May 2-6, 2010

This is a picture outside our balcony of a cool tree that had tons of flowers on it that all fell off in a rain storm. It made it look like pink snow had fallen!

Here is an excerpt from my journal about living in Europe:

There are a lot of things I appreciate about home – everything is harder here! For shopping, you have to weigh your fruits and vegetables and then push the right picture, then a little sticker thing comes out you have to put on your vege bag which tells what you owe. We have to stare at everything in the store, trying to figure out what it is, what ingredients are in it, etc, as everything is in Dutch or French. We have to bring our own bags to the store to take our things home in. We have to put money into this little coin thing to even be able to get a cart! Our garbage system is another story. We have a bag for plastics, one for paper, one for wet garbage, and one for glass. So we have four bags in our kitchen that we have to remember to put the right stuff in. When I cleaned out our fridge the other day, there were tons of condiments, etc that were old that I wanted to throw away - but no, you can't just do that. We have no garbage disposal, so Loel had to empty all the old mayonaise, steak sauce, etc, into the toilet, then rinse out the glass jars, then put them in the right bag for glass. The lids have to go in another bag for plastics and metal!!! Then we have to take it down our little elevator 5 flights to put in the separate garbage cans for each one! It’s pretty crazy. Cooking isn't real fun as the kitchen is so small, we bang into each other as we move around and then have to do all the dishes by hand. I don't think I'll be cooking much here.

Here we are in the Grote Markt in Antwerpen on Sunday after church. We were waiting around after church to go to dinner at a member's house with the sister missionaries in the city. So we got to do some sight seeing. This is a pretty cool statute of some famous guy who cut off the hand of a giant and threw it into the sea. They made a fountain out of it. This was a pretty neat square with tons of old buildings. We wish we could have taken some tours, or sat in little cafes and drank hot chocolate and ate french fries, but it was Sunday so we didn't feel right about doing so.
Church was great - our first Sunday in a Dutch ward!!! Everyone was very friendly - they immediately had us come to the front at the beginning of testimony meeting and introduce ourselves. Kind of scary. The bishop interpreted for me and it was a little unnerving to never know how long to talk before breaking for him to interpret, then talking more. I left out lots of stuff I wanted to say but Loel picked up and filled in when he spoke. Sister Gulliver, a sister missionary, sat on the stand and spoke into a little microphone thing while we had out portable headphones on, so she interpreted the whole meeting. It worked great. We stayed an hour and a half after church, just visiting and talking.

Seems like every main square in the towns have flower markets. This is one of them in Antwerpen. While we were hanging out in this market, a crazy guy saw our badges and tried to talk to us but he wasn't all there. A nice Netherlands couple was sitting next to us and when the crazy man finally left, they started talking to us and we had a really nice conversation with them all about their daughter in medical school in Pennsylvania. You can tell we're greenie missionaries as we didn't have any pass a long cards to give to them!!!

Here is a huge cathedral - the tallest I've ever seen. It's 400 feet tall. There are several Rubens paintings inside. We'd like to come back another time for a tour of it.















Look what unexpectedly came into our family (over 3 weeks early!) this week! Jane Moon was born to Shelly and Jonny in the middle of the night here (a decent hour in Utah). Shelly just couldn't understand why her back was hurting so badly; turns out had been in labor for hours! She went to the doctor, was sent immediately to the hospital, and had the baby two hours later!! We are so happy for them - #3, born one week after we left! Even though I would have loved to have been there, I feel a sense of peace and calmness, knowing that I'm where I'm supposed to be. I only cried once, and that was when I was talking to Shelly about how much I loved her and her sweet family. Jonny brought their laptop to the hospital the next night and called us on Skype so I got to see Baby Jane and talk to Shelly, too. It's so amazing how well connected we feel to family with free phone calls, emails, and Skype. It really eases the separation from family part of the mission. I told Loel that it's a good thing senior missionaries are allowed to communicate with home as much as they want, or I don't know if many would go on missions!