4-10 September 2010

Last Saturday, we decided to go down by the Marriott Hotel and become more familiar with the area where Elder Ballard would be staying. We were going to be driving him, Sister Ballard, Elder Rasband, Elder and Sister Causee for four days while they were in Brussels this week. When we parked the car, there was a group unloading restored wagons and beautiful horses for a very small parade. This old Opel pickup looks very much like an old Chevrolet pickup. Opel was a European General Motors company and it's obvious the design was used here also.

This is an old Model A Ford pickup that was used here.

Not far from where we parked is another old church, Saint Catherine's Cathedral.

When we heard Elder Ballard would be staying at the Marriott, I assumed it would have the large drive and plenty of parking by the front door to load and unload passengers. Not so. This is the front door of the hotel and there are three parking places in front.

Paula's standing on a typical downtown street. Barely two lanes wide and I spent four day driving a huge nine passenger van around these streets. If you've read our earlier blogs, you know how bad the traffic is. Elder Causee, who's from Paris, said Brussels traffic is worse than Paris traffic.

This was one of the wagon teams. Big, beautiful horses.

Another team. There were about seven or eight, all equally beautiful.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of these beautiful desserts we ordered at a wonderful French restaurant we went to here in Brussels. They were works of art as well as delicious to eat.

We visited the National Botanical Gardens on our last P-day. They are in Brussels and are huge and beautiful. It's over 220 acres of grass, trees, lakes and a castle. (They even have beehives.) This is the entrance to the gardens.

This was a beautiful castle in the gardens. It was my most favorite part of the whole garden.

Another view of this beautiful castle with the lake around it. There was a bridal party taking pictures here - what more romantic and picturesque setting could you ask for?

There were 13 greenhouses, all connected, each showing a different part of the world with plants from each area. These were some of my favorites - they reminded me of giant honeysuckle flowers.

These were kind of like giant water lilies - very unique. They can support the weight of a small child - about 45 pounds.

More beautiful flowers. This is a water lily flower.

Very cool cactus plant.

These looked like a bouquet of flowers, but they just grew that way.

We were in pretty good company here at this dinner at the mission home with the general authorities who came to visit our mission. Across from us are Elder and Sister Ballard, Elder and Sister Causse (First Quorum of the Seventy), Pres Brubaker, Elder Rasband (Senior President of of the Seventies), President and Sister Staheli (President of the Paris France mission), and us. We came early to help the Brubakers prepare the meal. Sister Brubaker put Loel in charge of the dessert - some kind of fancy chocolate souffle with ice-cream and 3 kinds of berries on top. It was a huge hit and the general authorities kept complimenting Loel on his cooking skills afterwards as well as Sister Brubaker's, as the whole meal was wonderful.

I wish I could describe what it was like to spend 4 days with these amazing people. We drove them to and from the airport, to hotels, and to all their meetings. Usually we had Elder and Sister Causse and sometimes Elder Rasband in our car, and Pres Brubaker and Pres Staheli had the Ballards in theirs. It was sometimes a little stressful to be manuevering a 9 passenger van around the narrow streets and horrible traffic of downtown Brussels, but Loel did it. We kept praying that we wouldn't hit any other cars, pedestrians, or bikers - and we had some close calls. My job was to carry on a conversation while Loel concentrated on the GPS and driving.

Elder Ballard made an immediate connection with Loel as Loel's dad's cousin was his missionary trainer. He loved this companion and mentioned it in one of our meetings - said he got him off to a great start on his mission and for the rest of his life.

We attended most of the meetings with the general authorities, which included one with the France missionaries, one with our entire mission, a member devotional, and a young adult meeting.

We had arranged ahead of time to take a mission picture with the general authorities. This was the sight that greeted us as we walked in with the Brethren into the cultural hall. Our entire mission, all lined up, quiet as a mouse, ready for the picture. They sat down, the photographer snapped the picture and we started our mission conference 10 minutes early. I have never been so proud of our missionaries as they were so respectful, attentive, interested, and asked very insightful questions in the question and answer period at the end. It was an amazing meeting, filled with the spirit and with great counsel for all.

At the end of the meeting, each missionary got to shake hands with all of the general authorities. Elder Rasband whispered to us as we walked by, "Be thinking of a good restaurant you can take us to at the Grand Place - we want the Ballards to see it and to have some Belgian waffles." The Brubakers were staying back to have a mission meeting with all our missionaries, so it was up to us and Pres Staheli to get our party to the Grand Place, find a place to park, find a restaurant, etc. Elder Causse and Rasband walked quickly ahead and found a restaurant. I couldn't believe I was sitting next to Sister Ballard (the sweetest lady you'd ever meet) and having lunch with general authorities at the Grand Place in Brussels!

Here we are, still glowing, after our lunch at the Grand Place. The general authorities had left for another meeting and we were casually walking back to our car, reminiscing on the experience.

We hated to say good-bye as we put them on the Huntsman jet to fly to Frankfurt the next day. They shook our hands, hugged us, and thanked us again and again for our service. We left having our testimonies strengthened that these men are truly men of God.