Oma's Pages #43

Oma’s Pages #43

Now that we finally had all of our day to day living problems worked out we could shift our energies more on our missionary work.

We did do our missionary work from the moment we arrived, but having to get the apartment things taken care of took a lot of our time.

What were and still are our responsibilities?

Well when you get to be a Senior Couple the responsibilities and the rules are different from when you are young missionary. As a young missionary there are so many things you still need to learn about the Church, about being a good leader, a good teacher, the importance of good leadership, how to discipline yourself, and lots of stuff about people.

I guess that Heavenly Father thinks that by the time you are old enough to come on a Couple’s mission you should have learned most of those things. And so now we, as couples, had to learn other things.

Anderson's; Pankratz (Sis P. is sitting); Van Komen's; Saldens (Sis S. is sitting); DeLeeuw's standing next to us; President and Sister Brubaker sitting in middle; Sister Anjewierden next to DeLeeuw's; Bushes (Sis B. is sitting) Elder Anjewierden standing next to Elder Bush; and Evertons. These are all the Senior Couples serving here right now (Well actually we do have a new Mission President but more about that later)

We have certain responsibilities that are always the same:

Monday: is Young Single Adult (here it is called JoVo, sound like Yo-Vo) Family Home Evening

For this we prepare something for the group to eat and then we have a short message and then we play games.

Opa playing a very fast chase around the table kind of ping pong game at Family Home Evening

Tuesday: we feed the missionaries a healthy warm meal for their District Meeting. 

We have the opportunity to sit in on their District Meeting and listen to their stories of miracles and how they are learning all the things they came here to learn.

Can you see the steam still rising from the Wok? We usually feed 10 to 12 very hungry Elders every Tuesday.

Thursday: we make a full dinner for the JoVo’s to eat before they have their Institute 

class.

JoVo Institue night is always larger than Family Home Evening we can feed as many as thirty on Institute night

Every other week we have to fix dinner for the entire Zone when we have Zone Training Meetings. We prepare for about forty at Zone Training. They are usually held in Apeldoorn or Zwolle and we have carry our food and sometimes our pans with us to prepare the food for everybody there.

Every quarter we have to inspect the Elders’ apartments and we have to make lots of reports. Opa hates doing reports. He has to keep track of how much money we spend for JoVo’s and report all of that both to the Stake and to Frankfurt and to the Mission Office.

We also have to make reports to the Church headquarters in Frankfurt Germany on what is happening good or bad in the JoVo center here. Do we have any missionaries going out, is anybody getting married, and do we have specific concerns we need help with etc.

He also has to make reports to the Mission about finances and other things as well. Lots of paper work..., or should I say computer work. He must keep every receipt for every thing that we spend and sort out what each thing is for and which organization he has to report it to. Ugh. Neither one of us likes that part.

In all of the other spaces we do service, visiting actives, less actives and people who are not yet members. We also go on joint teaches with the missionaries, do simple repair work in the missionaries apartments. We attend all the Ward meetings,activities, baptisms, and lots of other stuff.