Was poking around yesterday about activity in the Netherlands. I was on my mission there in the mid-70's. Membership then: Around 6500 with about 2500 active.

2010: Around 8300 members with 2500 active.

That's sizzlin'!!!!! How the hell do they justify even HAVING a mission in the Netherlands?

Ron

Tithing receipts from all these entrenched and committed TBM adds up to a lot of justification.

I gotta say that is really hilarious.

And they get their own temple too!

Maar het verbaasd me nog een beetje dat er nog zo veel aktieve leden in Nederland zijn.

Jezeker! En er zijn velen die nog goede vrienden zijn van mij. Geeft niet als ze leden zijn. Ik how van me nederlanse vrienden.

Ron

Stop it! Stop it now! I insist. That is one butt-ugly language.

Not as ugly as German. Mind you, English is none better either - we're just more used to it. chinese is like their all yelling all the time and that really hurts my ears.
Now the french and the Italian sounds like singing. Spanish not bad either.
:<

Women speaking dutch makes my insides tingle. It's a sexy language

È la lingua degli dei, l'Italiano.

Well, they're not paying for it, right? It's the missionaries paying their own way.

Isn't that the bulk of the expense?

And the temple just makes good PR, right?

I agree. If anything, the church actually makes money by keeping missionaries out in the field, especially if they ever get that program going where the members house them but don't get reimbursed. Since they no longer cover them with good insurance or take care of their needs in anyway, missions cost nothing, and they keep the young boys and girls busy, in positions where they masturbate less and question authority less.

would have been tempting to go tracting in the red-light district. What do that call that area separated by the canal, and it's door after door of potential investigators?

"de Wallen" or "the walls".

Amsterdam....I get goosebumps when i think about it.

Ditto...many fond memories of Amsterdam.

than Mormons in third world countries.

http://packham.n4m.org/morexmos.htm

It sounds like we can expand that to include some European countries as well!

I don't think there is even ONE country with more active mormons than inactives or exmos. Not one LOL.

Hi Ron, thinking about you here. I was going to ask, didn't you serve your mission in a dutch country.??

Why, yes, yes I did. There are two dutch speaking missions in Europe, the Netherlands and Belgium (only half of Belgium though, because the other half is a blend of Flemish and French).

I thought I remembered you stating you'd been abroad w/your mission. Were you abroad during military service as well.

Yep, I was overseas in the service too.

Holland no longer has its own mission. When once there were two, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, now there are none. The closure of Amsterdam was fairly recent. It is now part of the Belgium, Antwerp mission.

How do they do that? What language do they teach you in the MTC?

The Mission's name is now Belgium/Netherlands Mission and the mission office is moving from Brussels to somewhere near Amsterdam. French speaking Belgium is now under the Paris mission.

That's pretty funny because just before I went on my mission they split the Amsterdam Mission into two with a new one opening in Belgium (Brussels).

So in other words, the Dutch missions went from Amsterdam to Rotterdamn to We don't give a damn. Classic.

I'm fairly certain there has never been more than one mission in The Netherlands. The headquarters may have moved around, but I think that country has always been part of a single mission.

When the Church created a standard format for naming missions and stakes in 1974, the Netherlands Mission was officially named the Netherlands Amsterdam Mission. This mission included the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium until the following year when the Belgium Antwerp Mission was created, though this new mission was reconsolidated with the Amsterdam Mission a few years later.

Another attempt at an Antwerp Mission lasted from 1990 to 1994.

In 2002, the Netherlands Amsterdam Mission and Belgium Brussels Mission were combined to form the Belgium Brussels/Netherlands Mission, with headquarters in Brussels and the number of missionaries in the Dutch-speaking areas significantly reduced.

On March 1, 2010, the French-speaking areas of the Brussels Mission (southern Belgium and Northern France) were reassigned to the France Paris Mission, leaving the "Brussels" Mission with just Dutch-speaking areas—the same areas that had comprised the Amsterdam Mission prior to its discontinuation in 2002.

Mission headquarters were moved to The Netherlands in the spring of 2011, with the new office in Leiden and the new mission home in nearby Leidschendam, convenient to both Schiphol Airport and the temple.

So in the end it is the Belgium Brussels Mission that is no more, at least for now. There has been a net increase in convert baptisms in Europe in recent years, and among the Dutch and Flemish people, the rate has been as much as 5 times the European average.

Mijn lieve Ron, is het waar dat de Nederlandse mormonen hun tiende te betalen in chocolade, klompen en soms hypotheek hun windmolens?

Ook is het waar dat hun waardigheid interview de vraag omvat: Heb je je vingers in dijken?

Lieve Schat:

Niet alleen in chocolade, maar in muisjes, oude belegen kaas en oliebollen ook!

Ze hebben geen waardigheids interview in deze dagen. De bisschop gaat je vingers likken en als ze van dijken smaken, dan ben je wel klaar!

Zoentjes!

En Muntendrop. Maar tulpen mogen ook.

That's interesting news. I served in the French Belgium mission and left just before the merger with the Dutch side. Glad to hear that the Frenchies are now part of the Paris mission because when the missions were realigned in 2002 the Frenchies would have only 3 stakes to serve in and very flat boring land.

I mentioned this before, but back in 2001 looking at the stats for the mission even though we baptized about a 100 converts during the year there was essentially a 0 net increase in Sacrament meeting attendance.

They don't even have a mission for the Netherlands. They have one mission for the Netherlands and Flanders. There was a time Flanders had its own Antwerp mission, and Holland proper had several missions.

Also, I will never understand why they had to build the world's most underused temple, in Sweet Lake (Zoetermeer) of all places. Such an ex-urban backwater.

BTW, how many members does TSCC have in Belgium today? Twenty years ago it was 8,000 officially.

http://www.postmormonisme.nl/p/forum.html

There's also a thread that discusses this very topic: Waar is de Nederlandse zending gebleven:

http://nexmo-forum.980544.n3.nabble.com/Waar-is-de-Nederlandstalige-zending-gebleven-td2532480.html

We could use some new posters, the forum is a bit quiet at the moment. Tell your former investigators too!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2011 10:03AM by rt.

Regardless of whether it's the Dutch or Belgian mission that disappeared, the fact is that there were once four missions for the two Dutch-speaking countries, and now there is only one. Just like Austria shares a mission with Bavaria, and many other missions have disappeared (consolidated in mormonspeak) elsewhere.

BTW, Belgium had 8,000 members in the 1980s and even fewer today. Hope you enjoyed our waffles and chocolates, or else you wasted two good years lol.

By keeping missions in these countries -and temples as well- they continue the concept of the church like a '

rolling stone going to all nations. Or the members in utah and the rest of the USA might wonder if this is really the 'true' church.

Also, if Dutch tithing can't leave the country, what better place to put it than in real estate- mission home, temple, chapels. Great assets!

karin, not logged in, tho Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> By keeping missions in these countries -and
> temples as well- they continue the concept of the
> church like a '
>
> rolling stone going to all nations. Or the
> members in utah and the rest of the USA might
> wonder if this is really the 'true' church.


But even the holier-than-thou TBM übermormons I knew in UT/ID ten years ago were aware that TSCC was a spent force in Europe and Latin America. Who would still believe the stone rolling forth story today?