Zelfs in de koud, zingen wij graag

From e-mail dated December 14, 2009.

Hoi!
So, this week has been INSANE. I'll tell you all about it when I get the nitty gritty details of everything out of the way.
I'm glad you got to have lunch with Zr. Fritz's parents. I hope it was enjoyable. I've heard a lot about her parents, and they sound pretty great...
So, calling on Christmas-- here comes the real nitty gritty-- So, with the time difference, it's really difficult-- the ward is putting on a dinner for everyone who doesn't have family for Christmas (including the missionaries), and that starts at 4:00 here and they are going until 9:00 (we won't be staying that long, obviously). So-- what works out best with our schedule is having you call at 3:15 here-- which happens to be 7:15 am for you. If that is a problem, let me know and we can do our best to work something else out--but I figure that the kids are usually up and running about by then on Christmas anyway... I hope it works out better this time than on Mother's day.
Okay, so how did things go this week? The concerts were CRAZY! I feel like we didn't do much work in Amsterdam this week because-- well-- we didn't. We took a train to Brussels on Wednesday afternoon and all of the Zusters spent the night in this HUGE (according to European standards) house. It was 5 floors--3 bedroom 2 1/2 bathroom. If you can imagine 11 sisters in this house. It was pretty crazy--especially because only one shower gets hot water at a time--so if two people shower at once, one is ICE cold. Basically, we never got to bed before 11:30. Thursday morning, we had a choir practice, and then the rest of the day we went around singing. The French missionaries came and handed out fliers while we sang. And yes, since we were in Brussels, we sang in French. Good times. We had our performance that night, and it wasn't super well attended... but a number of the people who came were the people we met on the street that day--so that was cool. Oh, so really funny thing that happened while we were in Brussels: so, there are a lot of illegal immigrants, right? Well, a lot of them will take huge table cloths and put them in the middle of the outdoor malls with random things to buy--and then when the police come, they grab the 4 corners of the table cloth and throw it over their back like Santa Clause's bag, and run for it so they don't get caught. It was quite the sight. Poor fellow who gets caught though.
Friday we drove up to Antwerp (ew-- English pronunciation again--) and did the same thing. It was a lot of fun. We then drove back to Brussels and spent the night in Brussels again and caught a train Saturday morning back to Amsterdam. Yeah, pretty crazy week.
Saturday night we had a ROCKING AWESOME dinner with Familie Zwaan (Kim's family). They are headed to America for Christmas, so they invited us over for Christmas dinner. (P.S. if you want to get in contact with her or whatever while she's in Utah, you can look her up on facebook on my account--I think she said she has requested me as a friend, and then you can meet her or whatever--also if you want to send anything back, she has said she could take something small over for us--which sorry, I'm a slacker who didn't get that arranged-- so I'm sure she could bring something small back). They had this cooking thing in the middle of the table, and you just cook your own meat while you are sitting there. It was DELICIOUS!!! And they gave us all sorts of Christmas presents, which was super sweet.
Basically, I love being a missionary.
So, I was reading the Book of Mormon on Saturday in the metro (when the guy sitting across from me didn't want to talk with me-- yeah-- sometimes Dutch people are pretty closed--) and was reading about the predictions of Christ's birth. I recommend studying it. It was SO COOL! I love reading that second witness of Christ. I know He lives and was born so that He could live a life for us. I love sharing that with people. I have the coolest opportunity ever here on my mission.

I love you and am looking forward to talking with you next week.
Zr. Fowler