Oma's Pages #40

Oma’s Pages #40

I had to take a short break from Oma’s Pages for the past two months because I have been so busy with ‘vakantiehangers.’ (vacationers staying with us) We have had a great time, but it is also good to get back to our routines and other work here. 

So... back to the mission story...

The mission has a storage unit in Almere. We had helped the Beckstrands, the Pankratz, and the Andersons do an inventory of the unit so we knew what was in there. Now, it was our turn to go furniture shopping in that storage unit. The Mission Home in Brussels was also being closed down at this same time, so a couple of the extra pieces from that house were brought up to us as well.

Buddy and Beryl Gout, are our friends here in Groningen. Buddy and Beryl are serving a Mission from Groningen to the Leeuwarden Branch as well. Buddy serves as Opa’s counselor in the Branch Presidency. 

They gave us a desk that is open on both sides so Opa can sit on one side of it with his computer and I can sit on the opposite side of it with my computer. 

The Gout’s also gave us a couch, a love seat, a large area rug, a washer, a dryer, some pans, some knives, and a whole set of silverware. They have been very good to us. We are very grateful to them. 

After our first “shopping” excursion at the storage unit, the Senior couple named the Saldens who take care of the physical facilities here on this mission came up and brought us pieces to put together that they said would be a new set of bookshelves and closets for our clothes. 

Opa took the pieces and began putting them together. He did not have any instructions or pictures to follow. He only had the boards with holes and slots drilled into them. He had to figure out what putting them together would make. When he got the bookshelf put together. He found out that it had two pull out shelves in it, but he had several large boards left over that did not work anywhere with the shelves. He played around with them until they fit together and now we had a small desk. So we put it in the spare bedroom.

Oma's Pages #39

Oma’s Pages #39

Now we had a place plenty big enough for a table, but we did not have a table to put in the place.

With all the Senior couples gone we needed somebody to help us with some of the big stuff. A lot of the furniture was in pieces and had to be assembled.

This is our closet and it came to us in pieces with no instructions. We one of these for each bedroom. In the Netherlands they do not build closets into the house. You must buy a free standing box of some kind to put your clothes in.

It was a Monday night so we invited all the JoVo’s to come over and see our place, have  Pizza and help carry the big pieces of stuff we still needed to move.

These are the JoVo's and Elders who came to help us that night. 

When everybody helps it is fun and you can get things done without so much stress.

Have you learned that in your short lives? When everybody helps... it is fun and you can get so much more done than when somebody has to do it alone.

Oma's Pages #38

Oma’s Pages #38

The City Groningen, where we live is so far away from all of the other cities where the other Senior missionaries serve that it made it a real sacrifice for the Senior couples to come up and help us. When they came up to help us put in the flooring in our new apartment, they brought up the mission van. We had to take advantage of having both the van and people to help us by moving our stuff whether we were ready to do it or not. 

It was January so it was cold and this was the only place in the whole house to put our coats

Sister Pankratz helping

Sister Pankratz, Elder Pankratz, Elder Beckstrand, and Elder Anderson

The Pankratz working side by side to get our floor in as fast as possible

This was the only way we could transport our furniture and stuff from one place to another.

This was also the first day I drove a car here in the Netherlands. Driving here is very very very very different from driving in Utah. I was scared, but somebody had to do it. The other Senior sisters would not even try to do it. None of them had ever even been up here in Groningen except the Andersons when they brought us our bed, and then they did not stay very long. Negotiating the Dutch streets and road rules when you are familiar with them is a challenge. None of the other Sisters had the expertise of this town to even attempt to drive. We had to go over to our old apartment to clean it and pack up all the rest of the stuff. So I did it. I took a deep breathe and said, “I can do it.” 

I prayed as I drove away from the new apartment to go back to the old apartment with Sister Beckstrand and Sister Anderson in the car with me. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes... Oh wait, I am the one driving... so I opened my eyes real quick. I only took one wrong turn. I realized it was wrong right away. It took me into the center of Groningen which is the one thing I did not want to do. I also did not want to panic the other sisters so I just let my instincts and my memory of things I saw when I was riding in the car with Opa take over. Very soon I connected with a road where I knew exactly where I was. I was so surprised that I was able to drive us back to my old apartment. We packed up the stuff without much problem at all.

Sister Beckstrand making lunch for everybody

All of the big stuff was moved that day even though the floor of the new place was far from being finished. The men finished laying our bedroom and part of the kitchen. Opa and I did the rest of the floor by ourselves one day at a time after they all left. The Elders volunteered to help us once for about two hours. Other than that we did it all by ourselves.

We would get up and work for awhile and then go out to do missionary stuff, come back and work until we had to quit which was about 10pm. This apartment building has a lot of rules about living here... no noise late at night is one of the rules. Sawing and hammering make a lot of noise. 

Oma's Pages #37

Oma’s Pages #37

Once we had made all the legal arrangements to get the apartment then we had the massive job of finishing it. Yes I said finishing it. In the Netherlands when you rent a place most of the time what you get to rent is an empty shell. We were so lucky that this place did have a bathroom that was finished and it had a stove and very small refrigerator.

This is the master bedroom looking out of the window

This is the master bedroom looking from the window to the door

This will eventually be our laundry room

The sink is straight across from the shower

To the far left is the toilet, then the shower stall... yep, no shower door or curtain at this point, and the tub is a bonus since hardly any homes in the Netherlands have tubs... It is an American thing. The edge of the tub shows on the right side of the picture.

What looks like a small cupboard that Opa is putting things into is actually the total size of the refrigerator, including the freezer. It is three tiny shelves and a freezer that is four inches high

Our new adventure was in finding flooring and light fixtures that did not cost a lot of money but were still good quality. It was a lot of work. All of the other Senior couples who were here on missions came to help us. I was so glad that Opa was a builder all of his life so that he could tell us what to do and how to do it. And he could tell whether things we were doing and buying were good or not.

Oma's Pages #36

Oma’s Pages #36

Since nobody was doing anything about us getting a new apartment, I prayed and prayed that Opa and I could find one ourselves. Getting into an apartment here is very very different than it is in America or anyway in Utah. It is extremely complicated. In every spare minute we had we were looking for places to live. I had always dreamed of living in a little old Dutch house that dated back to forever ago. So we looked at the old, the new, and the in between. 

Opa and I had to take turns working in the kitchen we had because it was so small, so we really needed a new place to live. If I baked something in the oven I had to put whatever it was on the floor in the living room when I took it out of the oven because there was no place else to set it.

We also did not know for sure where to live. The people in Leeuwarden wanted us to live there and the people in Groningen wanted us to live there. I thought I wanted to live in Leeuwarden because the houses there were cheaper. The Mission President told us that we had to live in Groningen. He thought that would be safer since the JoVo Centrum was in Groningen and we got home much later from JoVo’s than we did from visiting members in Leeuwarden. 

At last we found a place. It was perfect. It was new and it was in an apartment house or a flat as they call it here. The first time we went to this place the model home was open so we just walked in and made ourselves at home. We went there several times. I wanted to just climb into the bed that they had in the model and stay there. Robert contacted all the people involved to get a contract, but nothing worked. At last they told us that they would not rent to a corporation. The Church has to rent the apartment so that when we go home somebody else can live there. 

I was crushed. I cried. It was probably the lowest point of my mission so far. I told Heavenly Father that we wanted to do our work but that everything was so hard.... We were so cold.... we had to walk so far..... we had to park so far away..... we had to do all the computer work at the Church in the middle of the night when nobody was doing Family History....... I was so tired and so discouraged. I just wanted a nice warm bed and some time to sleep in it.

After I had a great big pity party.... I sat and thought and thought about everything and suddenly it hit me. I thought about other times in my life when I prayed for something that I really needed and it did not come out the way I thought it should. And so I said a prayer and talked to my Heavenly Father and said, “Okay, Heavenly Father, We have done everything we know how to do. It has been my experience in the past that when things don’t go the way we want them to go it means that you have something better in mind. We have run out of options here, so could you please tell us what to do or where to look. Or can you just take care of this problem so that we spend our energies on missionary work instead of all this piddly house finding stuff.

And boom.... a few days later Thies deJonge called us and told us about an apartment building that was not selling fast enough so they had decided to rent some of the units. We went right over to see it and it was the best most marvelous place we had seen since coming to Holland! 

I stood in the bare empty unfinished living room, opened the window, and looked across the canal to the City of Groningen and felt like I had a home.

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.

Oma's Pages #34

Oma’s Pages #34

Okay so back to my story....

Another issue we had was that we had to get a Visa.... This was not a credit card. It was a card that gives us permission to live in this country for a year. We walked to the Grote Markt in the City Center and signed ourselves into the Groningen City at the Stadhuis.

This is the Grote Markt from the top of the Martini Toren. The Stadhuis is behind the Toren so you can see the Grote Markt but not the Stadhuis.

It was so cold when we walked to the City that my feet were so numb I could not feel them for at least an hour after we got home. I told Robert I had to have a pair of boots and the next time we went to town I wanted to drive there. We had to take some extra paperwork into the Stadhuis so when we drove I saw this man and his son and their sled. They were in the park near where we live. I felt sorry for them. There were other fathers and children who were being pulled or pulling sleds. The reason I felt sorry for them is that there are no hills in Holland to sleigh ride down. So the only thing they know is just a little pull here and there. But since they don’t know anything else then they were happy with what they had.

Notice how old fashioned the sleds look here. 

We then took that paper to the Rabobank near our apartment at the Paddepoel Mall and asked them to process an account for us so we could handle the JoVo money. They told us that we had to have our visa card but they would open a temporary account until we could come back in 60 days or less with the number that would be stamped on our visa to live in the country.

Later when we met with the other Senior Couples they were all talking about how they could get bank accounts going. Opa said they could just go down to their City and blah blah blah all the details of what we had just done. We were the newest couple. They all looked at us and said, “Oh you can’t do it that way.”  

Opa said, “Well, nobody told us you cannot do that so that is what we did and now we have a bank account and we are signed in with the City.”

It took the other Seniors months to process what only took us one day to do. I guess we were very lucky to have angels working for us because nobody else had such an easy time to do that as we did.

These Senior couples became our best friends. From left to right: Sister Anderson; Sister Beckstrand; Elder Beckstrand is hiding behind his wife; Elder Anderson; Opa; Sister Pankratz; Elder Pankratz