Good talking to you yesterday

I'm typing on a North American standard keyboard.  How cool is that?  Now the question mark isn't where the 0 is.  Yay!

Anydoodle, it was great seeing and talking to you guys!  Holy man, I had been looking forward to that for a few days.  Surprisingly, it was more....casual than I was expecting.  I'm not saying that you guys are boring or anything but it just doesn't feel like I've been gone this long...   Makes sense?  Probably not. 

I love you guys!

And yeah, the Knudsons are great, aren't they?  They do so much for us, it's crazy.  When we left, they gave us 3 huge packages of Poptarts and a package of Nutter Butters too.  Wow.  What champs.  Their one dog is pretty crazy for me too.  Apparently, I look like its previous owner or something, so it goes wild when I come it.  Plus I pet it and play with it pretty much the whole time.  Mmm, pets.

Have I told you about the Van Emples?  I think so.  Anyway, they have 4 cats.  What?  Yep, 4.  One is a big ham and always walks in, expecting attention.  Psh, who am I to deny?  They hate it when I pet it though, because cat hair gets h'everywhere.  They walked out and he jumped up and I pet him a bunch before he jumped away.  They came back in and screamed. "Elder, have you been petting the cat again?"  Um, no.  How can you tell?  Cat hair everywhere.  More screams.

Not too much more to report this week admittedly.  Elder Andrews is gone up to Hengelo now.  We rode with him up to Rotterdam, dropped him off then simply came back.  It's kind of strange without him.  But we've adjusted quickly.  Elder Kunz gets his own room now!

Our house is nearing completion.  Mostly, they just have simple things left to do.  The trim, some painting upstairs...  Otherwise, all the big projects are done.  I'm hoping we can have our house completely back by the end of the week.

Ooo, so the other night we just finished planning when a neighbour lady came a'knocking at our door.  She was a bit drunk and spoke slurred Dutch, but eventually we understood that she wanted to give us a couch.  Flustered, we agreed (without thinking it over) and walked over to her house.  There was another guy there, also tipsy, who we talked to for a while. Both of them smoked too.  Bleck.  So we hauled this million-pound couch through her tiny dutch house and down some not-so-tiny Dutch stairs, then down the street and into our house (which has a tight Dutch entryway).  Oh mah goodness did that couch reek.  Smoke and cat and ruined couch.  Yuck.

In hindsight, we shouldn't have taken the stupid thing--in only proved a further nuisance for the Saldens to have to haul it out.  Still, it was an adventure--and we got the number of the guy that was there, who is interested in learning more about us.  Who knows, maybe it will be a great experience.

Isa came to church again.  Woo!

And we met with Ardette again.  She is in a precarious situation.  Tired to the bones, she said several times.  Her friend was there, chilling for a while, before Ardette mentioned that her friend was against joining the church because then "then your man will have several wives." We quickly corrected her, saying that polygamy is not practised in our church, but she kept pressing.  "it says in the bible that other men had several wives.  Why not today?" Simple, because God commanded it so, for His purposes.  Now, it's not needed.  It was in the past, but not no more.  The end.

Then, she started going off about how she thought it was a good thing.  It was unbelievable.  First, she was saying she didn't want Ardette to join our church because of polygamy, then she goes off about how she actually supports it.  It was ridiculous.

Still, Ardette was on our side and even explained to her friend about Joseph Smith and how he received inspiration.  There is much hope for her yet.

Otherwise, this week was relatively uneventful.  Fun, eh?

aaaand, with that, I say adieu

tot volgende keer,

Elder Burgess

Also, I thought of something that you could send me......f you want.

Pictures!  I love pictures.

And I'm out of delicious popcorn.  How will I survive?!

Maybe a tie or too...  One of Papa Joe's.  Do you remember that one tie I have.  It's black...and brown...and...cool?  I have a picture of me wearing it in one of my little picture books.  I was wearing it the Sunday before I was supposed to leave.  I like that tie...  You can never have enough ties.  Well, that's not true.

buuut don't stress it.

I can't think of anything else.

Love yah, bye.