2/23 Den Helder

Dear Family,

Sorry I have to make this e-mail quick. We have to catch a train headed to Haarlem and this is the only time we could e-mail.  Things are going very well here! I love this new city and am excited to get things cooking. My companion is Elder Giles. He is from West Jordan, Utah and reminds me a lot of Elder Bickham, one of my former companions. We don't have a lot of similarities but we both work hard and like missionary work! Haha. We get along great :). This city hasn't had missionaries in 6 years actually. We are starting completely from scratch. I have always wanted to do something like this and now I get to!  It's a rugged fisherman's town right next to the North Sea. It is FREEZING!!! I thought I knew what cold was haha. Everyone here is used to it so we are still able to talk to a lot of people on the street. We have had a few miracles already! We are planning on a baptism for David for 30 March. A week after I leave. He's a good guy. His family are members and he has finally decided to take the step. We have set up a few appointments for the following week.  I am stoked to hear that James will be out at the Y.  We'll still be at the same school! Cool beans :D. I'm going to marry the first girl he falls in love with at BYU during his mission ;).

For the next few weeks, my goal is to give Elder Giles the best start to his mission possible along with kickstarting the branch here. Elder Giles and I announced to the branch that by this time next year the branch attendance will be doubled. People are excited and we're willing to step it up. I love you guys. Hope that all is well. Talk to you next week.

Love,

Elder Schulte

2/17 Borrowed Time

Dear Family,

The system was down this past Saturday. Sorry! I will have to make this short as this is probably our busiest office day yet. Some important things to let you in on. I am leaving Amsterdam :). I loved working here. I have spent over half my mission here!  The Lord has one last job for me before I head back and I am ready to rise up to the challenge. There is a city called Den Helder. It has not had a pair of missionaries for the past 4 years and is a teeny little branch. I will be opening up the city and training a new missionary fresh off the plane. I am super excited! It's been a dream of mine to open a new city and on top of that, I GET TO TRAIN AGAIN! That's the best calling in the world. I get to help an elder start off his mission. It's pretty far from other cities that have elders so we will be dropped off and then it's up to us to build from the ground up. I love a good challenge ;). A normal transfer is 6 weeks long but I'll have to pack in the training in 4.  This next P-day will be my last one on Saturday. Then I will be returning to Mondays AFTER that point. Guys, this is exactly what I wished for, haha. I'm going out guns a blazin'! I'll fill you in about my companion next week. Thanks for your e-mails and thanks for your prayers. I'll send some photos.

Love,

Elder Schulte

2/8/13

Dear Family,

Another great week for the books! People coming unto Christ. I love watching baptisms. It is such a blessing to be out here.  

Monday was probably the busiest office day yet. Trying to arrange 4 or 5 apartments, along with catching up on all the work we missed due to our hospital adventures from last week. Tuesday, we worked a lot on the streets. It was nice to get outside for a full day and just preach the good word! On Wednesday, we drove down to Turnhout, Belgium and worked with the elders there for a day. I worked with Elder Sterling Farmer. He is from the Columbus 1st Ward in Indiana. Such a good guy. It's nice to have a fellow Hoosier in the mission. Turnhout is world famous for their playing cards. Billy The Kid was killed while playing with a deck of cards from Turnhout, haha. The following morning, we drove to Antwerpen where I exchanged with Elder Burton and then drove back to Amsterdam to work. We had a great exchange. Had a cool little experience right off the bat that day. We were driving and as we were driving I saw a man with a stroller. I had a feeling to go talk to him so we quickly pulled over the car, I ran across the street to chase him down. Finally when I caught up to him, I asked him, "Hey I see you have a family of your own. How would you like to stick around them for forever?" He smiled, looked back at me and said, I was just thinking about that. " We have an appointment with him and his family this next Tuesday." I'm excited to see where that goes. We then continued our drive to an appointment with a kid from the Dominican Republic. He moved here a year ago but is having a hard time getting used to the culture. He's a member. I cannot speak Spanish so we used google translate for half the lesson.  We later had a lesson with a Chinese kid we are teaching. I love this guy. He is brilliant. I jokingly asked him to review out of his head everything he had read from 1 Nephi 1 until chapter 20. He literally went through all 19 chapters out of his head. Details and everything. He remembered names of everyone, remembered every vision, everything! It was incredible. He's been feeling a lot of changes in his life since studying this. I think he's starting to recognize why :).  Friday, we drove to Leiden. We held a zone leader council. My last :(. It was very good. 

I love my mission. I don't want to be anywhere else right now.  Thanks for your e-mails. Could you tell Grandma and Grandpa Buckwalter and Webb thank you for their letters? I have a lot of catching up to do.

Love,

Elder Schulte

2/2/13

Dear Family,

It's been an interesting week. A good week, but an interesting one. So something was up with my stomach and we spent about 20+ hours in the hospital trying to figure out what it was. Most of the time was waiting. And after being told to go home and take a hot shower several times, we finally found a hospital that was able to do something. It turns out that there was something wrong with some muscles in my stomach area. The hot showers were nice but after throwing up a few times and almost passing out a few times due to pain, we figured we still needed to keep investigating what it was. They injected some gnarly pain killers into my side and now they have me taking some medicine. The needle that they jabbed into my gut was huge!!! I didn't know that needles were that big, holy smokes. I still have some pain but I don't feel dizzy anymore so I can still work. All is well now, haha. One lesson that I have learned is that socialized medicine is NOT the answer. The system is a lot slower, it turns out that they are even more picky about who they take, and the system is abused tremendously. America is headed downhill for sure on that. 

I appreciated the e-mails that you sent from this past week. It's incredible how fast time goes by. My companion and I worked with the elders in Arnhem this week and that will be the last time I see Elder Hendrickson before he heads home in 3 weeks. Scary thing is... He's from my MTC group :X. I'm glad that I could stay an extra month. I'm working very hard. I realize that I'm only 21 and on a full time mission once, so I'm going 150%.  I love it too much out here. I love you guys but I really do not want to go back, sorry.

I really don't have a whole lot to say about the week. Half the week was in the hospital, and the few other days we were working in another city. One of our investigators is still struggling with koffie... How do you spell that in English? Will you please pray for M that she will find that motivation to quit? I love you guys. Thanks for everything! 

Ieper is about an hour from Gent. It's worth it though. My mission president said that you are not American if you are in Belgium and you don't go and visit it at least once. They still have trenches and everything down there.

Love you guys,

Elder Schulte

1/26/13

Dear Family,

Goede Middag allemaal!

Thanks for the e-mails this past week. It was great to hear from all of you. Dad, thanks for taking care of the BYU stuff. I went to the hospital yesterday. They thought I might have appendicitis but luckily it's not. On the downside, they are not sure what it is, haha. I need to make another appointment on Monday. I'll keep you updated but for right now, everything is fine and I'm being taken care of. 

Things are going very well here. We have had some very big miracles that I will never forget this past week. I will have to share those with you in another time. The people that we are teaching are doing very well. On in particular is making great progress and is ready for baptism. Please keep M in your prayers. I found her 3 transfers ago and it's been a long and steady progress but she's determined to make her goal of 10 February. She's a wonderful woman and very sensitive to the Spirit. We are also teaching this awesome Chinese kid from Beijing. He's the man. He has also made a goal to be baptized and he's making us Chinese food tonight, haha.

I love it out here. Every single day is a blessing. We're working our hardest and we're practicing our faith. The Lord is watching out for us. Thanks again for writing. It was great to hear from you. Tot volgende keer!

Groetjes,

Elder Schulte