8-16 October 2011

Of course, for our last P-day, we had to do some sightseeing with the Assistants. This time to The Hague. This is the Peace Palace, built by money donated from Andrew Carnegie. It is where parliament meets, etc.

Pretty impressive.

This is the peace flame, which never goes out. It's surrounded by a rock from every country in the world.

You can see the flame inside.

I liked this gate - the Assistants kind of jumped in the picture.

Also close to The Hague is the resort town of Scheveningen - this is the pretty ocean we saw.

We walked way out on the pier - you can see the coastline behind Elder Favero.

On the pier - kind of windy!

We drove down to Antwerpen for our last Sunday in the mission. This is a picture of three Dutch windmills against the morning sky we passed on our way to Belgium for our last time.

Another picture of the morning sky.

Oh happy day! Tafour, Anya's oldest son, asked Loel to baptize him on our last Sunday here. Here we are with Anya and her three boys. She and Djamil, her 11 year old son, were baptized back in May right before we moved to the Netherlands. Tafour was baptized on Oct 9th. It was such a wonderful, emotional time for us. It was testimony meeting in Antwerpen, which gave us the opportunity to share some of our feelings with our dear friends. How appropriate that our very first Sunday was a testimony meeting there, 18 months ago, and we were asked to introduce ourselves and bear our testimonies then. I remember feeling so strange and so scared. Now 18 months later, we were grateful to share our testimonies with so many people who have meant so much to us. Our kind bishop translated for us.

Loel, Tafour, and Elders Frahm and Hawkley, the zone leaders in Antwerpen. They are great missionaries. When I gave the talk on baptism, I told Tafour that we were looking forward to hearing about his mission call when he turned 19. Anya and I cried with arms around each other as we watched Loel baptize Tafour. Now she will have the priesthood in her home.

Here is Brother Nyans, our favorite ward mission leader, plus the two sister missionaries who serve in Antwerpen. Sister Harrington, in the middle, goes home with us. Sister Tanner has just been out a few months.

I needed a picture of Anya and her three boys, riding with us in the back seat of our not so big car. They never cared; they were just so happy to be going to church and especially going for a baptism!

So here I am, in my office, training my replacement, Sister Pankratz!!! Thank goodness she's served here before and is so familiar with everything! Makes the job very easy! They joined us for our Monday lunch, our last one, in the office. Afterwards the Assistants came in and one of them had to say good-bye as he's being transferred. I will miss them very much.

Elder and Sister Pankratz, with Elder Benson and Alexander - they're the ones staying in the office. Loel and I and Elder McCarlie, by me, are leaving - Elder McCarlie is leaving the office as the financial secretary to serve back out in the field.

On our second to the last day, Sister Brubaker took Sister Pankratz and I out to lunch at our favorite Greek restaurant. I called in advance, at Sister Brubaker's request, and asked if they would make our favorite cream of mushroom soup. The cook said, yes, he remembered us from times past, but said he had to run to the market and buy mushrooms!! Which he did. We had such a nice lunch with some tears shed as we talked about how much we have loved our missions and our relationships. Sister Brubaker called Sister Pankratz and I 'her two angels'. Sister Pankratz was there working in the office when the Brubakers first arrived on their mission, and now that she's back, she'll be there when they go home next July.

A very sweet family in our Wassenaar Branch invited all 7 of us missionaries to dinner! The 3 office elders, us and the Pankratz. This is their family (the Listers).

So we're at the last day in the mission field. Here we are in the office with the Saldens, Sister Pankratz, and three of the missionaries who go home with us. Everyone comes into the office on their final day for their interviews with the President, weighing their luggage, etc. Many of them requested career/school counseling with me, also.

Here we, sitting around our conf room table, once last time, for our final lunch together. I had made cookies and rootbeer floats for part of the lunch.

These two sister missionaries are acting out a super funny "marriage calendar", as a kind of spoof on our baptismal calendar. It was hilarious; we were all laughing so hard. This would only happen on the last day of the mission!

They had it all printed up, etc, with one of them acting as the guy who is on his first date with the girl and wanting to get a commitment from her and set a date to meet 3 times a week and then get married in 6 weeks time. It was all in good fun with lots of elders taking videos and pictures of it. We were all getting a little punchy by now and one Elder slipped a copy under the door of Pres Brubaker's office as he was interviewing one of the missionaries for his final time.

Elders Marshall and Hanks and Sisters De Groot and Harrington at the final mission dinner.

Elder Sanford and Elder Kuttler - E. Kuttler is from our stake at home. There were 13 of us going home the next day.
After experiencing so many final testimony meetings, it didn't seem real and now this was OUR last one. The meeting was amazing, filled with the spirit, as each missionary shared thoughts and feelings about things they've learned and how they've grown. The overall theme seemed to be that Heavenly Father loves each of us SOOO much and that we all feel so blessed for knowing this.

Here we all are in the mission home after dinner.

The next day was wild and hectic as we got up around 5:00 am, helped with breakfast, and were on the road by 7:00 am to the office to pick up luggage and get on the train to the airport. It was crazy with all 13 of us dragging our luggage (and we had tons! luckily the office elders, assistants, and Brubakers helped) two blocks down the street to the train station. We quickly crammed everyone on the train, standing room only at rush hour time, made it to the Amsterdam airport, and walked a long ways to where we checked in. The whole process took a lot longer as the airport was busy, and there were so many of us. I was getting pretty anxious about whether we were going to make our flight, but we did, last one on the plane with 5 minutes to spare!
We flew 10 hours to Seattle, and then had another quick layover in Seattle, before barely making our connecting flight to Salt Lake City. We almost lost E. Marshall as the customs people confiscated the tulip bulbs he was bringing home. But we all made it.
I wish I had taken some pictures of the airport. It was so wonderful to see all of our family, those in Utah and Idaho, there waiting for us. I went around, crying as I hugged each one, meeting three new babies for the first time who are now all a year old. Such a happy reunion!

Here are the posters they had made for us and brought t the airport, along with a picture of each of the kids that weren't there (Andy, Brad, and Heather's families.) So we put them all on the mantel for our open house after for everyone to see.

Our homecoming was filled with incredibly happy reunions with friends, family, and missionary friends. Here is a group of most of our missionaries who came - some had to leave before the picture. It was such a wonderful time to be together with some of our best friends again!
People said they enjoyed our talks and some even said now they want to serve senior missions when they can. That made us happy.

We had a little open house at our house afterwards for family and friends. Here is a small group of missionaries who were still here towards the end - lots had already left. We had about 20 there for the Sacrament meeting. It was so nice to introduce them to our family.
It was a great, emotionally packed day, and one that I will always remember. What a time we've had over the last 18 months, serving in the Belgium/Netherlands Mission. What a blessing this experience has been for us.

This is our last blog post for our mission. Thanks for reading and we hope you have enjoyed the journey as much as we have. This has been great period of growth for us personally and for our relationship with each other.