Mission Week 43, Alkmaar Week 4

(Note: This is a picture of Ian's temporary companion.)

I got my new companion today. Until January 4th, my companion is Harry van de Sande (the 81-year-old ward mission leader in Eindhoven). I'm super-excited to work with him again, but I'm also kind of disappointed that the plans changed. I was originally going to be working in a threesome with Elder Seaman and Elder van Rij in Haarlem. But then Harry volunteered for a mini mission. It'll be fun, though. He's awesome.
The work in Alkmaar is going slowly but steadily. We haven't been able to get in contact with most of our investigators this last week, but we've gotten a lot of appointments scheduled for Tuesday. It'll be good. I'm hoping that Harry's super-contacting skills will help us get some new investigators. I was thinking yesterday about how Matt's leaving soon. You should tell that studly cousin of mine to send me a letter before he leaves, or at least while he's in the MTC. And tell Aaron to get on finding that address for me.
It's cool that Aaron did so well on his test. I barely passed (81%) because I hadn't had a lot of experience without my teacher holding the wheel. Oh, yeah. Guess what! Drivers' Ed cars here have two gas pedals and six mirrors, in addition to the two brake pedals. It's really weird looking. And they have a big blue L on the roof when a student's driving.
Thank you for the earmuffs. I opened them already because it's been super-cold and windy the last few weeks. They've really helped.
So, there are a few interesting things that have happened to me this week. On Wednesday (or maybe Tuesday), we were at a fork in the bike path that can either take you under or around a bridge that goes over the canal in the middle of Alkmaar, and it suddenly started to hail. And then the other day, we were in the same spot and, right as I remembered the hail, it started hailing again. We've gotten a ton of hail last week, but apparently last night we got the first few snowflakes of winter. And on Wednesday I fell of my bike for the first time in eight years. I'm okay. I just can't kneel and need to take my pants in to get fixed. And this week is brought to you by the letter ij (It's really a Dutch letter. No joke. It's capitalized together like in IJsland.) and the word indefatigable (Thank Joseph Smith for that word).
I love you all and hope you're all doing okay. The Church is true.