Oma's Pages #44

Oma’s Pages #44

When we arrived on our mission and began to work with the members we discovered that this year (2011) was the 150 year anniversary of the first baptisms here in the Netherlands. There was a committee that had been formed two years earlier to plan a celebration to commemorate this event. Due to a lot of conflicts and problems we discovered that there were no definite plans.

A man by the name of Thies de Jonge asked Opa and I to meet with him and a man named Jan Weening. 

One of the issues we discussed that night was the monument. There is a monument here in the Netherlands that is a nationally recognized, dedicated monument to commemorate the first baptisms into the Church in this country. The monument is located at the location where the first baptisms took place.

 Jan Weening had asked numerous people before we came to help with the upkeep, but nobody did. It needed some serious upkeep. 

The monument is located within the boundaries of the Leeuwarden Branch. Since Opa was the Branch President we felt like we needed to do something about it. The first thing Opa did was to take out a section of the fence around it and make it into a gate. He had to paint the newly welded pieces. As you can see he does almost everything here wearing a his missionary suit.

The man who lived next door came out and helped Opa set the post for the new gate

We arranged a day to clean the monument. The Groningen Ward planned a Young Men’s activity to come and help. Opa and I arrived and nobody was there so we went to work by ourselves. You could not tell exactly what color the brick was and it was covered with lichens, mold, and moss.

We began to scrub. And we scrubbed and scrubbed. It was very hard work.

Later the Young Men arrived with their leader. They helped to scrub as much as possible off the bricks and concrete. Then the leader started to power wash all the junk we had scrubbed off. He showed the young men how to do it and they all worked very hard.

Here it is not like the Young Men’s program in the Wards at home. There were only two young men who showed up to come. And if all the young men had come there would only have been a few more boys. 

By the time we finished it was getting dark. We went over to the picnic table across the road and talked about what we had done. Their leader said that he had come with a bad attitude but as he began to work he truly felt the spirit of what had happened there. He said he felt that it was a sacred place and a very important event happened in this place. He said that he had felt there was a special spirit at this place. He was so glad he had come, worked, and felt his testimony of the Gospel and of his heritage enlarged. We all bore our testimonies about the spirit of the place and how we felt about it while we were working. 

There are always great blessings when you are working for God.

Later in the week Opa and I went back and painted the letters so you could read the words. The letters were deep and narrow into the monument so we had to take a regular paintbrush and cut off nearly all the bristles so that it would fit into the slots without leaving any of the black paint on the monument. It took us nearly all day to finish the work. Originally the letters were painted gold. We could see some of the original gold showing through. However, sometime in the past the letters had been painted with black so we had to paint them black. 

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.

Oma's Pages #42

Oma’s Pages #42

To celebrate finally getting everything in order with all of our living things Opa bought me tulips. These were my first tulips in this new apartment, however, over the months since we have been living here we have fresh flowers on our table about 75% of the time. 

Flowers here are so much less expensive than they are at home. I can buy a bunch of hyacinths or tulips for 3.99 euros when they are in season. I can buy roses and other flowers for between 4.99 and 6.99. This year I bought 50 tulips for 4.99 euros.

It is so much fun to walk through the flower markets and see all the flowers. Sometimes it is too hard to choose which ones to take home this time.

Oma's Pages #41

Oma’s Pages #41

Something else we had to have was another refrigerator. 

Most of the people here have refrigerators that are much smaller than what we have in the US. The frig that came with the apartment is inside of a kitchen cupboard and it is very tiny. The freezer part is only four inches high.

We have to make so much food for the JoVo’s and we must do it on a very limited budget. So we need to be able to buy things when they are on sale, especially meat and stuff that is perishable.

Robert and I went out looking and looking for a new fridge that would suit our needs and was not too expensive. We thought about buying this lime green one. We knew it would be a favorite with Aunt Mary. Maar helaas... it was too expensive and it would not match anything else so we did not buy it.

We found a nice conservative white one that was a good brand and not too expensive. Getting it into our apartment was a bit tricky, but we managed. And now we can plan and prepare for our JoVo’s more efficiently.

You can see it is not too tall because of where the handle for the window is on the right side of the frig, and the microwave is on top of it and the cupboard frig is to the left.

As you can see Opa has it loaded with possibilities for  fixing dinners

The bottom of the frig is the freezer part

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.