked them yet. Oh, but something funny!-- A big thing here (with all of the Africans, mainly) is the belief that Jesus was black. You see paintings up in places in windows and things (always knock those doors, by the way). Well, one of our super intelligent investigators actually went through and looked at a ton of historical crap and by the end of his lecture my brain hurt and now I think it's totally plausible that Jesus is in fact, black. Doesn't really matter. It'd be cool with me.

Bike accident! Yeah, it was pretty simple. Elder Moomey tells it much better than I do, considering I was a little distracted at the time. But here it is-- We were biking to correlation at the church. The church is very close to our house, so we only have to make one turn to get there. We were running a tad late, so we hopped on our bikes and hauled our little tushies. The bike light for our only turn turned yellow, and rather than slowing down, we decided to put the speed on and blaze through the intersection. All of us were moving at a more than decent clip, with Moomey in front and me behind him. Watching Moomey take the turn, I realized that I was now going way too fast to make it. I tried to slow down (to no avail) and tanked into the curb. I flew off my bike and managed to plant one foot on the ground before going face first and disappearing into a bush. MMhhmmm. Cars were driving by. Pointing. Laughing. Honking. The other Elders thought it was just hilarious. Really, I couldn't do anything but laugh, either. I came out unscathed, so no complaints from me! I got a good story out of it! 

Brownies! I made slutty brownies this week, and Elder Moomey and Elder Yocum couldn't decide who got the spatula, so they had to share (Mom note-- he did include a picture of this.  I am declining to post it. Ha!)

This week was a vacation week, and 3 of the days were massive parties for the students. Alcohol, scantily clad coeds, weed, dancing, you know, basically everything we can't be involved with. We just kind of avoided those. However, we were on the outskirts of some of them, and drunk Dutch people are hilarious! The communication basically becomes a bunch of slurred Dutch interspersed with loud, poorly pronounced English swears. It was a good time!

My favorite person from the week has to go to Teodor from Den Haag. He's a member there that speaks Bulgarian. During our lesson with Said, we were able to Skype him and have him help us teach is his native language. We wouldn't have been able to do it without him, so I'm super grateful. It was an awesome lesson!

Well, here are some pictures:

 

Groningen!

Mmmm, Boogers.

Saw this in a window. Almost died laughing.

Lastly, the most inspiring graffiti--ever.

Have a nice week, everyone!

This is Elder Shaw for KGWTF, Signing off.