23-29 July 2011

Last Saturday we went to Enkhuisen, an outdoor museum that is a re-creation of a Dutch village, vintage 1890-1932. The buildings were dismantled in other parts of the Netherlands and rebuilt in Enkhuisen, a town on the Isselmeer. We went with the Beckstrands, another senior couple from our mission.

There were several of these old sailing vessels from quite small to medium sized. this one has been restored and is beautiful.

They've attempted to make this like a working village with a net maker, blacksmith, lime kiln, tannery, laundry and all kinds of shops. Here the eel nets are hung to dry.

The setting is quite beautiful and picturesque on the water.

As we walked through the village, we stopped in one house and the gentleman there explained that the Dutch noticed that flies didn't like the lavender flower and so they created a paint the same color as lavender and painted much of the insides of their houses (especially the kitchen) in this blue, to repel flies.

The Dutch love their sweets. So, of course, there's a candy shop.

This is a dining room. I thought the stove was unique.

A mobile knife and scissor sharpening cart. The grinding wheels are turned by pushing on the foot pedal.

This is the fire department pump wagon. The capacity of the water tank is quite small, so a very active water brigade would be required to carry water to the pump. Of course, water is something that's not in short supply in the Netherlands.

A pretty little setting as we walked through the village.

A cute little house with two old bikes.

This is a little hard to see, but this is a dike. On the left is the water being held back and on the right you can kind of see how much lower the land is on the dry side of the dike.

Every Dutch village needs at least one wind mill. This mill raises water about three feet.

The cheese shop. All this is real cheese. We also experienced eating ice cream made from sheep's milk and smoked herring, smoked in a little backyard smoker made from a 55 gallon barrel.

This house has a roof that is a combination of both tile and thatch. The thatch is made from tightly wrapped local reeds and has a life span of about 50 years.

This is Lil, and her daughter, Kim. They are members of our little branch and their family invited us to dinner last Sunday at their house along with the 3 elders. She's a really good cook and we had a really nice time.

This past week, I had to make a quick one day trip to Frankfurt with one of our elders. This is in front of the Frankfurt train station. It's about 5-5 1/2 hours to Frankfurt from Leiden.

This is a walking area in the middle of the original old part of the city. This area is all little restaurants with the walkway through the middle. We grabbed a great German Bratwurst here, for lunch.

One day we went out to Gouderak, a cute little town with a blue and white porcelain factory where we bought some things to take home. On the way home we ended up taking this little ferry - backing the car onto it and then crossing it. This is a picture of the canal as we were riding it across to the other side.

Zone conference time! We attended both of them this week as we needed to help. These are all the sisters in two zones with Sis Brubaker and I.

Loel had to give out fire extinguishers to each apartment and explain how to use them as he is doing here.

Here's our two zones at the end of the conference.

The second day we got to go back to our old Antwerpen Chapel. This is Sister Herring again, a new missionary from my old area in California - she's doing great and has a wonderful trainer in Sister Garvin, who goes home next month.

Here's a picture of the other half of the mission on the 2nd Zone Conference day. The young man sitting in the front holding a big white envelope, is our good friend, Andy Thomas, and he's holding his mission call! We saw him get baptized last August and now he's going on a mission! He waited 2 days to open his call so we could be there. Then the President asked him to speak in Zone Conference and so he opened it at the end of the meeting.

This is right before he opened it - all the missionaries were so excited to see where he would be serving! He's going to the England Manchester Mission! He kept saying, "My joy is full." He is such an inspiration to all of us. He calls of his "parents in the church," and we feel like he's one of our kids.

Here we are at the end of the day - Joseph is the member who introduced Andy to the gospel. Andy is holding up a picture of his friends and the missionaries after playing soccer. An interesting thing about Andy, is his soccer game is good enough he was invited to try out for a professional team in Spain. He decided a mission would be better for him.
Unexpectedly, Pres Brubaker invited Loel and I to share a departing testimony as this is our last zone conference before we leave in October. We were completely surprised as we figured we'd be doing this at our zone training day in September. We both just cried a lot as it was such an emotional day with Andy Thomas there ready to open his mission call. It doesn't feel like it's time to go home as it isn't yet!
We spent all day Saturday helping to move 4 elders from one apartment to a new one in Amsterdam with 3 other senior couples helping out. The elders are always appreciative and do all the heavy lifting of furniture, etc, getting it up the narrow staircase to the 2nd floor. The Saldens have worked so hard to fix up this new apartment and it is a considerable improvement over their old one.