Oma's Pages #35

Oma’s Pages #35

We discovered that Real Estate people were showing our apartment without telling us because it was for sale. When I discovered this was happening I did not feel like I could leave my computer there or anything else like my i-pod that was worth money. So everywhere I went I felt like a pack horse. I had to carry my backpack plus a very large bag with all of our other things that we needed for the long days of missionary work. Nothing was happening for us to get a new apartment. We really needed a new place to live and I was beginning to get discouraged about that. 

The sign on the window of our apartment says Te Koop that means "for sale".... A funny thing is that one of the young Elders here thought it was the name of a very large Real Estate Company because he saw Te Koop on buildings in every city... ha ha ha ha 

Besides being cold and having to walk in the icy cold and not being able to get over having really bad chest colds... we had a car that had two kinds of fuel systems. You started the car with the battery and then after you drove a short way you had to stop and turn the car off and then turn it back on and it would switch to the other fuel system which was LP gas or natural gas. It was very scary to stop at a stop light or along some busy street and turn the car off and hope it would turn back on.

The black spot on the back of the car is where you insert the natural gas

You will notice that the license plate reads Ph-Zt which to me was a fizz-it which is how I felt about this car.

One day we got a call from the Mission Office. They had a brand new car for us to pick up. It was the most fun day for me so far on this mission. It was the first day we could not plan to do anything except drive to Cappelle an de Ijssel which is way down south from where we were. I so glad for the break. We met the Tibbetts who were the office couple. We picked up our new car. I don’t think I had ever gotten a brand new car with NO miles on it ever in my life. I was hoping and hoping it was not a white car and it was not white. It was a color that I loved. What a great day!

Elder and Sister Tibbetts

Opa is standing between our new car on his right (which is on the left side of the picture for you) and our old car on his left. As you can see the new one is much larger and a very pretty taupe color

We have named our Garmin (the car gps system) Hair brained Henderkien or Henny for short. We call it that because the only voice on the system in Dutch is a woman’s voice and we have it set to take us on the fastest route possible. This means that sometimes she tells us to get off the freeway and then she takes us on little tiny roads we would never have known existed if it were not for her. We call her hair brained because the phrase in Dutch that means “recalculating” sounds like “Hairrrr berakening” or in English hair breaking. All the time Opa doesn’t listen to Henny and she just keeps yelling at him, “Hair be-rakening” over and over. I tell him that poor Henny will not have any hair left by the time we leave the Netherlands. 

On this day when we left the car dealership there was some kind of a problem on the freeway system and Henderkien took us on an amazing route of old farm houses and beautiful scenery we would have never seen if it had not been for her..... It was a great day!

I began to think things were starting to look up. I was so happy.