Sunday, April 11, 2010

New Mission for the Servosses

Greetings to all. It has been a long time since we last wrote anything. We have been very busy with family, remodeling and church work. We want to announce that we have just been set-apart as missionaries at the main church Family History Library in Salt Lake City. We are just finishing our training this week. We have already been able to help a few people with Dutch translation. This is a great assignment and we will serve 1 - 2 days a week.

We really miss folks in the Netherlands and would like to make a return visit this year. We are enjoying being with our family again, but miss our Dutch "family". We hope to write more on this blog in the future.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Still Alive and Well

Greetings from St. George, Utah. We are off on a short trip with one of our grandaughters, Kessaren. Since Christmas we have spent two and a half weeks in Mississippi with one of our sons and family. While there we took our grandaughter KaeLeigh to Huntsville, Alabama for a little trip. We have a tradition of taking the 8 year old grandchild on a 2 or 3 day trip with us (the grandparents). This has been a very month. We did manage to be home for 5 days inbetween. appreciate all of you that have followed our blog during our mission. Please know that we want to continue to keep you informed on what we are doing. Please look for more entries on this blog in the future weeks. Thanks, Kent & Kae

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Temple Square, Kent & Kae, Sister Slingerland



Home in Utah Again

We have now been home for two weeks, and are getting used to being back. Part of our hearts remained in Nederland, and we will never forget those wonderful people. It has been good to correspond with some of them via email and Skype. We look forward to continued close contact with many of them. It is sad to realize that the special missionary spirit and discernment is no longer the same. We are getting caught up in the "normal" routine again. Kent has been enjoying attending the BYU football games with his sons (something that he cherishes). Kae has enjoyed visiting with her friends here again. Kent has had some dental work done, and is happy for that. Both of us are enjoying having our family close to us again. On Monday night, Nov. 30th, we went to Temple Square with our son Lance and family. We very much enjoyed the Christmas lights and feeling that was present there. We also had a wonderful time visiting with one of our former Young Adults from Rotterdam, Sister Ramona Slingerland. She is now serving her mission here at Temple Square. It was so good to see her and to see how happy she is.

The past two evenings we have had family visit us for a "Sinterklaas avond" (Dutch Santa Claus evening). We had a great time giving the grandsons "Zwarte Piet" hats (Sinterklaas's helpers), and Delft blue jewelry boxes to the granddaughters. There were chocolate letters for all, lace table toppers for the women and Scottish scarves for the men. We have had a little snow here and are expecting more snow next week. So far the weather for Utah has been dryer than normal. We are still getting used to the cold here, but look forward to the beautiful snow that will replenish the water supply for the area.

Some friends have asked us what our current plans are. We are trying to take things one at a time. Kent has a new Ward assignment and will be sustained on Sunday. Let us just say that he will be quite busy with the calling. We plan on learning more about the new Family Search program and spending time at the new Family History Library in Salt Lake. We also have the two new area temples to visit. After Christmas we will drive to Memphis area to see our son Brian and family. Then we will make a trip to Orlando to see our foster son, Robin, and family. We will be busy. In the future, when the time is right, we will serve another mission. For now we are happy to be home and are enjoying our family and friends here in Utah. May the Lord bless all of you and help you to have a joyous Christmas Season filled with joy. Merry Christmas from Kent & Kae Servoss

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Last Story before our Return

The time has finally come to end this great adventure. We enjoyed our mission so much and have had so many wonderful experiences. It was very difficult to leave Rotterdam and the Netherlands.

Since we were already in Europe we decided to take a trip to trace some of our family roots. We were amazed at how many English relatives we both had. We looked at our pedigree charts and plotted out visits to many of the places that they had lived. We had some wonderful experiences going inside a small church in Litlington, where some of the Webb family lived, another old church yard in Toddington where the Tracey family lived. We also drove through areas where John Burnett, Aurelia Hawkins, and Susan Hunt had lived. We felt a family connection as we traveled through those places.

On Monday, Nov. 9th, we drove to Liverpool and Preston. We enjoyed touring the Maritime Museum in Liverpool and were surprised to see a monument outside of it, which was placed there by the LDS church. It depicted an immigrant family which was typical of thousands who left from Liverpool to sail to America. An hour later we were walking along the River Ribble in Preston, where Heber C. Kimball and other missionaries baptized the first nine British saints just ten days after they had arrived from America. We were able to stay in the temple patron housing at the Preston Temple complex that night. The room was nice and the Scottish members that we visited with were great. They had come down from the Edinbourgh area for a week of temple activity. They were typical of many nice people that we met, and this day was just a sample of what we did. We put a lot of miles on the diesel rental car, and had a once in a life time experience.

Now we are here in Brussels for our last night in Europe (for now). We fly home tomorrow and are very excited to see family and friends once again! Thank you for all of your prayers and support. We hope to see many of you at our church this Sunday the 22nd of November at 11:00 am, 650 E. 2150 S., Bountiful, Utah.

Happy Missionaries, Preston Temple, Warwick Castle