"When he walks in the room, he's just got swagger."- President Robinson

Hello Friends and Family-

This week has gone by soo fast! I just cant believe its already Monday again. We have been crazy busy looking up so many people and meeting new faces from this amazing ward. The ward here in Rotterdam is alot bigger than my previous cities. Still with lots of inactives but definately bigger with some awesome members! We have had a dinner appointment every single night so far and I am loving it! I decided that we kind of have the best of both worlds because Capelle is kind of like living in a nice quiet little town, but then you travel for about 15 minutes and you are in a really gorgeous big town.

Some good news...we will be offically moving into our Capelle apartment tomorrow with a clean bathroom and no mice. luckily the prayers worked ;) I am super excited to finally live in the city we are working in. Its been quite the adventure traveling to and from Den Haag every single day and I am pretty sure me and Z Kohlert are the most expensive missionaries in the whole entire mission. Haha but despite all of the craziness, we have witnessed some of the most amazing miracles!! It seems like we look left and right and there is always something happening, and we are just lucky enough to be apart of it. On Wednesday we had Zone Conference and it was SOOO good. President Robinson had some really amazing one liners (hence the subject line). He is one of the most hilarious people I have ever met and I am so glad he is my mission president. Its always good to have these kinds of meetings to get some good spiritual nourishment! Kind of weird situation but we will be having another Zone Conference coming up on June 14th and I am super excited for that one too. Today we had a zone pday and went to Kinderdijk!! It is a place where you see sooo many gorgeous windmills right next to each other. It was so amazing! I also have the best zone EVER. I am finally able to work with Elder Elkins and also Zuster Thorley, my MTC companion. We are going to have a blast, I just know it. It only took a year to get these people in my area! Also other exciting news...my companion cut my hair! She had never done it before but my ends were so bad and driving me crazy that I let her just chop a good two inches off and little did she know..she was meant to be a hair stylist because she did a great job!

This last week we went on splits with the zone leaders and went finding basically all day long. We found FIVE potentials and made TWO appointments in about four hours! It was so awesome. If all of the appointments we have set for this week go through..it is going to blow our minds! I am so excited to see all the potential this great little city has. And very excited to finally get settled into our apartment. We will see how it all works out! I love you and miss you all!

Love, Zuster Brophy

"When in doubt...just CREAM."

Hello Family and Friends-

 

OH my goodness. So basically you could easily call this last week the most exhausting week I have yet experienced on my mission. I have successfully reached a level of tiredness and exhaustion that I have never reached before in my life. haha I counted it as an accomplishment.

 

But to just start from the beginning. After you find out you are getting transferred, its always an adventure trying to get everything packed and orderly in a matter of two days. I had to say some goodbyes and those are always hard (worst part of the mission in my opinion) and take all of the pictures you can before you leave your city. So Wednesday morning comes around and I get all of my junk to Utrecht central. I said goodbye to Zuster Jones and Elder Alston and all of the other missionaries. It was super hard!! Especially saying goodbye to missionaries that you have been working with for soo long. They just become your family out here! Then Me and Zuster Kohlert grab our stuff and the elders take us to our apartment in Capelle (since we have no idea where anything is since we are both new to the area). We drop our stuff in the family room and start looking around everywhere in the apartment. We go upstairs and one of the first things we see is the bathroom.....OH MY goodness people. I kid you not- there is mold and all different kinds of things you can imagine. The light doesnt work, and it looks as if something had literally just exploded allllll over the floor. It was disgusting! And so me and Z Kohlert just look at each other and start laughing because we are thinking Ïs this a joke?" But just wait....this story gets more interesting. Then we go downstairs and look at the table expecting to see notes of all their investigators and directions on how to get everywhere...there is barely anything. Cue the stress. AHHH. We were also informed on that piece of paper that our house is officially infested with MICE. mice people. And they have been trying to fix it for months and nothing has been done and so to just be careful and make sure that you dont leave anything on the floor or else they will chew holes in them. WAIT WHAT? But then we look at the bottom of our schedule for Wednesday and it says Bathroom check at 8 pm BE HOME. So...we look at each other and of course I say "well....i need a diet coke." Long story short....we get back home at 8 that night and there is a guy with his wife and they check missionary apartments. He walks upstairs and the next thing I know he is looking in the bathroom and says "sisters...you cannot live here. This is dangerous to your health and you need to be out of this apartment as soon as possible. I am going to call the president right now." So he calls president robinson and tells them we need to either buy a new apartment or fix it right now but that we cant live here. Soooo after alot of negotiating and figuring things out we decided that we are going to be living in Den Haag with other sisters for about 3 weeks and traveling to and from every single day, which is about an 1 hr 20 min train ride. So now we are living in Den Haag, but working in Capelle. All of my stuff is literally just all over the place because I cant really unpack.  And I offically went to bed after 1230 at night and woke up at 630 Sunday through Friday last week, while still working every day and trying to pink wash a city. WHEEW. I was ready for Pday to say the least and I have been eating lots of ice cream and diet coke. :) So  we are hoping to get back in to our apartment as soon as possible with a clean bathroom and NO mice. Cross your fingers everybody. Lots of prayers are welcome. On the bright side we are the fist sisters to offically have a "4 sister apartment"and its a blast!! We have a good time laughing at night and doing P90X in the mornings. :)

 

Capelle is absolutely beautiful!!! It is really close to Rotterdam which is a super big city, the ward is amazing and we are so excited to be companions and just blow this city up. We have tons and tons of investigators that the sisters left behind for us to teach and we are super excited to start working with all of these fantastic people. The elders have helped us alot, we have had some really loopy moments because we are so stressed and tired, but it is so awesome and I am happy to be here! We have already gotten 3 new investigators in about 4 days so I am just so excited to see the many miracles that will happen in this city. Even on these weeks....it is possible to find joy in missionary work. You just have to look a little bit harder. I love you all and miss you!

 

Zuster Brophy

 

PPS Cream is cry and scream put together. So when in doubt...just remember to cream. Love you all!!

This is when a mission gets realllll exciting....

Well everyone...even though I totally thought I was staying one more in Apeldoorn...PSYCH. Ive been transferred!!!! I have been called to serve in Capelle aan den Ijssel with Zuster Kohlert!!!!! Wooo!! We are also "pink washing" the place which means both me and Zuster Kohlert are new and it is kind of like opening a whole new city. So it will definatley be an adventure. :) Me and Zr K were in the same MTC group and we served my whole first 6 months of my mission in Beligum together so I already know her really well and I am SOOO excited to be her companion. We are going to have a little too much fun I think :) I am going to miss Zuster Jones sooo much. We were really hoping for one more together and we both were expecting to hear that I was staying so it was a little bit of a let down. I also got the phone call literally 10 minutes after I had said goodbye to my family...talk about a roller coaster of emotions. This is definatley one of the hardest parts of mission I think..is saying goodbye to all these members/companion that you love so much!! But I know that Capelle will be great and I have heard so many great things. I will also be serving in the same district as Elder Elkins!! Woo!! so I will finally see him a little bit more on my mission.

 

I loved skyping yesterday!! I cant believe that was my last time on my mission. It seems so unreal and like time just doesnt exist but it was good to see and talk to my family! This time...luckily I am not homesick at all. I dont know what changed from last time but Its been lots better this time so that is a plus! We had a really great week in Apeldoorn! lots of good teaching appointments and finding time! It has been raining non stop for about 4 days now and I am ssssooo sick of biking in the rain. In fact, just on the way to the library me and Zuster Jones got SOAKED and when we walked in the library we literally had people asking if we had just taken a shower. haha but it is beautifully green and blooming everywhere you look. This last week I made my famous dish "chili and noodles" for my whole district and of course everyone loved it and it is now mission wide. I am very proud. :)

 

This week is going to be super crazy and I have a feeling I am going to be really tired but I am supr excited for a new adventure, new faces, new city, etc etc. I am going to miss the members here sooo much but thank goodness for technology and its comforting to know I will be back visiting in just a short time. Missions are the best things in the world!! Love and miss you all!!

 

Love, Zuster Brophy

PS dont send anything to my old address now. I will let you all know my new one when I get there next week.

Temple and Tulips!!

Does it get any better than this?

The Hague Netherlands Temple

Hello Friends and Family-

What an FANTASTIC WEEK we had!! Oh my goodness I just didnt want it to end! I crossed many different things off my bucket list and It was sooo good to get a little spiritual boost from the temple and see all the beautiful tulips over here in Nederland!

On Monday night we traveled all the way over to Zoetermeer and was able to stay with the Zusters who were there. It was an absolute blast because one of them, Zuster Reeder, was my roomate in the MTC and I hadnt seen her since August and the other one, Zuster Verdegem, was a member in Gent the whole time I was there and then left on her mission when I left to come up to Apeldoorn so it was so much fun to see her again! She speaks GORGEOUS Vlaams and I didnt realize how much I missed that language. I just had her speak in Vlaams the whole entire night! Made me a little homesick for Belgium :) We woke up early the next morning and were in the temple by 8:30 and did a session all together. It was so funny because the last temple conference in October I could definately understand what was going on in Dutch but definatly not everything, but this time...it just sounded normal. It was such a weird feeling but I loved it! They dont have the new temple video in Dutch yet so we saw the old one again but the translation should be done by the next conference so that will be perfect. We were able to stay in the temple for a good two whole hours and it was SOO needed. That is one major downfall about being on a mission- not being able to go to the temple whenever you want. There is such a peace and a power there that you just cant find or feel anywhere else. Afterwards we went to the church building in Zoetermeer and had lunch and a little meeting with everyone together, then we all got in a huge bus and drove about 45 minutes to Keukenhof. Oh my goodness. I have never seen so many beautiful flowers in my life!!! We were able to stay there for almost 2 1/2 hours since it is so big and we all just had a blast. Pretty sure I took over 85 pictures so dont worry. I decided it felt a little bit like Disneyland...just without the rides. :)

The rest of the week was super awesome! I was able to go on Exchanges up to Fryslaan, in Leeuwarden with Zuster Hoff. We did lots of good contacting and taught alot of their investigators. Me and Zuster Jones have been working our butts off trying to find new people to teach. We had an super cool lesson with Sam this past week. He is still having lots of trouble stopping with smoking and so we decided we just really needed to pray and make a new plan with him, where we are really involved to get him motivated. And so we were there with two members for joint teaches and we decided to just talk about prayer and scripture study and how that should be your source of strength to stop with smoking. And we ended up making a plan with him and he gave us all of his cigarettes he had in the house, threw away all of his ash trays and lighters, and said ök this is it. I am totally done." It was a miracle!! So he is trying his very best and is going for the goal of being baptized on May 24th now. Please pray for him :) Me and Zuster Jones are loving being companions and serving here in Apeldoorn. Transfers are next Wednesday ( I know what your all thinking- It feels like transfers were just YESTERDAY!) But I am really really hoping to stay here for 4 and just make it another 6 month adventure :) I love the members here soooo much and I am not ready to leave just yet. But we will find out Sunday night or Monday morning what is happening so I will have that news soon. Its a total 50/50 chance for me so we will see. I love and miss you all!! Enjoy the pictures of the beautiful country I get to call my home :)

Love, Zuster Brophy

Ps. Cant wait to talk to my sweet family on Sunday!!

 A few of us with President Robinson

 Me and Zuster Jones

 I love my mission! I would't want to be anywhere else!

I have the best mission parents everrrr!