Meetings!!!

I'm very excited right now because I finally got the info I needed in order to get to a meeting tonight, and hopefully that will mean service this week too. Some kind of privacy issues surround giving out the phone numbers to local congregations here, so after calling the local Branch office, a very helpful brother there was able to play operator for me. I got a return call from another brother who not only gave us the meeting time for an English congregation tonight, and told us which train to take to get to that part of town, but he is going to meet us there at the train station in person to escort us the rest of the way. If it's an easy way for him to judge our character, then so be it. I'm excited! He said we take a bus from the Duivendrecth train stop to the hall on Sophie Redmondplein, and for that I'm glad he'll be with us. Who knows what the neighborhood will be like, and it will be after dark by the time we get there. With the overcast we've had, it's practically after dark most of the afternoons :) There was actually a brief covering of snow at the airport last night when I met Matt there for dinner.

The brother said it's only about a 10 minute train ride from the airport train station, but Matt and I will have to catch a shuttle from the hotel first to get to the airport. The one thing people complained about this hotel for when I was reading reviews and trying to find suitable lodging for this week, was that the hotel shuttle doesn't run often enough. I don't know if I thought they were ALL just being overly critical, or what, but they were quite right. The shuttle only comes round once every 40 minutes. You miss the one you want, and you'll sit around for almost another hour. So, to get to the meeting at 7:30 tonight, we will have to leave the hotel at 6 pm.

Also, the meeting with the immigration people seemed to go well. We got our temporary residence permit. We will still have to register again with the local municipality where ever we end up living, but until then, we are legal. Then, we got our Dutch social security numbers, which basically seems to only be there in case we want to open a bank account here. The people holding our hands to show us what to do were all very friendly and helpful. It seems their entire job is to help people like ourselves acclimate and not make waves. Again, something I'm thankful for. They gave us a book that looks a bit like a school book designed for ex pats to normalize into Dutch society. I checked for quizes in the back...I hope we got the teacher's edition...

Matt teaches a class at work tomorrow, and Friday is still the house shopping day. Time to get ready for meeting now! Yeah! Or as Matt would say, w00t!