Wind, an Inferno and a Doctor Tickles his Patient.........yeah. and a couple of pictures

Hello,

Yes, this week was temple conference. We had to split up into four different sessions, on two days. So yeah. It was in Dutch, and it was the old film, the new one is not available in Europe yet. After the temple, we have a zone conference. Yes, I sort of new the sisters we spent the night with.

No investigators came to church, and no, we did not get any new ones this week. Oh, I forgot to answer this question last week, I think, but the primary program isn't until next week, so not really sure how it goes here. Especially because there are like no primary kids in our small little branch. Maybe 5? With one that comes regularly. Don't know, I'm never in primary. Tender mercy.

We usually have to eat at our apartment, or take something with us for the day, but we hate doing that, so sometimes it's like skipping meals and such. But we have a regular dinner appointment on Saturday and Sunday.

Yesterday was Sister Rosenlof's birthday, so that was fun. The senior couple had us over for dinner at their house in Groningen, the Romigs, and they're new here, and they are super nice. And it was delicious. 

(From the mission blog)  Elder and Sister Romig will be serving in the Groningen JoVo Centrum and Member Support in Leeuwarden.  Elder Romig served as a young missionary in the Belgium Netherlands Mission and President and Elder Romig made the connection they had served together in Belgium  While President was Zone Leader in Belgium back in 1970, Elder Romig was a District Leader in Mechelen, Belgium.

It doesn't really look like fall anymore. In fact, I'm not even sure how to describe the weather today. Basically, it's like a hurricane outside. Not constant rain, but that kind of wind. That's not even  really an exaggeration. It's actually a miracle that we were even able to come email because the bus wasn't running earlier, and it's not safe to ride our bikes. We had to walk to the grocery store to do our shopping, and  coming back we were hit by a truck load of branches. There are trees in the road everywhere, and the water is flying up out of the canals. And the canal in our backyard? Yeah, you could surfing in that thing with all the waves. We were scared to take our elevator because it was shaking because of the terrible wind. Yeah, it's insane. Pretty sure God is punishing Leeuwarden, because last week there was that fire that destroyed a whole bunch of old buildings, and filled the city with smoke, and this week we get a wind storm. Actually you should look up the pictures for the fire, because that was an inferno.

(14 buildings were destroyed in a fire which began in a clothing store. Among the buildings destroyed was the birth place of Mata Hari.  One person, a 24 year old man, was killed in the fire.)

This week, Sister Rosenlof was finally approved to go the doctor, which was a relief. Anyway, so we had exchanges and temple conference this week, so we weren't able to go until Thursday. But we went, because we tried calling but the number wasn't working, so we went to the huisarts,(general practitioner) and socialized medicine is a joke by the way, because we had to go through all this red tape and then they tried to tell her that she cant be seen for a couple of weeks. And we are like you have got to be joking. But then, this is a miracle, the doctor came out and said that he had time to see her now. So she got right in. And it was a super weird appointment, and I'm still determined to never go to a dutch doctor, because once again, he didn't wash his hands before examing her. nasty. Anyway, he thinks something is wrong with her gallbladder, so we have to go the hospital on Wednesday morning for an ultrasound. early early in the morning. But hopefully they can figure out what's going on. Shes getting worse and worse. I feel really bad for her, I hope everything is okay, but she's a trooper.  Oh about this doctor, so he was pushing around sister rosenlof's abdomen, and then she laughs, and she;s like oh sorry, I'm ticklish. He then proceeded to tickle her. I'm not even kidding. For some reason this doctor thought it was appropriate to tickle his patient. It was so weird. But sister Rosenlof and I have been laughing about it all week. I don't think she felt too violated. Her name is on the temple prayer roll, I think. I put it there when we were there this week. And she has gotten blessings.

Oh, by the way, yes, she scares easily, but she has specifically told me not to scare her. She does not appreciate it, so I respect her wishes.

Oh, I got a package of Halloween candy and a card from Sister Walker, so that was super nice! :) I appreciated it a lot, and so does Sister Rosenlof, because I cant eat a box of candy by myself. Anyway it was very nice of her to do that. I still haven't gotten the envelope you said you sent a couple weeks ago? So I have no idea where that is.. weird.

I'm glad Grammie is home. That makes me happy. I hope she's doing okay. Do you know why I never hear from Grandma?

That is interesting about the thing about Noah's ark. Something to think about. (a story I shared with her about Visiting Teaching Sis. Walker)  Yes, It's been six months. A year from today is my release date. I think it seems sometimes like it has gone quickly, but other times it feels like I'm 100 years old, and I've been doing this forever.

The other day we were biking somewhere, and we heard some church bells start to play a song for the hour, and suddenly we were humming along and we are like how do we know this song? We then realized that it was "We wish you a merry Christmas". Christmas season is up and running here. The Christmas lights along the canals and in centrum are really pretty though.

I can't really think of too much else to say. All of our appointments fell through this week, so it was pretty slow. Hopefully this week isn't a repeat of the last.

Oh wait. A lot of people here ask for stories about how our parents met, and how long they dated and all that jazz. So I'm going to need some details about that. :)

Anyway I think that's all. This picture is me at the temple on Tuesday. 

Well, have a good week. Love you. Miss you.

Karoline

Stuff I borrowed from the Mission Blog

Karoline's mission President and his wife maintain a blog about the mission!  The link is below and also at the bottom of the page. I appreciate anything they share about the missionaries!  Sister Robinson always does such a great job taking pictures of EVE"RYONE so you know you'll get to see your missionary once in a while.  Last week she had posts about the day they worked over with Karoline and Sister Raun in Lelystad (back in August) a Zone Conference in September and last week's temple day.    All Credit to Sis. Robinson.

Day working with the Sisters

On August 27, 2013 President and I attended the District Meeting of Almere District.  Thank you Elder Stoddard for the great meeting.

That afternoon and evening we worked with the Sisters in Lelystad.  Sister Raun and Sister Western were great and we enjoyed our day.  It was great to work with you and meet some of the people you are teaching and working with help them feel the Spirit again.

 We had a great evening meal with a member of the Lelystad Ward.  Sister Perk was so great and we enjoyed our meal.  Thank you so very much!  Sister Perk asked the Sisters and President to share mission miracles with her.  We did and she was indeed impressed by how the Lord is blessing the missionaries.

 

Zr. Western, Zr. Raun, Zr. Perk and Pres. Robinson. 

 

Making friends at Zone Conference

 

Temple Day  10/22/13  (the temple is small and the missionary group is large so they did 2 sessions on Tuesday, 2 on Wednesday so that everyone could go and then had Zone meetings after their session.)

Den Haag Temple

Information and pictures from the internet.  Maybe more after tomorrow's visit.  The mission has a temple day twice a year; once in April and again in October.  I'm so happy she'll be able to attend three times. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhY3uftj8Ds

More Investigators, Sheep and Another Near Miss on Her Bike.

This picture is a picture of me and Sister Rosenlof, and to answer your question, she is from California, Ridgecrest. Speaking of companions, no, neither of us got transferred, and this week for district meeting, we had a newly wed game type thing, companion style, and we killed it. I mean no one else was even close to touching us. So yay. No, we never made it back to that little town, we did a lot more traveling this week out to more of the seaside towns. 

At one little town, there were a bunch of sheep on the walking path right along the ocean, and theres benches to sit on a long the way, and sister rosenlof and I looked over, and there was this one sheep using the bench to scratch its butt. It was so funny because it was going on for about ten minutes and sister rosenlof and I are just laughing so hard. Sister Rosenlof got a video, but it's too large to attach, so I will be excited to share that one day. Ha makes me laugh just thinking about it. 

                                                                 John 10:16

Oh, the lady from Siberia. She may or may not have been kidnapped by the Russian Mafia, and escaped before being taken over the Belgian border. I know. This was about a year ago. Anyway, I'm excited to meet with her. 

We are not still getting those large groups of missionaries, I think those will return when the summer time comes around again. Yes, we have doubled the size of the mission.

Tomorrow is temple conference, so Sister Rosenlof and I have to travel down to Den Haag tonight. Yay another three hours on the train.... 

                                            (The temple in den Haag is located in a park.)

At church yesterday, we had a visitor from a different ward, and he came up and said that he assumes I'm american because I'm a missionary, but he wanted me to know that had I not been wearing a missionary tag he would have thought that I was dutch, and that I look very european. It was super nice. That has been happening a lot lately, it's nice to not always have people assume you're american when you open your mouth. We also had to teach the sunday school lesson yesterday... ugh.

Have I told you about the old lady that we go sing for whenever we are in that part of friesland? Anyway, it was her birthday the other day, so her family asked us to come sing to her, so we stayed there for 30 minutes just flipping through the hynm book and singing whatever she wanted. She just turned 87. And shes confined to a bed, but she's sweet. 

Sister Rosenlof has been really sick, and I'm not sure what to do. We can;t stay inside all the time, and I know she's trying, I jsut don't know what to do.Basically, she's nauseous all the time, it used to be just when she ate, but it's been getting worse and wose to the point where she's basically trying to not give up. It's really sad.

We got two new investigators this week.  One of them we promptly gave to the Elders because he creeped me out a little, and he was also a little... uh, off. He said he would accept out book of mormon because we wouldnt come into his house. And then wouldnt let us pray because he was sure it would invite the devil. Anyway, he was the one who flagged us down and wanted us to go talk to him... but sister rosenlof and I will not be the ones going back.

The other day it was raining really hard, and we were on our way home, and we pass the guy on our bikes and we may or may not have almost killed eachother because the passing space was super small but anway, then he yells out "Sisters!"so we stop, and it turns out it's this former investigator, who moved, but just moved back to leeuwarden and wants us to  come meet with him again, so thats cool. Then we were teaching our investigator from Vietnam, and she had a friend over, who    also wants to meet with us again. yay.

Yesterday we sister rosenlof and I show up to the church at 9 to open it, and theres this lady standing out in front, and we're like hello? Anyway it turns out that she met the elders last week, and they invited her to come to church, and so she showed up. Theyve never taught her, she was merely a contact.Anyway she really liked it and is planning on coming back, so that's nice. 

Yesterday night we made halloween cards for the elders. We made jackolaterns that look like them. I myself thought it was pretty crafty. 

Hmmmm something interesting happened this week. So I 've been dreaming in dutch for a long time, probably since the first transfer or so, but the other day, I had a dream in Dutch, French, Russian and English. Which means all that french I learned before my mission, and the little bit of Russian I picked up before coming are still in there somewhere. That was pretty exciting.

That's about all for this week, I can't think of much else.

Hope all is well. Miss you. Love you.

Karoline

"Farmy", Trying to learn Russian, Great Mission Experiences.

This week Sister Rosenlof and I learned a little about our endurance. We spent three hours trying to bike out to this little tiny village called Westernijskerk or something like that. Anyway, it was starting to get super dark, and so we decided to head back. I don't know how to describe this experience besides, "farmy".  There are sooooo many farms, and basically sometimes bike paths will be through peoples fields, so you're biking and hearing all these cows, or there's corn around you, and there's no lights but the one on the front of your bike. It was very interesting, but we never made it out to the place because we ran out of time, so we will try again later. On our way home it also started to rain, so we were freezing when we finally made it back to the apartment. But anyway, I guess it's good to know that we can ride our bikes for so long now without getting sore. Also, I can't remember if I wrote about this last week or not, but there was this guy I was speaking too, who is an echt nederlander, and he thought I was Dutch. That's pretty much the nicest compliment you can get if you can fool a native. Especially because they are quick to point out your accent. Last week we also  bought these "American-style cookie mix", because we wanted cookies, but you can't really find the things here to make them. Like I've never seen baking soda, i have seen baking powder, but it's also expensive. And shortening, for a tiny little tub, get this, is almost 8 euros. Ridiculous. Anyway, these cookies, were clearly not real American cookies. They turned out to be more like muffins. So whatever. 

This week we also had our quarterly  interviews with President and Sister Robinson. President Robinson said he admired my work, and wasn't worried about me, and told me I had the keys to success here, so I suppose those things are compliments. :) They're cool people. They must have a very difficult job. 

We did a service project this week for some investigators the Elders have, which they want to give to us because they are two ladys. Anyway, we cleaned their house. It was..... interesting. We spent most of our time cleaning their only bathroom. Fun! But they're very nice, the  15 yr.old son even invited us to his birthday party. We couldnt go though, because we had something else. 

We did a couple area book look ups this week, trying to get some new people. One of them was in this really far away place by train, so then from the station we had to walk to his house, and it was pouring rain, but he let us in, so that was really nice. They're Africans, and speak swahili, dutch, and french. When we went in there, the wife wouldn't shake our hands, she had us shake her wrists. It was super weird/awkward. I've never had that experience with Africans before, so maybe she was just a germaphobe. Anyway, we taught this guy a lesson, but he is still stuck on the experience he had with the last missionaries, and will absolutely not be baptized again ever, and will not allow any of his family to do so either, even though his daughter is interested. Anyway so we won't be going back, but it was nice to get out of the rain. 

On saturday, we got to spend the majority of the day at a relief society activity. It was like this boutique thing. All the sisters brought all the stuff they didnt want anymore, set it up in like a store fashion, and then everyone swapped things. I got a couple little things, like an Aladdin lamp that was hand carved in India. Haha. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it's sitting on my desk acting as a book end. Anyway, free stuff is always fun, and then we got random things for the apartment, mainly because people kept shoving things at us, with the words "for the apartment"and we're like uh... okay. I can't remember what else I got... well, one person owns some kind of like cosmetic company/amazon rain forest product seller thingy. I don't know. Anyway, they gave out a whole bunch of stuff they collect, like hand made table clothes,  bags , journals, tea sets things like that. They're pretty interesting looking. 

We were served an interesting dinner at our weekly appointment on saturday too. It was a type of fish, that was definitely scaly and had its fins, and all the bones in it still. But it tasted good, actually. But the problem was that I had a migraine, so I didn't really want to eat or really do anything, and I was feeling queasy already, but I ate the fish and the dinner, and then it came to the lesson part, and I turn to sister Rosenlof and let her know I'm going to throw up, so she does the quickest member lesson ever, and gets us out of there. I was then sick the rest of the night. But it wasn't the foods fault, but I will probably associate it with that fish anyway. Actually, all the fish I've eaten/ been served here, has been really good. 

There is an inactive lady in our branch, who is from Russia. She was the first person to be baptized in Siberia. She's super awesome. Anyway I was talking to her, and she's going to teach us Russian. She made the appointment for us and everything. Actually, she said shes going to focus on teaching us to read it, because she feels like thats the most important thing in learning a language, and if I know how to read it then I can continue to learn it once I'm somewhere else. She doesn't speak English I dont think, so it will be learning Russian through Dutch, so that will be interesting. She's so nice though. She's been through a lot, and only doesn't come often because she lives super far away, and she has some other troubles at home and such. One day I'll tell you more about her, because she has an incredible story. Also she let us know that this mission is even much harder than Russia because at least the people in Russia are Christians, while people here dont believe in anything. So I thought that was interesting.  

On Monday, we officially dropped the investigator that has been here since this area opened. It was really sad, because he told us that he's not at peace with his decision, but he feels like his heart is just not leading him to the church. I mean what are you going to do? Tell them their heart is wrong? So we're giving him time to chill, but he said he still going to keep trying for a different answer. He's a really nice guy. All guys should be like him, he's chivalrous to the max. Anyway it was really cool experience, it's like one of those mission changing experiences I think. Like those ones you look back on and you can remember the feeling of the spirit. Like There I was, as he walked us to the bus stop and then waited with us, just testifying under this little bus stop light in the middle of this old village. It was cool. 

Other than that, we just have our one progressing investigator, the student from Vietnam who met the church there. She's reading the book of Mormon every day, but she's not coming to church yet because she's too busy with school stuff, so we're working on that. So we shall see. There are a couple others who arent really progressing yet, but that doesn't mean that they wont ever. 

Also, I was wondering if I could get some recipes please, like the one for sugar cookies, and chocolate chip cookies, and if you know substitutes for shortening and such, or if I can just use butter? And recipes for other things.... I dont know. Delicious things. :) 

Other than that, there's not much else. I hope Arizona is nice and warm, because it's freezing here :) Also, we were supposed to get transfer calls last night, and neither sister Rosenlof or I got one, so as far as we know we are both staying, but it's possible sister rosenlof can still get one sometime today, because they arent finished. I think that's all. Love you. have a good week.

Karoline