19-25 March 2011

Last Saturday's weather was beautiful and it was really nice at the outdoor market. It was fun to wander around without an umbrella and we spent our time looking at and tasting some different Moroccan food. The flower vendors had all their flowers out for spring planting. I enjoy looking at plants that we don't have many of in Utah - Camellias, Rhododendrons and Azaleas. I know we have some Azaleas in Utah, but not the variety of colors that we see here.

These are all tulips. Just boxes and boxes of cut tulips.

More flowers.

I really liked this group of bouquets. Yellow, orange, red and pink. And they're pretty cheap - maybe $14-$15 each.

We went downtown Brussels to a little park called the Petite Sablon. We were here last winter and this was dramatically different. It's considered a children's park, but I'm not sure why. It's very manicured with dozens of small statues around the park.

This is a picture across the park of the Notre Dame Church, or the Church of Our Lady of the Sablon. Look at the blue sky. We count these days in Belgium because they are so rare.

This is a well-known antique market in the Grand Sablon area of Brussels. We're not really into antiques, but it was fun to wander around.

We went out to get something to eat with the Assistants, in their P-day clothes! We love this little French bakery/restaurant within walking distance of the office.

Wednesday we went up to the Netherlands to our storage units and got some furniture for some of the elders' apartments and for ours. Three other senior couples joined us and helped us get things out of the units and start organizing them more. Here are the two elders in Gent, enjoying the new couch and chairs we brought for them. They were so happy to get rid of their old stuff and have this nice practically new furniture. We also went to Kortrijk first, hauling away lots of junk from their apartment, too.

We literally crammed the van full of junk from these two apartments -old couches, chairs, bikes, recliners, appliances, clothes, etc. We were very proud of ourselves and Elders Calkins and Alexander were a huge help.

Here we are at a Belgium recycling center or container park as they're called here. At home, we just drive up to a dump and empty out your car or truck and we're done. Here you have to have a special card to even get in, then you have to go to many different sections of the place to dump certain things. The elders literally had to heave couches up over their heads to get them into these huge containers!

Here they are at the container for metal. Then there was a special station for electronics, and another station for wood. We teased them that they were the only people in white shirts and ties at a dump! When we were through, we all had sandwiches at a little bakery place in town. We felt like it was a very successful day of making two apartments look much better than before with new furniture and clearing out tons of junk.

I felt like this was a week of beautifying apartments. We also are working on another apartment in Leuven that will soon have elders living in it again. We were able to bring a new dining room table, living room chair, new toaster oven, mattress pads, pillows, clean bedding, two rugs, etc. for this apartment. It is looking so much better than it used to.

After our district meeting in Antwerpen this week, we went on two joint teaches with the sisters. One was to a new African investigator, and the second was with an investigator soon to be baptized. The sisters felt like it would help to have Loel explain the priesthood to this man. It turned out very well as this man has really bonded with Loel. It's so cute how the Africans often refer to us as their father and their mother. This investigator is so excited and enthusiastic about his upcoming baptism and especially receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was really fun to be able to help with the teaching process with the sisters.