Doug and Marcia Glauser, Senior Mission 2021-2023

  SUNDAY After church we were invited to go to lunch at Henk and Alja Schuur's home along with the VandeWal's. It was so delightful to get to know them a little better. She made some Indonesian food that was delicious! MONDAY This afternoon we took a little drive to Belgium. The VandeWal's had gathered blankets, clothes and other items from the mission storage unit and they needed to get to Belgium by Tuesday for distribution to the refugees from Ukraine. We thought some Elders were planning on taking them, they thought the VandeWal's would do it. In the end, we were caught up with our office things and offered to go. After meeting up with the Zone Leader's there and amazingly getting everything from the van into their small car... Elder Christiansen and Elder van der Put ....and as we were about to head home, I asked Doug if we could find a place to buy some Belgian Chocolates in Belgium for Norma's birthday tomorrow. He only hesitated for a minute...and then a...

  SUNDAY We are enjoying meeting with the Utrecht Ward. The people are kind and helpful. We are hoping to get our 'out of unit member' status figured out so we have access to Tools and can see the members and maybe get to know them better. MONDAY When we sold our car in Arizona we thought everything was taken care of. However, the Title was in the name of Marcia Stewart but I signed with my legal name of Marcia Glauser. We had checked with a notary there and he assured us all was fine. But we got an email from Ashley Goaslind to whom we had sold the car. They had had trouble registering the car because of this discrepancy. So today we found a Notary and walked to their office. Not knowing we should have made an appointment, they still were very courteous and quickly did the necessary paperwork. The three women who worked with us were so kind and accommodating. There are so many good people in this world! On the walk back to the office, we decided we'd get them a little Than...

  SUNDAY We spoke in church today...really just introduced ourselves and bore our testimonies. I had an interpreter in the beginning and then bore my simple, testimony (that I had written out beforehand) in Dutch. Doug spoke only in Dutch and did a wonderful job. In Relief Society, Annalise de Haas sat between Norma and I and interpreted throughout the lesson. That was very helpful. But even better was the teacher, Jannalyn, had her power point in Dutch, but read the slides in English. It was great! Jannalyn has been in Holland about 30 years. She moved here when she was about 40 with her Dutch husband. She speaks wonderful Dutch, but when she speaks English, it's easy to hear that she is native US. Her husband is atheist, but was there to support her and is very supportive of her beliefs and activity in the Church. MONDAY As we left the house to walk to the office, we saw how the trash is managed here. Our job is to open the chute with a card-reader and drop in...

  SUNDAY Elder Glauser was asked to bless the Sacrament today. His Dutch is coming along wonderfully. Next week we have both been asked to speak for a few minutes, so this week I'll need to try to put some thoughts together and translate them to Dutch. Almost everyone in the ward speaks English, so I know that's not a problem but I would like to at least bear my testimony in Dutch. Today was actually a very 'international' day at church. The VandeWal's (from Canada) spoke, English and Dutch. The next speaker was from Portugal and spoke Portuques with a Dutch translator. The final speaker was from England (has lived in The Netherlands for 30 years) and speaks Dutch with an English accent. He was the easiest for me to understand.  We met Sjoerd today. He is a YSA, known here as JoVo. He was asking with the Elders and we walked over to meet him. He is a server at an American Steak house and we could not resist setting up a time to come eat at his restaurant. So we arra...