I was working in the town of Zwolle, with my companion, Elder Dalebout, and we rode our bikes to the city of Kampen, and from there, we took a bus to the little town of Urk. Here is the excerpt from my journal:
Okt 15, 1959: We headed for Kampen on the fietzen (bicycles), tracting along the way. We took a bus from Kampen to the city of Urk. It used to be an island (in the middle of the Ijsselmeer, big inland lake in the Netherlands) but two dikes made a peninsula out of it. They build up the dijks, and pump the water out of it and call it a polder. (That is where they used a lot of the windmills, to pump the water out of one side of the Dijk, and move it to the other side). Holland's land area is growing polder by polder. The polders are excellent farming country, very fertile and completely flat. We went to Urk to have some pictures taken of us in Dutch costumes. All the people of Urk wore a funny looking Dutch costume, and my companion and I dressed up in them and had our pictures taken. (Urk must have been a tourist town, with the picture taking). In other towns in the vicinity, the people wear the funny clothes all the time as a religious expression of their faith. In those towns, they don't cater to tourists, and if people try to take their pictures, they will hide their faces. They may even take you into custody and destroy your camera. But back to Urk, we walked around the quaint little fishing city and saw the people in their costumes. The streets were only about 10 feet wide and they went every which way. No cars were allowed in the city. We tracted one street and got in one house, lady all dressed up - 14 children, man and five sons, fishing. We caught the bus back to Kampen, tracted in Kampen, and and headed back home, against the wind, 14 km. It's possible we were the first missionaries to visit Kampen or Urk, probably forever.
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