The subject of the email is less inappropriate than you think. We'll get there.
I kind of felt like I was living in Africa this week, and here are the reasons why:
So last Monday, five other Brussels Elders and I went on a hunt through the city for some African shops so that we could buy some boubous together. Boubous are basically big African robes with tribal patterns everywhere, and it's sort of a tradition to buy a boubou or two before we finish our missions. We eventually found some good ones, and they still smell like dried fish from the African shop. Just adds to the authenticity, right? We'll be playing some boubou basketball sometime soon.
Speaking of dried fish smell, we went to an African family's house on Saturday for dinner, and we ate some fish. It wasn't just normal fish though, because we sat down, looked at our plates, and found that our plates were looking back. We ate fish heads and vegetables for dinner. AND, I'm proud to say that I ate everything on the plate. What I thought were caterpillars actually turned out to be tree pods, so that was slightly less exciting. For the record, I ate the tree things while thinking they were caterpillars. As for the fish, we got to crack the heads open to pull out the eyes, and I even ate those. Thus the subject of the email. Mmm. It's like I'm on Man vs Wild. Not really though, because I take metros filled with homeless men playing the accordion.
To get to an appointment, Elder Smith and I had to take a bus out of Brussels to a Dutch village about a half hour north. We got off the bus three stops early though, so we had to wander through the city with no idea where to go, and without being able to understand any of the Dutch street signs or any of the words that the people were saying. I felt like a new missionary again. Sorry, new missionaries. After taking six wrong turns and a half hour of walking, we found the house we were looking for ... but only because they happened to see us walk by and pounded on the window to get our attention. We felt cool saying "Hello" in Dutch to everyone we passed on our way through the city though.
Our investigator that was supposed to get baptized next Sunday kind of disappeared, so that was a little disappointing. We'll see what we can do to fix the situation.
Besides that, we've just been contacting and tracting around Brussels like normal and talking to people all day. Everyone in the city seems to be too busy with end of year exams to talk to or meet with the missionaries, but hopefully things will pick back up in a week or two when they've all finished.
And with that, I bid you all farewell. Until next week!
Elder Wilson
