Nothing but Police Sirens…….

Hello everybody! 

The Elders of Brussels

We had another hectic week here in Brussels, nothing but police sirens in the background…ha ha. 

Tuesday we had district meeting in the forest where Elder Holland dedicated the grounds of Belgium for missionary work. It was a super cool spiritual experience. 

Wednesday we went to institute to help invigorate the missionary spirit within the members. 

Thursday we accidentally found ourselves searching for a referral in a super Muslim neighborhood. After we got jeered a couple times we decided to leave. While we were there we saw two cop motorcycles flying down this city street making way for these two undercover Audi and BMW cop cars. They must have been going 90 mph. They were followed by a group of regular cop cars filled with police and military men. It was unbelievable. Something important was definitely going down. That evening we went to Paul's house. We taught a lesson and did some calculus. He has started to come to church more regularly! 

On Friday we met up with the Dutch elders and had a meat triad. Afterwards we went and taught an investigator we found in the area book, Gaspare. Immediately after we got texted by our bishop to not go near grand place or Gare du Midi because of bomb threats. He is a Canadian colonel that works for NATO so he helps to warn us of things. That evening we organized an event for he young adults called PingPong, Pancakes, and Pensée Spirituelle (spiritual thought), aka PPP. We taught a lesson at the beginning, followed by pingpong, and finished with pancakes. It was an idea Elder Madsen had from his other cities. The purpose of the activity is to help the young adults invite non-member friends. We ended up having a great turnout, and I think everyone had a great time!

Now time for the crazy stuff. Saturday morning we got a text from our Bishop followed by a call from our Zone Leaders telling us to stay inside indefinitely. Brussels is under a stage 4 (the highest) terrorist threat level. The metro system is shut down and the city is deserted…ha. Church  on Sunday got cancelled by the Area 70. School and main shopping areas were closed on Monday. We were told to wear regular clothing if we leave the apartment. The only reason I got wifi is because the Norby's came and took us to their apartment in their car. I doubt we will get to leave our apartment until they find these terrorists. That's all I know. Hopefully we will get to go outside soon. I can only take so many naps… 

As far as transfers go, I'm staying in Brussels with Elder Madsen, the new District Leader. Our roommates are leaving and getting replaced by Elder Palfreyman and a new Missionary. Palfreyman was already in Brussels in the other apartment. They are changing that apartment to a Sister missionary apartment. I'm excited because Palfreyman is a really good cook and so is Madsen. I will be eating well, haha!

This picture indicates the number of transfers we have each been a part of.

My Lebron James leaf throwing!

My companion drew this picture on his iPad.  It is of the Elders in my apartment.  I am the one on the right.

Out of boredom, I made a hockey stick out of a broken umbrella and cardboard.

My GQ pose after district meeting.

At a young single adult activity.  Ping Pong, Pancakes and Spiritual Thought

More pics from the forest.

I hope you have a safe week. God Bless

Elder Hein

Nothing Short of Insane

Hello! As you can imagine this past weekend has been nothing short of
insane. Before I give you the rundown, I will try to quickly summarize
the week prior to the shootings. 

So this week was super busy with members. We had 6 meal appointments! On Tuesday we got fed by a young adult member who is home from his mission in Leeds due to health problems. He is waiting to get sent back out so he is super excited to do missionary work with us. That is such a blessing to find someone in the Ward who is willing to go out with you whenever you call them.  I've found that a lot of the young adults here are super willing to help us contact and teach. A local member's testimony of the church is always a great tool in teaching. We spent a lot of Wednesday at the Norby's (the senior missionary couple) home in Brussels getting to know them better. They use to be the mission president of the Côte d'Ivoire mission, and Elder Norby served his mission in Belgium along time ago. Anyways they are the nicest people! They always are checking up on us to see if we are ok. They are like my local grandparents. Haha. The rest of the week was really smooth. On Friday I had my first zone conference. It was super fun to be back with a lot of the missionaries I haven't seen in a while. The mission president introduced an activity we are doing for the 40 days leading up to Christmas which started in Saturday. We are trying to get a new investigator for each of those forty days. We started with a fast on Saturday and will pray at least once every hour for the next forty days. It's going to be a hard challenge but anything is possible through the power of the Lord. Monday we went to Liege and had a really fun zone activity.

Local Paper

The WEEKEND:
So Friday night we went to bed not knowing about the events that had
transpired in Paris. Saturday morning, right before we were about to
leave, we got a text from the APs describing the events of the evening
prior followed by some instructions from the president. The rules were
we could not leave the apartment for the rest of the weekend unless we
had a previously scheduled appointment. If we were to leave the
apartment, we weren't allowed to take our bags with us to prevent any
bomb suspicion. So Saturday and Sunday we just chilled in the
apartment sleeping, eating, and playing games. I took a 4 hour hour
nap each day. We left the apartment twice. Once for an appointment
Saturday night and for church on Sunday. As of Tuesday, everything is
back to normal missionary wise. We just need to carry our passport
with us everywhere we go in case some police officer stops us.

JUST A FEW CRAZY THINGS AND MIRACLES:
So I don't know if you guys heard or not but some of the terrorists
were found in Brussels. they had planned a lot of there Paris attack
here in Brussels. If I'm not mistaken they were found in molenbeek,
and if you look at a map that is within a stone throwing distance of
where I live. As soon as we cross the park in front of our house we
are in Molenbeek. Me and my companion have been contacting there a
couple times and due to the demographic have remarked, "wow they
should just rename this place little Syria". Turns out Isis had a
little compound there. So needless to say we probably won't be
contacting over there for a long time. On Saturday night when we went
to our appointment we passed by a metro stop that was near molenbeek.
When the metro stopped it was the most eerie thing I have ever seen.
The station was completely empty except for two cops/military men who
were holding huge assault rifles with menacing German shepherds on
leashes. It was super scary. I felt like I was in a Jason Bourne movie
or Call of Duty. It was an experience I will never forget. Now for the
miracles. 

On Friday night in Paris there was a group of Mormon young
adults who had just finished a church activity. They had all planned
to go to this restaurant after the activity but when they got there
the waiter told them it would be a 1 hour wait. So they decided to
leave. Five minutes later, one of the terrorists arrived at the same
restaurant and started shooting people. If they would have decided to
stay they most likely would have died. Miracle number two. There was
another member in Paris who had a ticket to go to the concert that one
terrorist massacred. Earlier in the week she got a call from her home
teacher scheduling an appointment right over the concert. She decided
to forgo the concert and instead meet with her home teacher. Thanks to
the fact that she acted on a prompting for the Holy Ghost and stayed
home, she was most likely saved from death. The final miracle is short
and sweet. Not one missionary was injured or killed. All missionaries
were safely in their apartments by the time the shootings began.
This weekend has been super sad. Please pray for all the people of
Paris that they may feel comforted in their time of need. Don't worry
about me. I am protected by the Lord. By the off chance that some Isis
member does decide to start something in Brussels, they will be
greeted by my flaming fists of freedom. 'Merica!

Guards at the Metro

Have a safe week. God bless!

Elder Hein

Short and Sweet

Hello everyone!

I don't have a lot of time this week, so I will just touch on some of the highlights. 

This week my companion and I focused on working with the ward. We visited a lot of less active members and visited many of the other members. My companion baked a lot of cookies and we brought them to the inactives. It was a great way to get in the door and try
to figure out some of the problems they were having. 

We met with Janet again on Friday and taught her about the Book of Mormon. She seemed to take it well but we are starting to wonder if she is understanding us. So we found a member in our Ward who is from Rwanda like Janet, and she is going to come teach with us sometimes. 

We picked up another investigator this week but it seems like she just wants to bible bash, so we will see how that turns out. 

On p-day we went to Ikea, had some Swedish meatballs, and walked the store. Even though it's a European store, it somehow reminded me of home. Haha. 

We went on exchanges in Braine l'allelud on Tuesday and that was quite the experience. It is so much different than Brussels. No one is walking on the streets, so it is really hard to do contacting. We waited an hour and 15 minutes in line for some fries on Friday while we did our weekly planning.  They were absolutely amazing. I don't know if it is because we waited
so long or if they are actually that good, but I was genuinely surprised as to how good they were. According to locals, the place we went has the best fries in all of Brussels. 

Some weird European advertising going on here!

Anyways I have to get going. We are about to go to Paul's house for some more calculus
problems, haha. Have a great week. 

Love y'all.

Elder Hein

First District Meeting

LATE POST - BLOG WRITE UP FROM 11/2/15

Hello everybody! This week was fantastic! 

Tuesday I attended my first district meeting. The meetings are held at the Senior couple's homeand they cook us a nice lunch. It was super refreshing to have a home
cooked meal from an experienced mother rather than my companion. Haha.

Later that day we saw the fruits of our area book labors. For the past
week or so we have been calling and leaving messages on the phones of
people we have found in the area book. Up until Tuesday we hadn't had
much success, but that soon changed. Within a span of like 2 hours on
Tuesday evening, we kept receiving call backs from all these people we
had called. It was quite funny, our usually silent phone kept ringing
and ringing. Anyways we were able to set up a lot of rendezvous (meetings)  for
the rest of the week. An unfortunately funny incident happened that
day too. I was standing on the right side of the escalator and I began
to transition my left hand to rest on my hip. As I was doing so this
super old lady was walking past me on he left. I absolutely nailed her
in the face with my elbow. It was super unfortunate and not the best
first impression she got of the Mormon church. Haha. 

Wednesday we contacted all afternoon and in the evening some members invited us
over for an African meal. It was definitely different than American
food but it was great! Earlier that day, we were just standing in the
park across our apartment and this Muslim man came up to us and said
America will melt by 2027. So watch out everyone. 

Thursday we attended the funeral of a member who is from our ward. I didn't know her to
well because I had only been in Brussels for 2 weeks at that point,
but judging from the attendance it seemed she had touched a lot of
people's lives. We had a rendez-vous that fell through later in the
day, so that was disappointing but that's the life of a missionary.
Haha. 

On Friday, we celebrated my one month mark by going to get a meat triad and some pastries. That evening we had two rendez-vous with
investigators. The first one didn't go so well. He just wanted to fight with us on everything we said. Haha. But the second one was with
our only progressing investigator, Janet. She is doing great and our lesson went great. She fed us some Rwandan food. It was absolutely
delicious! 

Saturday a member cooked us some phenomenal soup and crêpes
for lunch. That evening we had another two rendez-vous, and yet again
one of them fell through. After our rendezvous, we invited the other companionship over to our apartment for a Halloween party. We carved
pumpkins and ate lots of candy. On Sunday, everything went smooth with
the new ward changes. That evening we met with an inactive and it was
such an awesome experience. We sat down and he asked if we liked mathematics. Next thing I knew, I was solving derivatives and
integrals for an hour. Haha. He is so smart; he has even created a
couple calculus theorems that he wants to publish. I never thought I
was going to use calculus in the mission field but shout out to
Mr.Greider for teaching me so well. 

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK: On P-Day we went to the Neuhaus chocolate factory, and they had all you can eat chocolate for free. It was absolutely incredible but now I feel
horrible. As a direct result of that we started running up the metro
stairs rather than taking the escalators in an attempt to work off the
calories we just gained.
This week my testimony of area book work grew tremendously. As a
direct result of all the work we put in, we were able to go from 1 to
6 rendez-vous in just one week. Time goes by a lot quicker when you
aren't just contacting all day, so I'm thankful to the Lord for
providing us all these opportunities to teach. I love y'all! 

Have a great week.

My Comp is an artist!

Happy Halloween!