I just spoke to a friend in Anwerp and she filled me in on some of the happenings in our old ward there. Shilpa is still coming to church which is good. She sent Shlok to India to spend the summer with his grandparents and his uncle's family and he loves it there. He told her that he does not want to come back home. Shilpa seems to be O.K. with that. It really may be better for him after all.
The Antwerpen ward misses us but are doing very well with the couple that replaced us. They are from Toelle, Brother Pancratz served a mission in the Netherlands and Sister Pancratz is learning the language very quickly. The ward loves them already. Before long they probably won't even remember us.
Here in Leeuwarden everything is going well. We had a fantastic fast and testimony meeting Sunday. There was only a handful of people there but the spirit was great. The meeting even went over for half an hour until everyone who wanted to had a chance to get up. One new member even got up two times because he had forgotten to testify about something. His name is Mohamed (Mussad)Ahmed from Egypt and he has been in the Netherlands for about 12 years, and a member for two years. He is very hard to understand. He almost sounds like he has a German accent with a little bit of something else tossed in. We really have to listen closely to try and understand him. We are not alone because the members seem to have the same problem. He makes a lot of comments during Sunday School and we can only understand about every 5th word or so. Darn this tower of Babel.
We went to Dinner again with the Steinvoorte family last night. Their son will be coming home from serving his mission in Greece in two weeks and they can hardly wait. Brother Steinvoorte does not have much energy because of the cancer treatments but they insist on having us come anyway.
Tomorrow we will be meeting with the Oppermans again. They live about 45 minutes away and are a fantastic couple who served a mission in Russia and we love hearing all their stories. He has been Bishop three times in Amsterdam and are now living in this small village that would be just the perfect place for a summer home with a small canal running along their back yard. Their children now live in the U.S. and Canada and they really miss them, so they love company. I have attached pictures of Brother and Sister Opperman and their back yard.
We have a young mother with three children who we will be visiting every week. Her name is Slivka and she does not have much contact with the three fathers of her children and is having a difficult time on her own. The 6 year old boy Safi and the nine year old girl Lian are pretty active kids and are really a handful. Jeffery who is 13 has had some major trouble with the police and is now involved with a soccer team six nights a week which keeps him off the streets. I hope we can help her with some homemaking and parenting skills, which she really really needs and perhaps help her get out of her rut. She is very willing to learn but I just hope we have the energy to tackle the job. We will be having Family Home Evenings with them every week and hopefully we can become better friends. She was baptized when she was young and sort of let go of the Iron Rod as the Branch President calls it. She has found the rod again and is trying hard to hold on this time. We really have our work cut out for us.
1 comment:
Thanks for the update. My favorite about the pictures is seeing how the "Dutch" live. I love how the umbrella was held up in the table by a screwdriver tied onto it. That's just the kind of "fix it" work I grew up with. Guess it was from my Dutch heritage all along. Made me laugh. I love it!
Post a Comment