Oma's Pages #45

Oma’s Pages #45

Thies de Jonge suggested that we make a plan and support the coming of this event even if we had to pay for it ourselves. He told Jan Weening that it was his job to make sure we had good weather that day. (The weather on the day of the celebration was perfect... so Jan’s prayers obviously were very effective) 

He also believed it would be important to make a book. I told them I felt it was essential to make the book. I told them that there was not any book in the archives of the Church that was a compilation of the history of the Church in the Netherlands from the beginning to the end. I told them that the book currently being used for this purpose had many mistakes in it. It was very old and not complete. There needed to be a more correct version that people could look at for historical purposes.

I began to work with a man named Guus Vreven on making that book. I had the software on my computer to compile, edit, do the layout and graphics for the book. Guus was a retired college teacher and he had the expertise to write the text. He tried to gather the histories from all over the Netherlands and into Belgium (since Belgium was once part of the Netherlands).

It was a massive project that took four months of working every spare minute I could find. I still did all my regular missionary work as well. There were many nights that I never went to bed.

We met the deadline. When Thies surprised me with one of the first copies of the book while I was at JoVo Institute, I posed for a picture and then I cried.

He took Brother and Sister Weening and Opa and I out for dinner as a thank you for all our hard work. He conveniently planned the dinner to be on Opa’s birthday. So it was also a birthday party for Opa.

Jan and Barbel Weening

Opa and Thies

Of course Opa loves to take pictures of our food. He had these tenderloin pieces

I had fish

This was Opa's dessert. That thing in a glass was like a roman candle. It would be totally illegal to set something like that off in Utah, but here it was blowing sparks and small tufts of sparkles all over the place and everybody just joined in singing Lang zal hij leven, which is the birthday song here that you all know ends with Hup Hup Hoorah repeated three times.

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