Oma's Pages #6, August 10, 2011

Oma’s Pages #6

In the pictures of the last blog... 

The first picture in the blog is of Maria and Egbert Van Komen and Rachel when she was a little girl. It was when we lived in the little old house on 300 North in West Point. Maria and Egbert were the Oma and Opa to your mother or father when they were growing up. They are your Opa’s mother and father. 

Today, August 10th is Maria and Egbert’s Wedding Anniversary. They were married 78 years ago today.

The family picture is of Egbert’s family. The first three across the front are: Bonje (Tante Bonn), Bouke, and Eva who is Tante Eef or Aunt Eve. The next row has Maria Meijer Van Komen, the mother, holding Jisteltje or Tante Jellie, Willem or Uncle Bill who owned the Dutch store in Salt Lake City, Egbert or Opa to your mother or dad, and Christina or Tante Tini. The back row has some Church person we don’t know, Pouwel who is the dad to all these kids, and Henderkien or Tante Henny who is the mother to Marty Vuyk and all of the Vuyk kids.To my knowledge this is the only family picture that has the whole family in it.

One picture has Egbert Van Komen when he was a young man still living in Holland standing with his father, Pouwel Van Komen. 

There is a picture of Willem Albert Van Komen. He is the old man with a beard and a hat on. He is the first person in your direct Van Komen line to join the church. He joined the church in the 1880’s.

The car picture is Egbert’s new car. He came to Groningen to take Tante Jellie and her step mother, Hiltje, for a ride. 

And then of course how can you not know those two adorable twins, Robbie and Ria, (Opa and his twin sister Aunt Ria).

   

About three years ago a friend of ours who lives in Holland asked Opa when he could come here to serve on a mission. Opa told him that the friend would have to request Opa and Oma to come in order for us to come to Holland and work. The friend said he would do that and he asked when we would be able to come. We told him we had to wait for Ben to go on a mission first. He said okay.

There still was the problem about having to pay off all of our debts. Opa just kept praying about going on a mission. He told Heavenly Father we needed to pay all of our debts. It looked like this would be impossible.

Then one day somebody wanted to buy a piece of old property that Opa had. It was exactly the amount of money we needed to pay off our debts. For a few minutes we thought about all the really fun things we could with that much money. But we knew that God had given us a great blessing of selling the piece of property because Opa and I had been praying that we could go on a mission. And so we paid off all of our debts so we could go on a mission.

When Ben graduated from High School. Ben, Opa, and Chris Choi came to the Netherlands. Opa met with his friend who had asked him to come and serve a mission. The Mission President was also at that meeting. Things started to happen for us to come.

At last the white envelope arrived in the mail that said we were called to serve in the Belgium/Netherlands Mission.

We were assigned to live to in Groningen. In the whole country of the Netherlands why do you think we were called to live in Groningen? Remember.... this is the place where Opa’s family lived for many years and where Opa’s father was born?

Now we knew it was very important for us to know about Opa’s family stories.

Why do you think that would be important?