some days i live in europe: temple trip to den haag

i knew coming into this whole europe deal that they have like 10 temples over the whole country. okay so there is actually 11. but there isn't even one in the country i live in. its a big change from the 10 minute drive to the mesa temple and my attempts to go weekly. its so impressive to see the sacrifice that the members make here to get to the temple.

well, me and laurel had a rough start getting there....to say the least. haha she spent the night at my house and we had to be at the church at 6:30am. meaning we had to leave my house just around 5:30 due to crazy buses. so we get to the bus and had missed it. in order to catch the metro we had to get there on time and so we ran. 4 stops. in church clothes. hahah i am sure we looked like psychos. but we got there in time, just 3 minutes to spare actually and showed up to the church at 6:27am. and then of course we had to wait around for other people and didn't leave until 7:15. laurel was so annoyed! haha i am just glad we caught it. nick and jess weren't so lucky :( they got stuck.

elder and sister phair drove us in their car and it was nice conversation, for about 10 seconds until we passed out. hah we got to den haag in the netherlands a few minutes before the 1st of 2 sessions started. we had a fantastic session. i was baptized in dutch! changing was maybe the coldest experience of my life though. seriously all of us were shivering and so cold! there was a little bit of a mix up and several people were confirmed in their normal church clothes. so at the end laurel and a boy went in and were reconfirmed for all the ones they had done. it took quite a long time.

after we had a very very quick little break for lunch. problem. no one notified us that we needed to bring lunch. and thanks to our early early departure time we had a tiny breakfast. the phairs were so nice and told us to eat some of their lunch. the next group was ready to get going before we were done and we said for them to go ahead. i really wasn't feeling too good and i think it was due to lack of food/sleep, basically the essentials. plus it was cold. which for me is always a problem. hah

we ventured out to the little and adorable town with shops right next to the temple. it is so clean and lovely there! i loved it! first thing...find food! there was this shop that sold a huge range of food. laurel got herself a good ole' hamburger, fries and a coke. i got chicken wings, fries and a hot cocoa. haha it was so tasty!

then we found an awesome second hand shop where i found a killer deal on a down jacket for 9euro. and i bought an old fashioned dutch plate with a egg cup. who even knew about those little cuppy things?! i didn't. hah but i loved it.

we also went to a sports store and i got myself some gloves and we both had to stop ourselves from buying these fantastic coats that cost too much.

oh! and we saw our first holland windmills!!! okay i actually only saw 1, but it was still exciting! i wish we could have stayed longer then just a few hours, i am so excited to go back.

everyone wanted pictures of the temple, you can see sinoui with the millions of cameras. it was so funny, mostly because everyone was tired and hungry and cold.