26th Week

Whoa! Family and Friends it has been another week in this place we jokingly but really are quite serious call eternal summer. The days are long but the weeks are short. Is that good? I'm really not sure but I'm going to call it okay. As you are all aware Kers (Christmas) was this last week and it sure has been an interesting one to say the least. I especially enjoyed the spirit of Christmas and finding truly understanding what Christmas in July means.

Our adventurer begins on December 23rd.

Exchange to Uitkijk:
The night of the 23rd my companion and I rode to the middle point in the long/not-too-long road between our area and Uitkijk's area. We exchanged companions and then I rode with Elder Tullis to Uitkijk. Elder Tullis is from Logan Utah. He is awesome. He spent a year at USU going through Marines ROTC and wants to join back up with the Marines when he gets home. Although, I have no intention of joining any of the military branches his stories almost make me want too. Hopefully, I won't be his companion for a long time before I come home or I might be shaving my head and enlisting.. .Just kidding... Kinda of... Either way we had a great time working together on the twenty-fourth of December and I think we were fairly productive. We didn't do a ton because Elder Tullis still doesn't know Uitkijk a ton but we did our best and I'm proud of what was accomplished

Christmas Eve:
We got back in at 6pm on Christmas Eve because we were told we would get picked up right around then. Only to have to wait for an hour and an half for Elder Jansen to finally come... I didn't use to handle being late that well as most people can attest, but I'm getting better. Suriname is making me be better. Especially when Sacrament meeting starts late and it is the first meeting of the day. So we went to the Jansens and had snacks such as hot chocolate (It was 85 or so degrees outside) and other things such as pretzels and others. It was pretty nice. The Jansens then gave us all a Christmas gift of a nice fluffy white towel with West Indies Mission and the Suriname flag stitched into it. It was really nice and they brought them all the way over from the Netherlands. They are the nicest. After that we headed to the Zone Leaders so we could hang out together. We exchange our secret santa gifts and I got one of those boards where the pen has a magnet on it and you place it on the board and can write things. The last few days I've changed it to something motivational every few hours to make me feel good about everything. We then went to bed because it was about 2am.

Christmas Day:
Christmas day started at 6:50 with us all rolling out of bed and getting dressed quickly so we could go sport. We went and played soccer and then a bit of ultimate Frisbee. I, naturally, got my goal during soccer and had a few good plays during Frisbee. Didn't win but that is okay maybe next time? We then went showered and got changed so we could head to the Jansens for breakfast. Pretty good breakfast to say the least. Always gratefully for what they do for us. Then we went to the Old Folks home requisitions a few of them and took them to the church. At the church, we sang for them and talked with them and I got an opportunity to bear my testimony in Dutch about the birth of Christ. It went really well and they really seemed to enjoy it. The coolest thing, in my opinion, is that most of them were sitting in nice blue wheel chairs that had all been donated by the church a few weeks ago. Gotta love that. After that we headed to a baptismal service and saw a child of record and a convert get baptized. Both baptism had a few problems so each was rebaptized a few times :P At least it got done right? Then we went to the ZL's apartment and started to watch Toy Story 3. I didn't get to see all of it though as I had to make my family phone call. It was worth it though as I'd much rather talk to my family then watch the movie. Although I was the one who suggested it and fought for the idea and everyone thought it was the best movie ever. I guess I was right again! After all of that we had two hours to go home rest and sleep before we had to start a normal day of Sunday work. Overall it was a great Christmas.

Everything is going really well for me right now and I love you all. I also hope you all love illegal aliens because I'm about to become one! More on that later.


Love you all,

Elder Nathan John Nielson