St. Martin's Songs and bag miracles

Well, this was an exciting week, full of cool missionary experiences and cool cultural experiences.

The library where we email- De Nieuwe Kolk- has these weird poles in the front of it that light up and play music when you hug them. It's strangely satisfying.

First of all, St. Martin's was on Tuesday! It's sort of like halloween, and they only celebrate it in the Northern Netherlands. The kids make paper lanterns and go around doors- they get candy, but first they have to sing any one of maybe thirty different little St. Martin's songs. The lyrics are random nonsense but cute. We were eating with members and got to walk around with their 8 year old son for a little while while he and his friends were going around - we learned one of the songs, which was cool. On the way back to the house we stopped at the home of the de Jonge's neighbor, sang our songs just to be silly, and still got candy! And set up to come teach them with a member next week. That was a win-win-win. Then back at the house, we got to answer the door for other little kids coming around and singing. It was adorable, and we also saw very creative lanterns. Here's a song example:
"Mickey Mouse ging lichtjes lopen, Alle deuren vlogen open, Mickey Mouse zei 'dank je wel.' En hij ging naar de volgende bel."
Mickey Mouse went out walking with lights, all the doors flew open, he said 'thank you' and went to the next doorbell. See? It's random. But cute. I wish I could sing it, then it would make a bit more sense. But there you go.

Also this week, Sinterklaas came to town! It's a big deal. We had a lunch appointment, then got out just in time to see the parade with Sinterklaas. We bought delicious olliebollen to fully appreciate the festive atmostphere, then went to our next appointment- it was great though. Sinterklaas is huge.

 

We saw Sinterklaas come to town! He rides in on a boat from Spain, don't ask me why. This is a different person from Santa Claus. But his boat is beautiful, and it is a huge deal when he comes! They'll celebrate Sinterklaas here until December 5th when he fills the children's shoes with goodies. It's a huge and interesting holiday.

Sinterklaas himself on his horse riding by in the parade. It was awesome.

We also had exchanges this week- I went to Apeldoorn with Sister Jaramillo and we had a great day working there. She's also an amazing cook, so when we came home for lunch I helped her prepare a fabulous meal of over the top spaghetti. She's also from Arube, so Dutch is a bit more comfortable than English, so we spoke mostly in Dutch- it was cool for me to see that even casually, I can speak Dutch all day! We got on the train to exchange back, and then I realized that I accidentally left my overnight bag sitting on a bike at the station! Fortunately we were able to call our zone leaders who also work in Apeldoorn, and they were able to hurry to the station to rescue my bag- miraculously, it wasn't stolen. hallelujah. But that was exciting!

 

Kneeling to cut the onions when I was on exchanges with Sister Jaramillo, because I didn't want to cry as hard... haha

We also got several new investigators this week as referrals from current investigators. That was pretty cool. I love that we are so busy teaching all the time! But it makes the time we do get on p-days to relax and email a bit all the more precious.

It's getting much colder here now, and it rained all day yesterday but otherwise has been luckily pretty dry. I don't mind it getting colder, but I hope it stays dry! That's most important.


Sister Woodbury and I with our olliebollen! Delicious balls of fried dough covered in powdered sugar... it's glorious. Kind of like a doughnut I suppose, but different. Traditional for Sinterklaas!

This was the olliebollen stand. Dad note: Notice the halos above the heads of these angelic zuster missionaries.

I love that as missionaries we have so much time to study- a full hour of personal scripture study in the morning, companion study, and language study. It's so spiritually enlightening and I'm learning so much! The missionary lifestyle is great in a lot of ways.

Well, I love and miss everyone at home! Hope you're all having a great week!

Veel liefs,

Zuster McKinney Voss