Hello everyone!!
This week has just flown by! It really amazes me to think that a whole week has past since Ive written an email. Okay, to start off Ill tell you a story that some might think pretty funny. So our water heater has now been broken for about a week and a half. Which means that every day we wake up to FREEZING cold showers. After the first couple of days, we kinda got tired of the cold water, (I know, weird, right?) so we started heating water on our stove. So now, we get in the shower, turn on the cold water, shower REALLY quickly, then turn off the cold water. Then, using a ladle, we scoop out warm water and shower with the ladle. I thought it was pretty funny the first time. Haha, plus I always "let" the other Elders go first, because they always leave a ton of water, because they dont want to take too much. So the last person always gets the most warm water! (But dont tell them I told you that.. ;) ) Haha, so we finally got a hold of someone to come fix it, so it should be working again by tomorrow! (Should is the key word there.)
So lets see..ah! So my normal Pday schedule is this: We wake up at six thirty as always and exercise and prepare for the day. At 8 we start our studies which include personal and companionship study until 10. Then we take time to clean the appartment. Then we come do emails and go shopping. Then we have until 6 to kinda do whatever we want. We go shopping for extra things we need and such. We havent been able to go anywhere cool yet, because weve needed to get things. We should be able to go somewhere next week though! But today we have a legality thing.
Okay, next. A lot of people think that we are temoign jehovah (jehovahs witness) and weve even had people think that were gardians de la paix. Gaurdians de la paix means keepers of the peace. I think they are so cool and funny. They walk around with these purple jackets and hats on. And their job is to keep the peace. Simple as that! And its fun to say gardians de la paix! As long as you say it in a really cool way. So this week we had another really cool miracle. I think it happened on Friday? So we went to this members house to help him pracitce giving a book of mormon to a friend of his. Now this member speaks english and lives really far away from where we live, so he lives in a Dutch community. So we got out to their house and they had forgotten that their girl had a meeting at her school, so they asked if we could find something to do for about an hour. And of course we could, were missionaries!
So we started walking when we realized we didnt understand ANYTHING! We were in an all dutch community. So we went over to the side of the road, and prayed to find at least one person who spoke French that would want to listen to us. So after that we just started walking and there wasnt anybody on the streets, and I mean nobody. We started walking down the super deep back streets when we saw this kid walking towards us. We didnt know what language to contact him in! So we kinda just stopped and asked if he spoke French. And he did! We found out that he was a 17 year old white Brazilian who spoke French and Portugese, living in an all Dutch community with a Black father and brother! What are the odds?! Plus that he was super interested in what we had to say. We have a rendez-vous with him this week. It was a cool experience to tell the member family when we went back to practice giving his book of mormon away!! Then on Friday we had a Finding Day. The France Paris mission combined with the Lyon mission had a goal to find 1000 new amis (investigators) on Friday. All the companionships throughout those two missions would pray every 30 minutes and we would try to find people for most of the day. And it was amazing because we actually talked to a bunch of more people than usual that morning! Then at lunch we all ate millefeules (the thousand layer thing pastry) which I thought very fitting considering we wanted 1000 new amis. Im not sure exactly what the number was, but it was still a cool experience even if we didnt get it.
Our afternoon was shortened because we had to go to a baptism that night. Yes, I typed that right. I saw my first European baptism last friday. They were two boys that the sisters in our district had taught. We went because a different companionship had to pass a new ami to us. That was fun because I got to see my first European baptism, and we got a new ami! Lets see..oh, so I was thinking. I know, it was pretty dangerous. But I was thinking that all of those hugs that I always gave to mom and Kira were just actually preparing me for my mission! Because my mission is a very huggy mission. Each week at district meeting, everyone gives hugs, and if you arent going to see them for a day or two, youll give them a hug. Like I said before, its a pretty huggy mission! And all those times you told me no one in my mission would like hugs..think again! Haha, okay, on to questions.
The weather here is very rainy. Im pretty sure it rained every day for the first 2 weeks. I liked it a lot! It hasnt rained in the past couple of days which has actually surprised me. Here in Belgium it rains what they call Belging. Belging is when its raining but not really raining. Its like a wave of mist is coming on you. Its really enjoyable. I do not usually get max or johnnys email. Johnny actually emailed me today, but I do not know if his weekly email is going to my email, but you are welcome to check. I wasnt at that zone conference, because that was a different zone. Our zone conference is tomorrow, so youll probably see me on the facebook page if they post pictures of the zone conference tomorrow. We do have a washer and dryer in our appartment, which is super nice, because if we need to wash our clothes, then we can just throw them in! They said try to do wash on pdays, but its not a huge deal if we really have a need to wash our clothes. I think my bank account is okay, Ive just payed for my extra baggage on the plane, and I purchased a ten euro watch. Actually two ten euro watches, because an elder in the appartment needed one as well and he wasnt with us when we found the watches and hes going to pay me back. The watches we found are really nice, and the only watches that Ive seen that arent 90 euros or more, so that was awesome! Lets see.. I think thats all for the week! It sounds like everyone is doing well!
Thank you all very much for your emails! I love and miss you all! Until next week!
Love,
Elder Hamilton