"Bonaire?" "Nee, nog een eiland." "Bonaire?" "Nee, Curacao." "Bonaire?" "Bon tardi!" "Wat?"

Bon tardi! (Good afternoon)

I officially made it to Bonaire; it was about a 2 hour flight from Guyana to Curacao and then about 25 minutes (if not less) to make it to Bonaire. It was fun though, because I just had surgery on my toe, I have to wear flip flops to let it be able to move so I walked around the airport in dress clothes and flip flops. I also got to take a lot of awesome pictures on my way out of Guyana! As I was leaving, a storm was coming so there was just a giant sheet of clouds above Guyana and we were flying above them. It was so beautiful, I took lots of pictures!

I Skyped my family Christmas Day and it took some time to get it going because of the technical difficulties. The neighbors were playing some Hindu music really loud so that made things difficult as well! Luckily, by the time it was my time to Skype, there weren't any problems and the neighbors seemed to have stopped playing music. We also visited this one member family with our branch president and because their front yard was flooded, we brought some long boots with us so we could walk through!

Bonaire is really cool, really pretty and there are tourists everywhere! Everything here is really weird in comparison to where I just came from; the standard currency is US dollars, we drive on the right side of the road, there are cruise ships coming in daily and white people are everywhere....where am I? Unfortunately, a lot of the Dutch people here don't like religion or us. My first day though, we went out for some ice cream with Sister Noij and her little girls. They're so adorable! As I ate my ice cream we were talking with them all and it was just so nice to speak Dutch again, I didn't realize how much I missed it!

I'm excited to be working here, my district is really awesome and I'm ready to see what's in store for me! Wish me luck!!

Lobi,

Elder Hardy

Title Translation:  "Bonaire?" "No, still an island." "Bonaire?" "No, Curacao." "Bonaire?" "Bon tardi!" "What?"

attached: Clouds, clouds, cool island thing and the Noij family, their friend and the Elders

"Voor de kerst, wil ik een taco hebben." "Alleen een taco?" "Nee, met saus ook erop"

Hey everyone!

Sorry about this email, it's going to be short.

But next week will be better!

This week was really cool, we had a lot of fun teaching people! Lot of walking around and the rain has started kicking up again. We had a branch Christmas party and Elder Rios was Santa Claus, it was pretty fun! I also went to Linden on exchange and I got to talk with a bunch of kids. I convinced them that I had: magical ice powers (that's how we drove to Guyana from America), they thought I was from France so I spoke French to them, they thought my companion was from Spain so I pretended to speak Spanish and I also named two reindeer Bulbi and Daisy. Good time.

Have a Merry Christmas!!!!

Lobi,

Elder Hardy

Title Translation: "For Christmas, I want a taco." "Only a taco?" "No, with sauce on it too"

"Waarom draag je mooie kleding aan?" "Omdat ik wil netjes zijn." "Oké, Gelukkig Kerstfeest!"

Good afternoon everyone!

The following conversation at the top was between Sister Benjamin and Elder Payne. Some funny during that as well was Elder Hunt (one of the Assistants to the President) saw her interestingly put together manger. He said, "Sister Benjamin, I like your manger but you're missing the most important part!" "The donkey?" "No Sister Benjamin, Jesus!" We all had a good laugh at that and we even left a "Light the World" pass along card there to celebrate Christmas! If you want to watch the video, I added a link at the bottom of the email, it's pretty cool!

This week we had Zone Meeting with President Egbert, it's was stressful because we had to teach a lot but it was also fun too! President Egbert talked about a lot of things he would like us to work on but we had also had a really good talk about why it's so important to do these things. We learned a lot as we looked to the example of the Savior as that was the main overlying theme of the meeting, of course!  It's always an amazing time being able to meet together as zones, you know that something wonderful will always happen!

Sunday was a cool day, at first there was a blackout so we were scrambling to get the generator working at the church, how many people does it take to get a generator working? 6 missionaries, a Branch President and some guy on the phone! Luckily, we were able to get it on and there weren't any other hiccups the rest of the service; ironically enough, it was one of the most spiritual sacrament meetings I've had in some time.

Today we had a fun P-day activity! We tried to go to the Zoo but it was closed so we decided to head to Giftland, essentially a very large mall, and had to wait in the car about half an hour for it to open. When we did walk in, however, I almost fell over because of how it was; it was basically America! It looked like an actually mall, I saw a music shop with beautiful guitars hanging on the walls, everything was clean and they even had massage chairs! It was really cool, we had a lot of fun because we were also doing white elephant gift shopping since next Tuesday, all of the missionaries in West and East Coast are getting together for a Christmas activity. Should be fun!

Happy Holidays!

Lobi,

Elder Hardy

Attached are: a selfie and a sunset, Elder Thompson eating my pizza (had to protect those pepperonis) and a new notebook I bought from Giftland.