Sep 4-10, 2022

 SUNDAY

Another week with several new people at church. Travis and Heather Lybbert are from Davis, CA. They will be here for 6 months while he is on sabbatical leave from UCD. Their two kids are on missions, a daughter in France and a son in Argentina. We are excited to have them in our ward!

Tatiana is another refugee from Ukraine. She has fled the country but is anxious to get back to her homeland. She teaches at a university and can teach online right now. Her husband is still in Kiev, not in the military, but some sort of support role for the military. I hope she will return to church next week. It is heart-wrenching to see these refugees uprooted from their homes.

Taylor Booth plays soccer for FC Utrecht. He is from Eden, UT and has been playing for Bayern Munich for the past four years, since he was 16 years old. He signed with FC Utrecht a couple months ago. So of course we will need to go and watch him play! His cousin, Luke is here for a few months. He is a college student but is doing a semester online. He is already interested in getting involved with the JoVo's for activities. 

Marcia, Luke, Taylor, Doug

MONDAY

The office is always busy on Mondays. The APs, Social Media District, Office Elders, VandeWal's and us are all there. The Monday Mission Zoom call added a new feature today! For the past several weeks, it has been mostly Dutch but starting today Elders Hanks and van der Put translated to English in real-time. It was so good for me! I know the missionaries want to mostly be participating in Dutch to help their language skills, but maybe there are a few new ones that this might help as well.

TUESDAY

Preparing food for Zone Conferences takes time! Norma and I went to Sligro (our Costco-like store) in the morning. We were back to the office by 11:15 and began to cook and chop. Doug and Gerrit were also chopping. 3 1/2 hours later we finally finished and tried to fit it all into the two small refrigerators at the office. But to no avail. We ended up taking a lot of the food to our homes to refrigerate overnight. Feeding 150 people is no small task and with the smaller sized appliances it limits us on what we can serve. But we have fun doing it and the VandeWal's are good to work with. It's worth it all when we see how much the missionaries appreciate the good food!

WEDNESDAY and THURSDAY

Zone Conference in Antwerpen. It is about an hour and a half drive from Gouda to Antwerpen so we get an early start. Each Zone Conference begins with 'surprise talks'. About two weeks prior, everyone is given the topic, this time it was 'How can the principles of sacrifice, like fasting and prayer, align our will with the will of the Lord? (scripture references: Alma 66, Helaman 3:35, DC 68:35). At the beginning of ZC, two missionaries are called upon to give their talks in Dutch. It really is a good way to accomplish many things whether or not they are asked to actually speak.. They are studying a topic in depth enough to give a five minute talk about it and translating it to Dutch writing everything out. I was in the kitchen doing the early prep for lunch during the first talk, but was able to hear Elder Hoopes give the second talk. Thanks to the translators, I understood the entire talk. 

Elder Hoopes talked about his love of music and how when he started his mission he went through his playlist and deleted anything he thought was not missionary-friendly. As time went on, he thought he should delete a few more and wondered what it should be. Even though the music was good, it was a question he had. One day as he was pondering it again, the impression came to him to just delete it all. "Delete alles" kept coming to his mind. He argued to himself that he had some very spiritual music and why should he eliminate it all. But the phrase "delete alles" continued to press his mind. So he deleted all his music. Then, one by one he added only very uplifting, spiritual music especially the Tabernacle Choir back to his playlist.

He went on to talk about fasting and how it is a way to overcome the natural man. Our spirit can be stronger than our body and this 24 hour period of fasting from food is a tangible way to see it. But we can fast everyday! We can fast from music, food, Social Media, English, bad habits, etc. Thought it was a great way to overcome the natural man and we can do it one 24-hour period at a time.

Sister Watson spoke about being 'True Blue, through and through'. Being true blue is being extremely loyal having having integrity. We should be true to ourselves (as a son or daughter of God), true to others (do what you say you will do) and true to God (practice what you preach and keep the covenants you have made)

President Watson invited us to study thoroughly and carefully The Living Christ and to remember that 'as a man thinketh, so is he'. He also reminded the missionaries there are safeguards in place especially for use of technology  that can and will protect them if they will be diligent in heeding the safeguards. He referred back to last ZC when he asked the missionaries to follow President Nelson's counsel to identify the debris  in our lives and get rid of it in order to be more worthy and feel the power of God.

Doug explained the changes we will make as a mission for collecting money for traffic tickets. He talked about car and bike inspections and likened that to our daily personal inspection and evaluation. He referred to Sister Craven's conference talk Careful vs Casual, Alma 5 and concluded with President Nelson reading the temple recommend questions and asked the missionaries to imagine the prophet giving them an interview for a recommend.  

The Elders and Sisters were divided into their Zones to practice some teaching and finding skills using role play as they did last ZC. I enjoy wandering around watching and listening to them and capturing a few of them in a picture.

Elder Jarrich Grey

Sister Elizabeth Anderson

Sister Karissa Ashdown

Elder Adam Kujanpaa

FRIDAY

We drove to Amsterdam and met up with Jon, Carol Jean, Joyce and Clark! Carol Jean and Jon are extending their tour and Joyce and Clark came early for their vacation and we all met for a day and a half. We are so grateful for them for making the time to spend a day with us. We visited the Rijksmuseum, got some lunch and then walked to the Van Gogh Museum. During a downpour we drove to the Pannenkoekenboderij for dinner.

SATURDAY

We picked up the Baron's and Bishop's from the Hotel Alexander in Amsterdam and spent a few hours at Zaanse Schans before getting them to the airport. What a delightful visit with these wonderful people!

It had been a very busy (and exhausting) week. After getting home, getting groceries and doing a few chores around the house, we planned to just go to bed early. But about 20:30 Doug got a call from two of our Sister Missionaries. They had run over something on the freeway and had a flat tire. They were safely on the side of the freeway somewhere between Utrecht and Amersfoort. Unfortunately, there are no spare tires in some newer cars and this is the case with theirs. After trying to call some tow companies, Doug had them call the police and report it. The dispatcher said she would send someone. 

In the meantime, Doug walked to the office, got the key to the Office Elders car that is parked at our apartment for the weekend, and we headed out. The Sisters had given us the coordinates of where they were and we felt confident we could find them. But when the directions took us off the freeway and into the center of Zeist, we began to wonder. After putting in the coordinates again, the Maps app gave us another 3 km to the destination. When we arrived there, we were on a side street with a line of trees between us and the freeway. We attempted to find an onramp by just looking at the map on our phone, ended up across the freeway and actually down a bike path! 

At that point, we decided we needed a prayer!

From there we were able to follow the map, get on the freeway and finally get to the Sisters. By now it was about 23:00. Interestingly, the tow truck arrived less than a minute after us. We were so grateful that we got there first and were able to have the Sisters ride in our car rather than with the tow truck driver. He loaded the car and took it to a parking lot just off the freeway. Apparently, this is how it is done in The Netherlands. Part of the quarterly car tax is used for roadside assistance such as this. 

We drove the Sisters on to Apeldorn to their apartment and headed back home, arriving about 1:30. There is still a mission car that we need to take care of, but the Sisters are safe.

What an eventful end to a wonderful week. I feel so blessed to be having these experiences day after day!