Welcome, everybody!  I am recording from the lovely town of Port Angeles, Washington.

We had some friends come stay with us for a few days and they went to many of the local tourist destinations like the Olympic National Park, the rain forest, Marymere Falls, etc. We really live in a neat place.

Well, today we have a good show for you. I talk about an incredible story of the Dutch saints after World War II. I recently wrote about this in the Peninsula Daily News and I thought that I would share a little about it here on the podcast. So let’s get to it!

Have you had the opportunity to travel overseas much? I feel like I’ve traveled a bit throughout my life, but I’m always amazed at all the places in the world where we have listeners!

The demographics that I’ve seen on our listeners are interesting. Most listeners are in the USA, but we have listeners in 24 other countries as well, including Estonia. I mention Estonia because I keep getting notifications that the Rocky Mountain Sunshine Podcast is ranking in the top Christian podcasts in Estonia, so to you listeners in Estonia, Hello from Port Angeles, Washington in the USA! One thing that I always that was so cool about living overseas was how many people spoke English. We really don’t do well as a country on being bilingual.

My wife and I lived in The Netherlands for a year and a half on a work assignment.  I was fascinated by the stories we heard about what it was like to have lived through the German occupation of World War II. One of the members of our church congregation in Almere, where we lived, told us of how the city of Rotterdam had been completely decimated by the German bombs. She said that they just kept bombing and bombing even after all the buildings were rubble. Nothing was left. After WWII, the entire city had to be reconstructed.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to go through that. So much destruction. So many lives had been lost. Everyone had been through a terrible ordeal.

After the war, the Dutch members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints obtained some potatoes, not for eating, but for planting.  They kneeled and prayed over their potatoes and planted them asking God to bless them and the land for a bounteous harvest. These people had hardly anything left. They were in a dreadful situation.

Across the border in Germany were members of the same faith.  Walter Stover, a leader from the Church in Germany came to visit Cornelius Zappey, one of the Dutch Church leaders. Stover told Zappey that the members of the Church in Germany were starving and even in a worse situation than the Dutch members of the Church, and winter was approaching. Zappey felt that he needed to ask the Dutch members to donate their potato harvest to their German brothers and sisters who were in desperate need. He wondered if he could ask so much of them.

Imagine being there. Your country had been overrun. Unspeakable things had happened. You were left with almost nothing. Germany was to blame for it all. Yet, members of your faith in Germany were starving, and you had been asked to give your harvest to those who were your foe just a few months prior.

Tune in for the rest of the story!

#dutch

#potatoes

#latterdaysaints

#WWII

#worldwar2

#ww2