Oma's Pages #21

Oma’s Pages #21

And then there was the door to the apartment. There was not any door nob like we have at home.

On the outside of the door it looks like a regular door nob but it does not turn. It is just a handle to hold onto. Below the door nob is where you put your key, hold the door nob, pull back and turn the key.... most of the time it worked. Occasionally Opa’s key would not work so then I would take my key and take a turn at opening it. I had to turn it all the way around until I felt it click. 

It reminded me of the old post office in Garland when I was growing up. I could barely reach the Buchanan post box. I remember turning the nob until I heard it click and then I could turn the small nob to open it. That is the way my door in Holland opened.

Just below the door nob was our mail post slot. We could receive anything that would fit through the slot. If it was bigger a man would come to our door. If we were not home, he would leave us a message and we had to go to a store that had a mail desk to get our package. 

On the inside of the door there was no door nob at all. Instead of a door nob there was a sideways latch with a pull string on it. You can actually lock yourself into your house from the inside. We know of mothers who lock their children in their house when they leave so the children do not go outside where it is not safe. Things are a lot different here than at home.

Oma's Pages #20

Oma’s Pages #20

The garbage was another interesting adventure. Some people in Groningen can put out garbage cans like we do in Utah, but mostly that is something only for businesses. The rest of the people have to take their garbage to a garbage location. There is usually one somewhere on the street close to where you live.

When we first arrived at Albertine Agnesstraat there was garbage in the kitchen garbage can so I asked a man who was helping us how to get rid of the garbage. He looked around a bit and then said, “Just bag it up and put it in the shed behind your apartment and forget about it.”

At the Church you have to walk down the street about a block, then turn the corner and walk halfway up another street to get to the garbage place.

As you can see in the picture, the garbage place thingy is closed and you cannot get into it unless you have a pass card.

Part of your expenses for living in a city is to have one of the pass cards so you can get rid of your garbage. But even that is not exactly correct. Here in Groningen you cannot put anything that is glass in the garbage. If you get caught putting glass in the garbage you will be fined 65 euros which is $92.00 in US money. You have to take your glass to a glass garbage place. You can find a glass garbage place near by some of the grocery stores or shopping centers. At the glass garbage place you have to sort your glass by green, brown, or clear glass and put your glass in the appropriate slot.

Your city garbage pass allows you to put garbage in the containers 200 times in one year. This is about twice a week. You can only put one large bag in the container at a time. All of this is very different from how it is in the USA.

Do you help do the garbage at your house? What do you do to help?

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.