SLC to AMS

30-05-2015

It was the normal large amount of busy this week. We got 5 missionaries and sent 18 back away. And all sorts of surprises were to be had.

On Monday, we discussed the plans for the transfer with the mission president and his assistants. I made up travel plans and re-checked all the different elements of the Sheraton (located near Amsterdam Airport Schiphol ) reservation and such stuff.

The 5 new missionaries arrived later than expected on Tuesday (mainly because we misread the arrival times) and we brought them back to Leiden. After the usual legal orientation, we ate at the pancake restaurant, Oudt Leyden, and Sister Robinson took their pictures in front of a windmill in Leiden. After a quick trip to Rijswijk for legality purposes, we shipped the greenies back off to the Sheraton for their nap. We ate dinner with them and then they opened the letters containing their first city assignment.

The next day was transfer day, and very busy. I spent the whole day at Schiphol and most of it at the hotel. The trainers for the new missionaries trickled in along with some of the departing missionaries before 10 (though some were late, as usual). It felt like I was herding cats (or sims) most of the time. There were a lot of people for the stand up buffet lunch at midday, what with all the trainers, greenies and most of the departing missionaries (plus office staff). The afternoon was a lot less busy (for me at least) and at some point, I took a few of the departing missionaries to the panorama terrace on top of the airport, from whence we watched the planes moving around (and we took a look inside a Fokker 100 originally flown by KLM Cityhopper). Since my companions had to go fetch something from the mission home, we ended up sleeping at the hotel once again.

Bright and early the following morning, we barely had time to say goodbye to the departing missionaries and see them start heading out before we had to return to Leiden to go to another hotel, this time the Golden Tulip. We were there with about 20 other missionaries to learn about familysearch.org and how to use it to find opportunities to take our ancestors and do temple work for them. The next step after "finding and taking" names of our ancestors, was teaching. So the missionaries then passed on the knowledge they had just learnt to Seminary & Institute Coordinators from Western Europe (including Elder Moreira). I enjoyed it (though I really already knew everything that was covered), mainly because of the new 3 part plan they introduced, namely: find, take and teach.

Friday was back to normal, mostly. Since President Robinson will be gone by next transfer, I really need to figure out all the things that need to be adjusted and also which details need to be emphasised.

On p-day, we played football with just one member this time, but it was pretty intense nonetheless. After that, we did the usual routine of showering, shopping and e-mailing (partially) and then we returned to the Louwman museum in Den Haag.

"After having won a scepter, few are so generous as to disdain the pleasures of ruling." - Corneille