Elder Hayden Lott: New Life

Hey Everybody!

So transfer week has come and gone, and we are sitting as just two Elders here in Almere. That's ok with me, gives us a much bigger area and we can work more freely that way. My new companion, Elder Wootan, is great. He is originally from Red Hook (Mid-Hudson Valley), New York. This will be his 4th transfer in the land, hurray for young companions! Although in reality he is older than me, he's 20 I'm 19. Cool though. He has a pretty sarcastic dry sense of humor, very New York, which has been great. It's been really fun the last couple days. He's very willing to work, and seems to really truly care about it so far, which will be a breath of fresh air, ahhhh! He's prepared himself well for a mission, and works very well with members. We're already seeing success starting to build, so that's good.

This last week was really slow with the other two elders leaving, then on our first day after tranfers we just had to clean the apartment. It was absolutely disgusting. I had been working on it the last couple weeks but in reality it was only chipping at a much bigger problem. So we really cleaned it down, getting rid of bags of junk and garbage, hardcore cleaned the bathrooms and bleach bombed the whole place. We called it good enough after that and will finish our resurrection process today.

We've seen some real miracles in finding though as we try and turn the work around here. Along with turning the work around I feel like we've received just what we needed. Our new Ward Mission Leader has been putting together a new ward mission plan for us that is fantastic. From the minute he presented it to us I felt confirmation that it was exactly the right direction to take. It involves a mindshift in the ward and with us that instead of the members helping us with the missionary work and our relationship with the ward being fairly distant, we will instead be working on helping the members and the organizations in the ward with their missionary work. We will be working much closer with members to build trust and more of a 'we're in this together' feel. It's silly as I realized that he is simply calling us and the ward back to how missionary work really should be everywhere in the church, not just here. It is most successful and in the way that has the most force for good across the board.

"Missionary work isn't the only thing we need to do in this big, wide, wonderful Church. But almost everything else we need to do depends on people first hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ and coming into the faith...."
Elder Jeffery R. Holland
We Are All Enlisted
Ensign, November 2011

Cool week, I love you all so much!

-Elder Hayden Lott

Question of the Week: Do you see many people wearing klompen (wooden clogs), or is it only the more rural areas?

Answer: I have almost never seen people wearing klompen. Except for some of the older Dutch people when they work in the garden. They are definitely used in decoration still and are a classic part of Dutch culture.