19-25 February 2011

Here's a windmill I snapped a picture of out our front car window as we drove past it on our way from the North Sea coast to where our new apartment is - I thought it was cute, that right by the side of the road, here's a windmill. That's the Netherlands for you.

Last Saturday we drove 2.5 hrs up north to the town of Deventer for a senior couples lunch and meeting. Afterward several couples wandered down into the center of town where a market was set up. Here I'm holding a bag of split peas I found for a very good price. They're kind of hard to find in regular stores around here.

This man is making stroopwafels
which are a favorite in the Netherlands. He has hot caramel that he's putting in between two waffles.

This is the booth with the stroopwafels - our new couple, the Evertons are on the far right with me and Sister van Komen next to them.

Here we are, stroopwafels in hand. I got mine dipped partially in chocolate.

You can't really see this bag of fruit that Elder Everton bought at one of the stands, but it was very colorful with a whole variety of fruit in it.

Here we all are. This was all the senior couples in the mission at the time, plus the Brubakers and the Noots, one of the counselors in the mission presidency. We had a wonderful pot luck lunch and a nice meeting, mainly about the Young Adult Outreach Centers that most of these couples are involved with. Since this meeting, the Saldens, another couple, have returned to serve a second mission here, so we now have 8 couples. On April 1st, another one arrives and we'll have 9 couples in our mission. That is really pretty amazing.

This was our second trip to Deventer. We love the little town and the beautiful huge apartment where the Hofmans live and operate their young adult center out of downstairs. I think all the other senior couples were impressed with their space.

On Sunday we had a neat experience watching one of our new African members bless the Sacrament. He's probably in his 40's and was very nervous. Elder Matthews, one of our Assistants, stood right next to him at the Sacrament table and was his example and support. It was very touching to see this young 20 year old missionary helping a man twice his age, yet the African man was so humble and sweet and wanting to be involved in using his new priesthood.

I've been busy working on the Donny Osmond firesides, which will be happening in mid-April. Donny's son is in our mission and Donny has a tradition of coming to his son's missions and doing these missionaries firesides where he discusses his beliefs, shares his testimony and sings a couple of songs. He's bringing his entire family - all of his children, their spouses, and the grandkids, so they'll sing a couple of songs as a family. I'm working on a committee getting press releases ready, articles for the Dutch and Belgium websites, announcements for the bishops to make, and posters made to put in chapels. This is a total missionary effort. The ticket to get in is to bring a non-LDS person with you. We'll be holding 3 of these firesides on three consecutive nights. It should be really fun.