APRIL 28

Title: Fields of Stripes

 

It's tulip season! Have I already talked about the tulips? Who cares! Who can say too much of tulips when they live in the Netherlands? WE GET TO GO TO KEUKENHOFF TOMORROW! YAY TULIPS! it is so surreal how picturesque the tulips actually are. It's so beautiful. I hope there are windmills at Keukenhoff. I don't really know if Keukenhoff has two f's or one but hoff is better with two fs.

 

Springtime doesn't only mean tulips, however. Springtime also means KONINGDAG. That is to say, Kingsday. this weekend was the first Kingsday in a long time since it has been Queen's day for the past few years. But anyway--long live the king. It's the biggest party I have ever seen. Everyone is wearing orange and Nederland colors, there are a ton of people out on the street selling all of their old stuff like one giant garage sale (I found a guitar for 3 euros! and have gotten blisters on my fingers because of trying to get those callouses back--it is painful! but the really cool thing is that there is a chord chart in the back of the children's song book to help me remember all the chords. this guitar was probably an answer to my prayers about how to teach these families with children effectively. MUSIC. What a perfect answer.) We had a booth in the Groningen centrum area to give away copies of the Book of Mormon and talk to people. My thoughts about it at first were "oh here we go again."I thought of that day back when I was in Breda and we did a booth in this small town called Ramsdonksveer and NOBODY had ANY interest and they threw our cards on the ground and were not nice. But oh me of little faith, we gave out somewhere around 80 copies of the Book of Mormon and people were talking to us a lot and not that many people threw our cards on the ground and a lot of them were nice (unless they were drunk...). My companion and I went a little further away from the booth and gave out cards. I gave one to a young adult girl and about a minute lady she came back with about 6 of her friends and they were asking questions and were really interested. It was so cool to see that. Of course, there were other people who took copies of the Book of Mormon and ripped it up so there were pages in the streets, but there will be opposition in all things. I really liked Elder Holland's talk this past confrerence about the cost of discipleship. Why do we go on missions to have our most cherished beliefs spit upon and torn in to? Because the alternative is to have our house "left unto us desolate."

 

I was thinking--if this is the kind of celebration the dutch put on for their king--where is the celebration that we put on for ours? Where is our "King of King's day"? Where people are giving away their old bad habits and sins instead of their old useless junk in the closet and getting blessings instead of money for it--where people are proudly "showing their faith"like Elder Nelson directs and not "checking [their] religion at the door" which Holland strongly cautioned against--where instead of crowding and pushing, people are helping and loving and working together to build eachother up and LOVE. You could call that the Christmas season, but I still don't even see it then. But that's really something that has made me think--"how do I celebrate my King."

 

It has been one year now since the day I was sitting in the Stake President's office with my family and being set apart by priesthood power to a plane of higher living as a messenger of Christ. What a privilege it has been to be alive this past year. This week, I will celebrate the one year anniversary with my nametag.

 

xoxo

Zuster Hoff