26 February-4 March 2011

This is a huge bell tower attached to an old church in the town of Mechelen, which is about 20 minutes from Brussels. We went to climb this bell tower with the Assistants on our last P-day. It was about 317 feet tall.

The church was started in the 1200's and completed about 200 years later. The bell tower was started that year and it took nearly another 100 years to "almost" finish it. The tower was supposed to have a slender spire on top, but the spire was never placed on top.

This is inside the big church - this is a wooden pulpit with incredibly ornate carvings all over it - Adam and Eve are carved into it, the serpent, Mary, Jesus on the cross, etc. There's a squirrel and a snail carved into it, along with detailed carved leaves. It appears that this was carved mostly out of a single tree.

I love this picture of the inside of the church, with the stain glass windows and the big organ pipes. This really is a beautiful church. So many of the churches are dark, but this one is very light.

As we climbed the bell tower, we could stop along the way to six different chambers or floors. This was one that had an opening where you could look down into the church and the organ pipes. You can start to see how tall this bell tower was.

These are the stone steps we climbed, and climbed, and climbed! 538 steps.

Notice the big and little bells in the picture. This was another level we stopped at close to the top.

The Clock Chamber houses the clock and the mechanism that makes the carillon bells ring. This drum was was built in the 1700's and is one of two carillons in the tower. In 1981 a second carillon was added. Mechelen is known for it's bells and carillon. Classes are held on how to play the carillon and many come here for training.

Notice how big these bells are.

We made it to the top where there's a nice lookout - you can see the Belgium flag above our heads (the Assistants and I). It was a rainy, cloudy day, so the view wasn't as clear as we would have liked, but it was still pretty spectacular. The wind was blowing hard enough for the flag to stand straight out and provide a really good look at the Lion of Flanders.

Happy climbers.

The view looking down on the rooftops.

You can see the bell tower behind us.

We had a wonderful baptism this week - the young couple in the middle - they are Joseph's best friends - he baptized them, he's on the left. The sisters taught them. They are in a threesome now with the sister on the far left who is actually from the Netherlands, called to serve in Philadelphia, but is waiting for a Visa, so she's serving in our mission for 5 weeks until her Visa comes through. She's delightful to have around. How special for her to be able to be a part of this baptism one week into her mission.

I love this African family. They are all investigators that the Assistants are teaching. The father joined the church in Ghana, but his family has never joined and now they are coming and taking the lessons. They are such a beautiful family - 6 girls and one boy - darling kids.

The little girls are so cute with their braids and they are so well behaved. We watched them walking to church with the Assistants - the little girls were running and skipping along, holding the elders hands, as they walked from the tram together. They stayed the entire 3 hours and then for the baptism after.

This is a picture of many of our African friends in our ward, after the baptism. You can see the sister missionaries in the back, dressed in their African clothes.

This is our great district - we had just finished a district meeting in Antwerpen with Elder Marshall, the redhead in the back, giving us a wonderful lesson. He will be leaving the office this next transfer, and you never know who else might be leaving in two weeks, so we had to take a picture. We made a new chili recipe for our lunch this day that everyone loved.

Here's Loel, sharing instructions to the Elders in a Zone Leadership Council on how to take good care of their cars. He is showing what's in a box that he made for each companionship, for taking care of their cars.

He's showing them the windshield wiper fluid, the window cleaner, tire gauge, etc. They loved their boxes!

I love these bicycles. This is a bicycle that has a place for kids and a plastic covering to keep them out of the rain. You can't imagine how many kids they can get on one of these bikes. Pretty cool.

This is a picture of our new office - it's only about 2 blocks from the train station in Leiden. It's right in the center of town - we're on the main floor, right on the street level. It's so nice - we park in the back and walk right in - no going up 8 floors or down 6 more below ground, like what we've been doing in Brussels. It is much smaller than our Brussels office.

This picture shows the inside of the the office conference room area. You can see the little kitchen in the back - we will have a microwave/convection oven, a fridge, sink, and a dishwasher!! A big improvement over what we have now. Right now we only have a microwave with a broken knob so we have to use a pair of pliers to turn it on. We have no oven, no hot water, and very small counter space. This is going to be a big improvement.
We are getting ready to make the move to the Netherlands - probably in about a month's time. We are very excited - we'll be in the Netherlands in the spring!

After looking at the new office, we went to dinner with the Brubakers - we walked a few blocks, past this cool windmill, to a nice Greek restaurant that we all loved.

It's so fun to see the colorful crocuses sprouting up in the grass all over! Spring is finally coming!

Another view of the windmill. This windmill is a molen (mill) museum located right in the middle of Leiden, on a canal. You can't get much more Dutch than that.

This picture doesn't do this sunset justice. This is from our Brussels office, looking at the Cinquantennaire monument in the distance with the sun going down next to it. The sun was a giant red globe right next to the monument.