Church

Before coming to the Netherlands, I listened to a “Learn Dutch” audiobook. It didn’t have a ton of vocabulary, but one of the phrases it kept repeating was “de kerg straat”, meaning “the church street.”

I thought that phrase was a little odd to use when teaching a language. There aren’t that many “church streets” in the US. There certainly are here though! Even our little town with a population of 1,100 people has a beautiful large Catholic church with a gorgeous bell tower. It rings the time every hour and half hour, 24 hours a day. Luckily we’ve figured out how to sleep through the ones at night.

On Sunday we went to our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The closest one is in Breda, about 7km (4.3 miles) away.

We had heard that people in Europe weren’t very religious, so we weren’t expecting a very large congregation, but there were actually a lot of people there. We were even more amazed when people started apologizing for the kiwi attendance. Apparently a lot of families hadn’t come because (1) half of the roads in town were shut down because of the Tour de Spain bike race taking place in Breda that day and (2) it was still holidays, so a lot of people are on vacation.

Nonetheless, there were enough people at church that they had to open the overflow. We also heard that they are building a large new building because they are bursting at the seems most weeks. Before COVID they had over 200 people attending every week! Numbers have dropped a bit due to COVID, but attendance is still a lot higher than what we had in Massachusetts.

There was a lot of energy and excitement in the meeting. It was a real pleasure to be there.

One interesting thing is the degree of international diversity in the wars. Most people are Dutch, but there are also a large number of English, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers attending as well. We weren’t the only new family there. Another new family had just arrived from Portugal. They spoke Spanish and Portuguese, but not Dutch or English (although they could understand some Dutch).

So, we ended up with a fun bit of translation going on. Speaking Spanish, the mother of the family introduced their family. I translated what she said to English, and then someone else translated to Dutch. I think most weeks they have simultaneous English and Spanish translation (they only did English this week, likely because people were unable to come due to the race and holidays).

Getting to and from church was an adventure. We still only have the 5-passenger rental car (but there are 7 of us). So, we drove to church in shifts. Linda dropped JJ, Henry, and I off at church and then went back home to pick up everyone else.

Coming home, we were worried about being blocked by race traffic, so I told Linda to drive home and Timmy and I would walk. It was a nice, but somewhat long, 7km walk.

We are very much looking forward to (1) getting a larger car and/or (2) getting bikes.