24-30 September 2011

On 24 September, we drove to Leeuwarden for the commemoration of the first baptisms in the Netherlands 150 years ago. These are the elders serving in the Apeldoorn Zone. Leeuwarden is in the Apeldoorn Zone.

This monument was erected about 50 years ago. The little canal in front of the monument is where the first three people were baptized. This town is about 2.5 hours north of us.

These are all the elders in the Apeldoorn Zone singing during the service.

This a re-creation of a picture taken at the dedication of the monument. President Brubaker and Elder Boom, our Area Authority Seventy, are in the center.

We drove to Leeuwarden with Elder and Sister Beckstrand. Sister Bekstrand surprised Paula with this little quilt she made. It's hard to see, but the quilt has a windmill, a tulip, a wooden shoe, a swan and a little Dutch boy and girl, all done by hand. I (Paula) was so touched by this labor of love. It is something I will always cherish.

Saturday evening we were invited to dinner at the Stigter's and this was dessert . Lill is Autralian and this is an Australian dessert. It's kind of like a fruit pizza, but the base is not pastry, it's meringue, with cream and fruit on top. It's also very delicious.

Zora Brobbey was baptized Sunday afternoon. Behind her are all the goodies brought by the branch, including a beautiful cake made by Lill Stigter. The Brobbeys are a wonderful family in our branch. The church was filled with people; non-members and members.

Monday was the culmination of months of planning. We have been able to purchase eleven new cars in the past year and we shipped some of the old ones off on Monday. We loaded four of the cars in Leiden and then I met the truck in Brussels and we loaded the last one. This is just down the street from the old Brussels office. I was really concerned how we would find a place big enough for this truck to load the last car.

The Brubakers had all the senior couples to a kind of open house at the mission home as many of them had never seen it. We had a wonderful dinner and a delightful time together. It was kind of sad as we said good-bye to some of our dear friends as we won't see them before we leave.

Here is the second table with the rest of the senior couples and the Brubakers.

We went early one morning to Aalsmeer, a town about 30 mins north of us to the Flora Holland flower auction - the biggest one in the world. This building was huge - the size of 120 football fields. They export flowers all over the world. The most popular flowers are first roses, then chrysanthemums, then tulips, and then lilies. These are boxes and boxes of anthyriums, boxed up ready to be shipped.

These little trains would drive these layered carts of flowers all over the huge warehouse.

We were on a raised walkway (catwalk) and could look down and see everything that was going on. This is the line of carts filled with flowers that was going into the auction area for people to bid on.

There were big rooms with tons of computers where people would make their bids. On the big screens in front you can see the flowers they were currently bidding on with the carts of the same flowers underneath. these carts move at about a slow walk's pace, so there isn't long to bid on the flowers.

You really cannot imagine how colorful and beautiful the scene is as you look down from the catwalk unto all the flowers.

I wished I could capture the smell and put it on the blog - it was heavenly.

It seemed that there was every type of flower. The flowers come primarily from the Netherlands, Kenya, Ethiopia, Israel and South America.

The flowers are exported all over the world. This auction is only a few minutes from the Amsterdam airport. This is one of six auctions in the Netherlands, but the only one open to the public. We have one here in Rijnsburg that just celebrated their 100th anniversary.

I wanted a close-up of some flowers so took this picture of a bouquet at the entrance of the tour. It was truly gorgeous to view this auction.

On Friday the Brubakers had an open house for all their neighbors. They wanted us there, along with our branch president, our stake president, and several couples in our branch to mingle with the neighbors. I went over early to help prepare the food for it. This is Roliyne, Sister Brubaker's helper in the kitchen, who was working with us.

Sis Brubaker makes an amazing vegetable basket that she learned how to do in France. Here are more of the items we had for them to eat.

I made two kinds of cookies and she had others there, too.

These are the cute cupcakes a neighbor made along with beautiful sunflowers.
The weather couldn't have been more perfect - beautiful, sunny day and so the open house in the evening was partially inside and partially outside. Lots of neighbors came and we were able to share a little about what we do with them. We all felt like it was a great success. The visitors stayed until after 10 pm! We had about ten times more food than we needed, but the elders will eat lots of it on Monday.

16-23 September 2011

On our quest to see everything cool in the Netherlands before we leave, we went to the Arnhem Historical Living Museum with the Beckstrands. It was so beautiful - a whole village of Dutch life a while ago. Course it had lots of cool windmills.

Everywhere you turned, was a cool picture - little lakes, buildings, stores, farmhouses, etc.

A house with a water wheel pump below. This house held a paper mill that made paper from cotton fiber. Everything was run from the water wheel. We chose to walk around the whole village instead of taking a little train so we wouldn't miss anything.

They had these really big farmhouses where the barn and the family living area is in the same structure - the people's area was to one side and the animals had the rest. Guess they all kept pretty warm this way. No going out in the cold to take care of the animals.

This is an area that is rich with peat. Peat is kind of an organic mud that can be cut into blocks. The blocks can then be stacked into a structure for living. Kind of like the sod houses built in by the homesteaders in the midwest. The peat can also be dried and burned like a low grade coal.

Now this was cool - these two cows wouldn't separate so we could take a picture of Sister Beckstrand's favorite cow in the Netherlands - she calls it an "oreo cow". But this one looks like a two headed cow since the two of them wouldn't separate. They are actually the Dutch Belted cow.

Beautiful gardens.

This was a cute little chapel where they had an actual wedding; thus the balloons.

Another cool view of the lake, forest, and windmill in the background.

Loel loves this picture as it shows how the thatched roofs are made. (Loel) I always thought the thatched roofs were made from straw. Actually they are made from reeds that are tightly bound together and laid layer upon layer. I though it was cool the way they trim the edges to a very pleasing shape.

A weaver's house where they were making this beautiful colored fabric. Don't you love the blue walls??

In front of the bakery, there was a sign saying "pudding bread" so I asked what it was. The baker brought out this white bread roll with vanilla pudding in the middle with powdered sugar on top. Of course we had to try it. It was great. It was vanilla pudding in a white roll, with a little powdered sugar on top.

We had a senior weekend and stayed at this little hotel in the Apeldoorn forest in the little town of Hoog Soeren - in a beautiful forest. The setting was idyllic.

We did have to laugh at our rather "basic" rooms with purple velour bedspreads and tiny bathrooms, but everyone was a good sport as I was able to negotiate a very low price for all of us. Here are Sisters Brubaker and Beckstrand admiring the cool chandelier in our bedroom.

We had a wonderful dinner together in the hotel's nice restaurant - we had the whole room to ourselves. We didn't choose the menu, the chef did - we had a delicious mussel soup, then filet of sole, potato croquettes, vegetables, a stuffed little pepper, bread, salad, and a beautiful dessert of ice-cream with apples and strawberries and cream on top. It was a typical European meal that lasted 3 hours - but we loved being together and enjoyed the time.

Breakfast was the traditional Dutch breakfast. Bread, cheese, jam, peanut butter, sliced lunch meat, yogurt, boiled eggs served in little egg cups, orange juice and hot chocolate. They let us take the leftovers for sandwiches for lunch.

We happened to hear about a special yearly event that takes place once a year about a half hour from where we were staying. It was commemoration of a World War II operation called Market Garden. Five different countries dropped 1000 parachuters inside German lines in this little town, in September 1944, to try to secure the Rhine River. Unfortunately they were not successful and there were a lot of Allied deaths and prisoners taken. A movie was made about it called "A Bridge Too Far". Each year they drop lots of paratroopers to remember this time. It was pretty impressive to see the airplanes fly overhead and each one would drop about 25 troopers. Throughout the day they dropped between 750 and 1000 paratroopers.

I've never seen so many paratroopers at once come down.

Here is our group watching the operation.

Afterwards, Loel and I went into this national park and rode these white bikes all around beautiful forests on wonderful bike paths. As soon as I got on my bike, my phone rang. This time I got off to answer it (unlike my last time on the bike in Brugge) and it was the Assistants again, just like last time! So I didn't fall off my bike this time - I didn't try riding and talking on the phone.

Loel took this action shot.

Here's one I took of him while riding behind him.

We first rode to the Kroller Muller Museum in the park and wandered around this huge sculpture garden outside. Here's one of the sculptures. (Loel) This sculpture was cool because it was free floating. Because of the "wings", the wind would catch the sculpture and it would move around this pond.

I thought this was a pretty unique sculpture. After the sculpture garden, we went inside the museum and saw a lot of Van Gogh's, Renoir's, Gaugin's, Mondrian's and other famous painters - which I'm probably spelling wrong! It was a great museum.

Then we got back on our bikes and rode 5.5 kilometers to this cool hunting lodge on a lake that was in the park.

And then we rode back to drop off our white bikes with all the others - you pay an entrance of 8 euros to get in the park and it includes using the white bikes. Very fun. Sometimes we'd be riding through forests, then scraggling looking plants, than sand dunes, then beautiful hunting lodges.

Here is Lill Stigter, a wonderful lady in our branch who has us over to dinner a lot. She's an excellent cook and makes cakes as a hobby/business on the side. She made us this beautiful anniversary cake and brought it to church for us. We love this family!

Here's our special anniversary lunch/party that we had at the office the next day for our Monday lunch. We made pulled pork sandwiches, potato salad, and veggies.

The little bride and groom ceramic figurine on the top of our cake was dancing so the President wanted us to be dancing, too. We only ate half the cake that day so I brought it the next day to a district meeting I made lunch for and ate it some more. It was delicious! Buttercream frosting with strawberries in the filling inside.

On Friday it was Elder Benson's birthday - he's our newest member in the office, training to be the financial secretary. His parents sent him a cake mix and frosting and so he made it and brought it to the office so we could celebrate. He's 20 years old, surprise!

After the birthday celebration we went to see this castle called Muidenslot. It was very cool - one of my favorite castles I've ever seen - just a few miles from Amsterdam.

I loved the beautiful gardens right by the castle.

The castle almost looks like something from Disneyland.

Us in the gardens.

Loel got this picture of a bee on a pretty flower.

This is a view from up in the castle, looking down at the gardens.

Of course the Beckstrands went with us again - here she and I are standing on a little hanging walkway high above the castle courtyard below.

They had some amazing armour.

And more. Look at the length of the lance. How did they hold them up.

I had to stand here in the court jester's costume since the Beckstrands say I'm such a joker. It was a really fun afternoon and a very beautiful castle, inside and out. I loved it.