hello hello my dearest family and friends.

greetings to you on this lovely sunny freezing cold day.

snow has visited us this week... and oh what adventures we did have.

let me break it down.

TUESDAY: twas a classic missionary day. woke up. studies were had, district meeting, a freezing concecrated hour around liedseplien that turned into metro finding because NO ONE WAS OUTSIDE BECAUSE IT WAS FREEZING. went well. we were double dinner appointment booked. one surinamese dinner and one thai dinner. haha. it was a wild ride. good times. good day.

WEDNESDAY: hoppin day for finding. we walked all over the bijlmer finding the people in what i like to call 'botox wind'. because its so cold you feel like you cant move your face which is what i assume it feels like. we were singing while we walked and a lady actually stopped us and invited us to an open mic night where you just make up your own songs and express yourself musically. haha. we in turn invited her to church! perhaps we will go and just sing the restoration lesson. i shall keep you updated. we had a member lesson with a sweet lady from suriname who has such cool dutch...we had wijk eten and a crazy man named brahm told me that he is insane and he is in a mental institution because he thinks he is lucifer. yeah. no idea why he comes to our ward dinners. what a crazy. another good day.

THURSDAY: this is the day that the craziness began. we went to leiden for legality bidness. there i got to hang out with my original mtc crew. SO good to see them. absolutely made my week. what great missionaries. good good times. all went well. so, then we were supposed to go down to dordrecht because its sister exchanges. alas, the sister i was going to exchange with was already in town so we just went back to a'dam right then. so, with transfers, i took over the city for the day and showed her the haps. even though she is the senior companion she has never served here. luckily i didnt get lost and we made our way smoothly through amsterdam. we visited a lady from our ward who was sick and eventually made it home...all seemed fine...until...

FRIDAY: the crazy day. oh snappppp. it started snowing. real snow. utah snow. pretty to look at during studies, not pretty to be in during the rest of the day. we left our house and went to our appointment, it went beautifully, then we stood and waited for our tram to a'dam centraal forEVERRRRR. oh snap. so cold. finally it came. we got to the station and it was HOPPIN. so chaotic. everyone was in a dither because the snow had pretty much stopped the city. people couldnt handle it. haha. it was so insane. we FINALLY make it on our train and get to dordrecht a few hours later. at dordrect we waited for all the sisters but my companion never showed up...they couldnt get there. so she was stuck in den haag. so i went with the den haag sisters and finally got a train...but by the time we were all switched back and ready to go...it was way too late and we had to spend the night in den haag. crazynesss. it was good but crazy.

SATURDAY: i guess this is the crazy day? you will soon see why. we FINALLYYYY get back to a'dam. just in time to catch the bus to correlatie with the ward mission leader...who lives in a'dam nord. turns out we were on the wrong bus. had to walk across town. haha. we arrive. make it happen. then we are on our way again, did a concecrated hour on the kinkerstraat, eventually make our way home. i walk upstairs in our room and notice something funky. all my drawers are slightly open. the closet doors our open. the cupboard at the end of our bed is open...and my earings our out on the dresser....it was all sort of strange becaue that was not how i left it...then we walk down stairs and see footprints in our backyard...so we called the senior couple to see if they had been in our house because they are the only ones with a key. they said they hadnt..then we realized the lock was totally broken on our back door. what!?!?!? turns out we were broken into! but dont worry about it. we are all okay. we are truly protected. so glad we were stuck in den haag the night before! so - we couldnt tell that anything was stolen but we were a bit creeped out so we stayed the night at the deleeuws house (the senior couple in our district) and that was super nice. ahhh. it was so crazy. the police came and checked it out and said they would send forensics on monday.

well, sunday went well, it was beautiful and fabulous and we had the elders come leave a blessing in our home and we are back in action fully. what a super crazy cold week. hope i was able to properly draw a picture of the haps! we just had a good zone p-day with a potluck and volleyball. good times had by all.

life is good. amsterdam is doing well. our investigators are coming along. we meet with roos every week and she always comes to church. talk about golden. we havent met with john benjamin again but we are going to call him this week. noi is in thailand on vacation but i think she will be going to church there. things are also progressing with meriella and jesse. two other fantastic people. things are happenin! i'll tell you what! well. we must be on our way. so until next week, ik hou van jullie! doei!

- zuster stout