January seemed to fly by in a blur of activity

January 2017 began with a lovely breakfast with the other senior couples at the home of Beryl and Buddy Gout.  We rushed out with the Olivers to attend church in Leeuwarden.  We were also accompanied by President and Sister Bunnell.  This was quite an enhancement to our little Leeuwarden branch.  Bonnie and Sister Oliver sang a lovely duet and I was one of nine speakers since we had been informed by the Stake Presidency that sacrament meeting should last for 90 minutes that day.  It kind of reminded us of the old days of 90 minute sacrament meetings.

On Tuesday, January 3 we had our regular district class and then took the elders from Leeuwarden to visit a recently baptized member.  This is about a 90 minute drive from our home.  We took the elders to an appointment in Leeuwarden and then made a home teaching visit.  After a quick stop to eat and shop, we headed to branch council in Drachten.  The council consisted of the branch president and his wife (the Relief Society President) and us.  Despite the small numbers, it was a successful council meeting.

On Thursday, the district blitzed the Leeuwarden area to contact media referrals.  They are people who had requested a DVD through the Facebook media campaign the church conducted here.  We were assigned to visit seven referrals along with two of the sisters from Groningen.  Six of the seven were home and one agreed to more contact from the missionaries.  Since we were already in the area, we stopped at the monument commemorating the first LDS baptisms in the Netherlands (1 October 1861) and the famous Scherjon Klompen factory.  The sisters seemed to enjoy the work.  Miraculously, a lost phone was found and we arranged to meet a kind lady who had found it.  The sisters also placed a Book of Mormon with her.

On Friday, January 6, we returned a violin that the violin maker in town had loaned us to use for the various Christmas programs we did over the holidays.  He refused to accept any money for the rental and he had given us a fairly expensive violin to us.  He was a warm and gracious man.  I suspect we will have to return with a plate of cookies.

Friday evening we drove down to Breda for the wedding reception for Carsten De Wilde and Aubrey Robbins.  Sister Robbins had served in our Turnhout district when we were in Belgium and we worked closely with the De Wildes in the Antwerp Stake.  This great young couple will be living in Leeuwarden and he will be working for President Brandenburg.  They will be a great strength to the branch.

Friday night we got our first major snowfall.  We awoke to the ground and the shallow canals covered with snow.  It is supposed to warm up and rain later today, so it won't last long.  This is a big difference from our first missions where the canals froze enough that the Dutch could skate between cities.  It has been 20 years since that has happened.  I guess the deep freeze has moved to the US.

On Saturday, Bonnie finally finished the complicated jigsaw puzzle she had been working on (with sporadic help from others) since her birthday on October 18.  I am not certain she will work it again.   We have also seen quite a few river cruise ships from our apartment window.  I think they have been in town for a large tourist expo running in the Martinihall - the local convention center.  Everything in Groningen is named for St. Martin.

The following week we had our regular schedule of Family Home Evening on Monday night, District Class on Tuesday Morning and Institute on Thursday evening.  On Thursday morning, January 12, we drove to Leiden to meet with the former temple president, Chris Kleiweg and President Bunnell about public relations activities.  President Bunnell graciously took us out to lunch after the meeting.  We also stopped by the mission office to collect eight new fire extinguishers for missionary apartments.  The old ones had expired in the summer.  We had to rush back to Groningen so that Bonnie could finish cooking dinner for institute that evening.

The week of January 15, we attended Church in Groningen and then took three of our young single adults to the fireside and sacrament meeting in Gouda.  It was well attended and it is always fun to see the young people from throughout the mission.  We also hold a meeting for the senior couples at that time.

Fi-Yen Mo, Amber Dallinga and Yenny Mo

The senior sisters with tacos for the Gouda Young Single Adult Dinner
Sister Christensen, Caldwell, Goebels, and Fletcher.  Sister Christensen did most of the work.

On Tuesday, January 17, we attended the zone conference in Zwolle.  Bonnie had to do the cooking by herself since Sister Hill had to make an emergency trip to the US to care for her daughter.  Sister Christensen generously volunteered to assist and they provided the rice for the stroganoff.  Bonnie had to teach a class on sewing and I had to do a presentation on "crucial conversations".  We had to rush back after the class to attend our branch council meeting that evening.

Bonnie had to cook for the Institute class on Thursday, the 18th.  We were blessed to attend a baptism of a great young couple on Saturday, the 20th.  They were the ultimate golden investigators.  Immediately after the baptism, we drove to Apeldoorn to attend a fireside presented by Savanah Stevenson.  She is a London West End actress who starred in Wicked for about three years.  She also played Mary in the Bible videos produced by the Church.

The fireside was very spiritual and she also sang three beautiful songs.  We had two of our Young Single Adult sisters with us and also an investigator.  The investigator certainly was influenced by the fireside and it moved his interest forward considerably.

Bert and Coby Koekkoek

Sisters Lucero, Maughan and Mercer with the Koekkoeks

Lots of Sister missionaries were involved in this story

The fireside in Apeldoorn with Savanah Stevenson

On Sunday, January 22, we drove Fi-Yen and Yenny Mo to Leeuwarden so that they could speak in sacrament meeting.  These two amazing young ladies joined the Church last June.  They are most recently from St. Martin, but were born in China.  They have a deep spiritual understanding of the gospel and are both great missionaries.  As we arrived in Leeuwarden, we discovered that the city had changed the parking regulations so that there is now paid parking from 12:00 noon on.  This is a product of more stores opening on Sunday afternoon.  Because it was unexpected, we cancelled Sunday School and just held Priesthood and Relief Society.  That evening we were treated to a delicious dinner at the De Jonges and the Mo sisters enjoyed the fire.

Yenny Mo, Carston and Aubrey De Wilde and Fi-Yen Mo

On Monday, January 23, we drove about an hour south to Zwolle to participate in a zone activity.  It was very low key where the missionaries played games for a couple of hours.  Bonnie rehearsed the missionaries in preparation for stake conference next month, where they have been asked to sing a 15 minute prelude.  They did surprisingly well.

Rehearsing for stake conference 

Experimenting with hair cutting

Playing werewolf

In the evening we held a very successful family home evening with 15 in attendance.  It was also Yenny Mo's 20th birthday.

On Tuesday, we drove back to Leeuwarden to do some home teaching.  Our regular district class was moved to Wednesday because there was a world wide missionary broadcast scheduled for 6:00 PM our time (10:00 AM in Utah).  Changes in the missionary schedule and key indicators were announced and were received with enthusiasm by the missionaries in our district.

On Thursday, we attended Institute where I was assigned to teach the lesson.  It seemed to be well received and there was a lot of deep discussion.  The lesson was on the pre-mortal life of the Saviour.

Friday evening we had the first ever young married activity in the Groningen Ward.  Bonnie made a delicious dinner enjoyed by everyone and then we watched Napoleon Dynamite together.  Our version included Dutch subtitles so that everyone could enjoy the inane dialog.  We had an enjoyable evening and will try to make this a monthly tradition.

On Sunday, we had an enjoyable sacrament meeting with Carsten and Aubrey De Wilde being the speakers.  They are certainly a wonderful addition to the Leeuwarden Branch.  We were also accompanied on our trip to Leeuwarden by Jan Weening and his wife so that they could present a two hour session on Family History.  Jan served a building mission when I was here on my first mission 49 years ago and they are great friends.  It made the trip much more enjoyable to have their company.

On Monday, January 30 we drove Elders Meister and Gleave to the Scherjon Klompen factory in Friesland (near Leeuwarden).  This is a pilgrimage site for missionaries serving here in the north.  The wooden shoes are made from willow instead of poplar and are much more durable.  This is one of the oldest factories in the country and is still family run after about 180 years.  It is certainly not focused on tourists from outside of the country.  We held family home evening that night and had a nice lesson on prayer.

Elder Meister

Elder Gleave

On Tuesday, we held our district class in the afternoon so that President and Sister Bunnell could conduct their regular interviews during that time.  We finished off the day with a late night drive to Leeuwarden for a Branch Council meeting.  Some of these days get to be pretty long for old folks, but we are grateful to still be up to it (barely).

Finally, here are a couple of pictures from Facebook showing how creative the Dutch are in their use of bicycles.  We have seen a mother on a bicycle with five children being taken along.  It is an unusual minivan system.

Thus ends the 20th month of our mission.  It seems like we blink and another month has flown by.  It will certainly be difficult to leave the Netherlands and Belgium in three short months.