Let's Celebrate!

                We had some great celebrations in April.  The Dutch get a national holiday every year on the King’s birthday!  It’s called Koningsdag (literally Kings day).  It is marked by the king visiting some town in the Netherlands.  This year it was Tilburg.  Everyone also gets the day off and most amazing is that it is somewhat of a national flea market day!  Every city center from the smallest to the largest blocks off streets and everyone can come sell whatever they want.  We went to Utrecht.

The missionaries were encouraged to put up a booth and offer free church literature as they try to make as many contacts as possible.    It began for us by hauling a church table from Gouda to our house.  We couldn’t quite fit it in our car (oh, how many times I have wanted our Expedition!) but managed to almost get the back door closed. (Joe’s knees were touching the dashboard and the “door open” alarm beeped the entire 40-minute drive home!).   The next morning Jason, the most helpful member of the church in Holland, who also is the only member we know with a full-sized van, picked up all our equipment and drove us to Utrecht.  We parked as close as we could and hauled the table, chairs, signs, books, etc. 4 blocks to our spot.     

Elder Hoornweg, our only Dutch missionary, suggested we put “gratis” on our sign since the Dutch people love a free deal (doesn’t everyone?!), and we added “families can be together forever”. 

                                                                     

This is our finished booth and our district, ready and waiting for potential investigators!   I happened to see these “Holland” t-shirts in the national color of orange for $1.25 so I splurged and got one for each of us.  They are a mighty fine looking group!   

They played music and talked to everyone! 

 Joe got a wonderful opportunity to share the Book of Mormon with some interested young adults.  He was amazing!

We had several miracles.  First was my neighbor Ineka. We talked about the holiday and what we were going to do. She was worried about us being in the crowd and being there all day.  We got up the morning before the holiday to find 2 very light weight, folding aluminum chairs leaning on our front door for us to use!  They were such a blessing!  The woman in the booth next to us looked so tired by 2 PM that we shared a chair with her for a while : ).  

The second miracle was an older man who stopped toward the end of the day.  He had lost his wife and 2 daughters.  He was lonely and our message that families can be together forever caught his eye.  He talked with the missionaries for nearly ½ hour.  We pray that he will be open to the message of the restored gospel.  The missionaries gave away 80-85 copies of the Book of Mormon.  It was a wonderful day of work, people, and amazing missionaries!  (and yes, our car alarm beeped the whole 40 minutes back to Gouda with the table!)