Oma's Pages #19, November 11, 2011

Oma’s Pages #19

The biggest problem we had in this apartment was not the cold showers, not the small living space, not the missing kitchen table, not the fact that we have no place to put anything. The biggest problem we had was the parking. 

We began to know the cars we saw by the names we gave them. There was Mr. Salmon and Mr. Orange, and Miss Pink. Every day I would look to see where they were parked. Most of the cars never moved. There were not enough places for everybody to park so about 5 or 6:00 pm all the parking places were gone. Because of our work with the Young Adults and the people we had to visit in Leeuwarden we never got home early. So we never had a place to park near our apartment.

There is saying in Groningen that no matter which way you go, the wind is always against you and that is the truth. No matter where we parked, it was freezing cold with a fierce wind. We felt like popsicles by the time we got into the apartment. The ground where we walked was usually covered with ice so it was also slick. Sometimes we had to park about half a mile away from where we lived. A lot of nights it was midnight before we got home so it was also kind of scary to walk home that late in the cold wind on slick roads and walkways.

Because most of the cars never moved there were only about ten or twenty spots each day that opened up for people to park in. We began to notice that the car we named “Old Saab” NEVER moved. Every day I looked to see if it moved. As the snow came it froze on it and then more snow piled on top of that. This car was an old restored Saab. We began to say that it really wasn’t restored.... it just had never been driven so it had not aged... That was a joke but we never saw it move.


One day we even found a parking space right behind Old Saab. It was like I could feel that car's spirit.... if cars can have spirits.... I don't know, but I really liked that car.

Then one day we came home in the middle of the day and as we drove around the corner by our apartment we saw Old Saab driving out of the neighborhood. We never saw it again. I was glad we got to see it leave since it had become my friend. I would talk to it whenever we walked by it on our to and from wherever we had parked our car. We have driven back to that neighborhood several times to see if we could find Old Saab, but we have never seen it again since the day we watched it drive away.

Oma's Pages #18, November 5, 2011

Oma’s Pages #18

When we arrived it was almost Christmas. Do you remember that we had Saint Nicholas Day on the Sunday we were still in the Mission Training Center. We still had to go almost another week before we left for Holland on Friday. We arrived in Holland on December 11, 2010. For the first few days everything was crazy. We came with very bad colds, so we were sick. We were trying to learn all the things we had to do, and it felt like we could never do everything.

We had to keep the apartment totally clean, spotless, and with everything out of sight and put away every time we walked out of it. We had to do laundry at night because we could not hang it up during the day. We had to learn how to drive in the country again, and we had to learn how to drive this very strange car. It was very very hard.

One day I looked up and thought, it is going to be Christmas and we don’t have one thing in this apartment to remind us of this holiday. We had been told we would be moving soon so we did not want to buy a tree. Besides if we bought a tree we would have to buy something to put on the tree, and what would we do with that stuff when Christmas was over. We did not have room for the things we brought with us. We did not want to add anything more to our mess.

I had sent myself boxes of things that we would need after we arrived. I decided those boxes would be our Christmas gifts. Some of them had been sent several months before and I could not remember what was in them. Opa had no idea what was in any of them so it would be a surprise for all of us.

We gathered up the boxes from the Steinvoorte’s and built ourselves a Christmas tree with them. I put all the pictures I had on the tree. They were pictures of all of you guys and of Jesus Christ. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about anyway, Jesus Christ and Family.... So we were set!

Oma's Pages #17, October 28, 2011

Oma’s Pages #17

Another problem we were dealing with was our car. It started up using regular gas and then after you drove it a short distance you had to stop the car and start it again to get it to switch to LP gas. If you did not do this the car would not go very fast.

Here is Holland the cars are very small, the roads are very narrow, and they travel very fast. So sometimes it was very scary when we were driving around and suddenly had to stop someplace like at a red light,  turn off the car and turn it back on again. Especially when it was so cold, I wondered if we would stall in the intersection or on the freeway and not be able to get the car started again. Once or twice it took more than one try to get the car going, but then we were blessed to be on our way, safely.

I am sure all of the prayers you said for us are the reason we were so safe in such a scary driving situation.

Opa was getting used to driving in the Netherlands at this time. It is very different here than at home because all the signs and rules are not like they are at home. He has driven a car every time we have come here to visit, but I have never driven a car here in Holland until I came on this mission.

One day when the Senior couples: Beckstrands and the Andersons and the Pankratz came to help us, I had no choice but to drive the sisters someplace while the brothers were doing something else. I took a deep breath and said, “Okay, Heavenly Father, if this is what I have to do, will you send an angel to drive with me so I can drive with the right rules and that I will not get lost.”

He answered my prayer. He always answers my prayers. Only sometimes I don’t get the answer instantly. Sometimes I have to wait a long long time, even years before my prayer is answered. This time He answered it immediately. I was so grateful!

Have you ever had a prayer answered right after you prayed?

Omas Pages #16, October 15, 2011

Oma’s Pages #16

To add to the problems we had with the apartment, it was for sale. The owners of the apartment had decorated it so it would show well to people who might want to buy it.

We were not allowed to change any of the pictures on the walls, or move any of the decorations. This made us feel like we were living in a hotel or somebody else’s house. It was very difficult to feel like we were where we were supposed to be.

The sales people would bring customers by without telling us. This made it so that we had to take our computers with us everywhere we went. And we could never leave laundry hanging out or any kind of mess. It was very difficult because we had so many things to do and places to go that keeping everything like a “show house” took every spare minute we had.

Another problem was that the floor was very dark so it showed every piece of lint, or dust, or dirt. I had to sweep and wash the floor sometimes twice a day.

The Senior couple the Anderson’s did bring us a bed and took the bunk beds away. This helped us a lot. But it made our very tiny bedroom even smaller because the bed took up so much room.

In order to get dressed at the same time, Opa would have to take something out of the closet and then step two steps to one side. Then I would take something out of the closet and steps two steps to the other side. It was like getting ready to go anyplace was a very strange way of dancing.

Oma's Pages #15, October 12, 2011

Oma’s Pages #15

And then there was the shower.... Oh my!

The shower room was attached to the back of this small apartment and had been added on at some later point so it had walls on three sides with no insulation to keep the room warm. The only source of heat for the room was a towel rack that heated up.

The washing machine was also in this room. And there was a drying rack. There was no dryer and sometimes it was so cold in the apartment that it took two days for the clothes to fully dry.

The shower was so cold that when you stood in it you could feel the cold travel from the bottoms of your feet up through your entire body.

When your shower was over you and you dried yourself off, you could see the steam rise from your body and you could see your breath.

Part of the problem was that we arrived in the coldest part of the winter. In Utah we have a very dry atmosphere so the cold is a dry cold or the heat is a dry heat. Here in Holland there is a lot of moisture in the air so the cold and hot have a lot of moisture in them. The moisture makes it colder or hotter depending on the temperature. So since it was very cold when we arrived, the air made it even colder. 

Opa and I were not used to this kind of cold so sometimes we had to climb into our beds and wrap up in our duvets (like comforters) in order to get warm.

Also our thermostat for the whole apartment only worked part of the time. It had some kind of timer that was not working right so at random times it would shut off the heat.

It was very nice when we had to cook things because the added heat from the stove helped to warm up the apartment.

One picture shows me sitting next to the radiator (the way the apartment is heated is with a metal coiled radiator against the walls) reading my scriptures early in the morning. It was the only place I could find any warmth.

Oma's Pages #14, October 9, 2011

Oma’s Pages #14

This apartment was the tiniest apartment I have seen for a long long time. The kitchen was so small that only one person could work in there at a time. The picture of it makes it look bigger than it was. It was so small that if you opened the refrigerator your back would sometimes touch the sink behind you.

If we baked something I had to set whatever I baked in the middle of the living room floor to cool because there was no place to set it in the kitchen.

We did not have a kitchen table. If we had a kitchen table we would have no place to put it because the apartment was so small.

Another Senior Couple, the Andersons, brought us an old folding wooden tv table to use as our kitchen table.

Oma's Pages #13

Oma’s Pages #13

At last we arrived at our apartment. We were very surprised. We had been told we would have a place to live with at least two bedrooms so that we could have people stay at our place.

Not only did we not have two bedrooms, we had to sleep in bunk beds. Opa was a true gentleman. He chose to climb up on the top bunk. The bottom bunk only had a child’s size mattress on it, so if I rolled over in the night, I fell off of the mattress onto the wood part of the bed.