18-26 December 2010

We apologize for the length of this post. This has been a crazy week with delayed missionary transfers and Christmas. Danielle arrived and we've been playing with her also. So, this post is 9 days instead of 7. You can always just close and wait for next week. Guaranteed it will be shorter.
We went for a drive to the park near our apartment after the snow. It was beautiful and wintry. More about that later.
We took Danielle to the Grand Place in Brussels and enjoyed the Christmas decorations. We found that cobble stones are really slick with a little snow and ice on them.

After dark the lights come on and they have a light show multiple times every evening. The Town hall is used as a screen and colored images are projected on the building.

The colors are constantly changing from red to green to blue to white.

Europe was hit by a huge winter storm last week. We had 12 missionaries going home and those scheduled to go through London were delayed because their flights were canceled. This is our normal Monday lunch with the addition of Danielle and the five missionaries whose flights were delayed. They were scheduled to go Tuesday out of Brussels and their flights were canceled again because the Brussels airport didn't have enough de-icing equipment. We finally drove them to Amsterdam and they all got out on Thursday - five days late. They all made it home for Christmas - some on the 24th. We must have said good-bye to them about 6 times as they kept being delayed again and again.

Danielle wanted to see a concentration camp as her class had studied the Holocaust last year. While this isn't one of the extermination camps in Germany, Breendonk was a camp for political prisoners here in Belgium. It is one of the best preserved prisons and as we left, the lights on the guard tower, with the fog and snow, were a dramatic climax to our visit. Paula had been here before and, understandably, she didn't want to return. It's a cold, dank, dark, unpleasant place.

This is Paula now. Instead of going to a concentration camp in the freezing cold weather, Sis Brubaker and I went to lunch and Christmas shopping. Here she is as we had a leisurely lunch together in a really cute French bakery that we walked to just a few blocks from the office. We had a delightful afternoon where we enjoyed visiting without running around preparing food, etc.

We took Danielle to Brugge and when we went to the place where we have taken canal rides in the past, they were closed. There was ice on the canals.

One of the things we've always wanted to do in Brugge is stop in a chocolate shop and go to their little tea room for hot chocolate. This hot chocolate was exceptional. The sign outside says, "The best hot chocolate." They don't lie. To start with, the oversized cups are huge. This picture is not an optical illusion. It is really this big. They bring the cup about 1/2 full of hot milk and a chocolate cup of chocolate chips that you pour into the cup and whisk to make the chocolate as strong as you desire. Of course we all dropped the whole thing in and to say it was to die for is probably an understatement. Will we go back? Not will we, but rather, how many times?

The lights in Brugge were beautiful. There was a Christmas market set up in the main Centrum with an ice rink and little booths for food and items for sale.

The Bell Tower is magnificent at night.

It was really cold. But the lights were beautiful.

Snow kept coming all week. Paula and I had to drive about 25 kilometers early Friday morning after about 4 inches of new snow. They have no real snow removal equipment and they use salt to remove the snow from the roads. We've been told that all of Europe has run out of salt, so only the main roads are clear. The side roads are still full of snow, the parking lots are full of snow, and nobody has snow shovels so they don't shovel the walks. temperatures have been just below freezing, so the snow isn't melting either. Today was a little warmer and it's supposed to be warmer (35-45) for the rest of the week.This is the Mstoyan family. They are Armenians that have emigrated from Russia. We went to visit them on Christmas Eve afternoon and they surprised us with an amazing meal of Russian, Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish food. It was a feast.

Anya makes all her own pastries by hand. This meal was really incredible with a potato meat dish, lots of vegetables, feta cheese with herbs and bread, a filo dough thing filled with cheese, fried fish and onions, some fruit we've never heard of before, and it goes on. What an experience!

This was a surprise Christmas present I got for Loel. It's an abstract painting that he fell in love with in a B&B we stayed in in the Netherlands. Sis Brubaker went back and picked it up for me and hid it at her house (the paintings there were all for sale). I gave it to him Christmas Eve and he was totally surprised! I think that's the first time I've pulled off a surprise for him. We have it up on our wall in our apartment and it looks stunning. Now we just have to figure out how to get it home!

This is Christmas Eve at the mission home with 6 elders acting out the nativity. Pres Brubaker read the script, we sang songs, Loel and I were Joseph and Mary, and our elders were everything else. We were laughing so hard at their depiction of shepherds, wise men, and angels.

Here's Elder Keith (he's from Timpview), as the angel. He was great.

On Christmas day we invited these 4 elders over for lunch and to play the bowl game. We laughed so hard as they were acting out different characters. We had a great time together. Before they came over, Loel, Danielle, and I opened our presents.

Sunday Loel confirmed Charles (white coat). Richard was also confirmed this same day. Then we had two more baptisms after church - two more Africans. It was a wonderful way to spend the day after Christmas. Our ward also put on a beautiful Christmas program.

After the baptisms, we took Danielle into the Groen Platz and Grote Markt of downtown Antwerpen to see the huge cathedral there. They had Christmas markets going on, too, which are always fun to wander through.

The Brubakers surprised us with these beautiful hand painted wooden shoes, done by Pres Brubaker. The red and yellow shoe is the color of the Belgium flag (red,yellow and black) and the other, the Netherlands flag (red white and blue). He created this mission crest and he painted it on them. He also painted our names and the dates of our mission. They are beautiful and will always be treasured.

All our gifts are opened and are being used and enjoyed. We got to talk to all of our kids on Christmas or the day after, some on Skype. It's been a great Christmas; we've loved having Danielle here to experience so much with us. On Christmas day we were invited to a member's home for a wonderful 3 1/2 hr Belgium feast. It was superb.

We are blessed. Blessed to be here, blessed with the gospel of Jesus Christ, blessed with a wonderful, supportive family and blessed with wonderful friends. We hope your Christmas was wonderful as ours and we pray that your New Year brings you the Lord's richest blessings.

11-18 December 2010

This was all of our district on a P-day to Brugge. Our new senior couple, the Beckstrands, opted to come with us even though they had just flown in a few hours before. We all rode in the big mission van with Loel driving. We got an amazing parking place, which is very rare, and wandered around the city together.

As we were leaving Brugge, the Christmas lights started coming on and the city centrums were becoming pretty magical.

This is a manger scene built in the Grand Place. We took the Beckstrands there as well as two elders who hadn't seen it yet. It was all decorated for Christmas.

We had two beautiful baptisms last Sunday - the sisters taught Charles and the elders taught Richard. As each of them came out of the water, they both raised their hands in joy and shouted something like, "Yes!" or "I did it!" It was so inspiring to witness.

These are the two elders from Gent that we took to the Grand Place with us. They liked this chocolate shop.

The Beckstrands and us at the Grand Place in front of a huge Christmas tree they've got there now. Sister Beckstrand loves to travel and has been so excited about everything she's seen.

This was our last district with all of us together - Sis Fritz and Elder Conder are leaving so we needed to take a picture after our district meeting in Antwerpen. I made a pot of soup for our lunch as I wanted something a little more special than sandwiches again.

This is the view from our office balcony after a snow fall. I thought it was a cool picture. Yet the snow kind of messed up travel these next couples days - that combined with many delays in airports from the States.

Here are most of our departing missionaries who left this week minus about 3 of them. Loel and I have had horrible colds and worse and there couldn't have been a more difficult time to be sick with all that had to be done these past two days. And there could hardly have been more things to go wrong, either!
We had 9 new missionaries coming in at 8:00 am - turns out they were delayed until 1:30. Only problem is, we had 12 departing missionaries arriving that afternoon - both sets had to be interviewed and processed and preferably not together. Loel was driving the van all over with luggage, taking them here and there. The trains were having problems and so all 9 new missionaries ended up having to stay overnight at the mission home with all 12 of the departing missionaries! The Brubakers got them upstairs to bed before we brought over all the departing missionaries. We were cooking fajitas for dinner at 7:30 pm and the testimony meeting lasted until midnight. We left around 9:30 pm, too sick to listen to the testimonies.
We were up bright and early the next morning to take the new missionaries to the train station to get to their areas, and to take the departing missionaries to the airport - their flights were delayed. One sister's shoulder bag with passport, wallet, all her mission journals, camera, etc, was stolen in the train station the night before - so she can't go home for 3 more days. Four elders found out when we got them to the airport, that their flights were canceled and couldn't get flights out for 3 days!
Danielle was flying in this morning, also, and her flight was delayed, which was actually a blessing. She's here now and we're all relaxing at our little apartment. It's really fun to have her with us for Christmas!

5-10 December 2010

This week's blog is kind of different. We posted late last week, so we included our weekend activity for two weeks. This week is just our weekly activities. No sight seeing. This week was a little different as four Zone Conferences were held in the different zones of the mission and we traveled to all of them. Normally they would be held maybe two a week. But with Christmas and President and Sister Brubaker's desire to have a special conference before Christmas, they were all in this week. The conferences this week included a Christmas program prepared and presented by the missionaries for the stakes and the community, celebrating the birth of the Savior. As a result the conferences went to 8 PM instead of the normal 4 PM. Paula and I stayed in the Netherlands two nights because of the distance we would have to drive each night and the next morning (three hours each way). It was a great week and we have some tremendously talented missionaries. The rest is Paula's narration.

It was Elder Conder's birthday so I made him a pumpkin cake, at his request, for our Monday lunch.

Here we are at our first Christmas zone conference of the week. This one was in Leiden. We had a fondue lunch each day. It was delicious. We helped Sister Brubaker prepare all the things to dip into the cheese fondue. We had peppers, potatoes, pickles, apples, bread, and salami.

At the end of the lunch, we served a plate of cookies that we had made on Monday. I had gone over in the morning to help make them, and then Loel and I returned that night and helped them finish the project. Pres Brubaker is quite the artist and really decorated them well. Sis Brubaker made the fancy heart shaped ones. We had a good time decorating them together.

Here's Loel, getting ready for the second day of fondue lunches in Rotterdam.

This time we sat at a table with two other senior couples and had a nice visit. We actually didn't get sick of preparing and eating fondue each day for four days in a row!

Two of the nights we stayed up in the Netherlands with the Langevelds. Here they are, studying in the morning in their PJ's in their apartment. They were so nice to us, letting us stay in their guest bedroom, feeding us great breakfasts, etc.

Sister Brubaker had me order Smart Wool socks for each elder and we wrapped them as a Christmas gift. Here is Elder Christensen, showing us his socks with huge holes in them as he holds up his new pair! He goes home next week and we will miss his sense of humor.
We asked each senior couple to be in charge of making soup for dinner for the missionaries each night before they put on their program. We made 4 batches of minestrone soup for our zone and it was practically all gone at the end of the meal. As we were serving up the soup, I got a big kick out of one elder who asked, "Elder Tibbitts, were you a cook in the Air Force? Because you seem really good at making big meals for large groups of people?"

Each night of the zone conference, each zone put on a Christmas musical program. This is our zone and the missionary choir they performed in, with Sister Brubaker leading. It was a really nice evening - we saw 3 of the 4 programs over the week. We have some really talented missionaries.

Here are our best friends - the 3 office elders and the Assistants. Two of the five are from Timpview High School in Provo - our neighbors.
The President gave some great instruction to the missionaries at these zone conferences. He told them that this Christmas in the mission field will always stand out as one of their favorites, because they're kind of insulated from the hustle and bustle of the gift buying, etc, and can concentrate on the birth of Christ and sharing His gospel. It made me grateful for this time that we have to experience Christmas in the mission field. We haven't had to worry about the regular Christmas stresses, but have enjoyed serving here.

27 November-4 December 2010

It's Christmas market time in Belgium! This is one we found last Saturday right here in Brussels at Saint Catherine's church, close to the Grand Place. It had 240 booths selling everything you can imagine. We wandered around, buying olliebollens filled with apples, some Moroccan cookies, a white sausage sandwich, etc.

Loel fell in love with this cool merry-go-round - they call them "roundabouts" here. It had an airplane on it, a dinosaur, a car, with lots of other cool things. When's the last time you saw a merry-go-round with an airplane like this?

Here's the ice-skating rink they had set up. I liked this picture with the ferris wheel in the background. We bought nativities from Poland and from Yugoslavia, which we promptly came home and set up on our mantle.

This was the first snow storm we received this week - this is the view from our balcony. You've seen this picture in the spring, the fall and now with snow.

That night we drove to Gent in the big van, picked up the elders there, then this is the Nda family who was getting baptized, and drove them about 40 mins to St. Niklaas to be baptized. They are a wonderful family, referred by a new member in Gent. They have already referred another family of four that the elders are currently teaching, too. Their two little girls are darling. They are from Ghana.

I just had to take this picture of our friends in the Anwerpen ward, Joseph, Grace, and baby Benjamin with his cute outfit on at church. We had about 7 investigators at church on Sunday.

These are the McLeans, a wonderful member couple from Breda, a town in the Netherlands about an hour and a half from Brussels. They met us up there to meet with a real estate property management agent to see some new apartments we're trying to find for the elders there. They were so kind, taking us around, showing us what they had found, telling us how they could get people in the ward to do a lot of the work that has to be done any time you rent a new apartment, etc. We LOVED the apartment and hope to have a contract signed soon. They took us shopping afterwards, showing us lots of the Netherlands Christmas favorites to buy, then took us so their gorgeous apartment and fixed us lunch. We loved spending time with them - they served a temple mission in Frankfurt, a prosyliting mission in Austria, and then 3 years as a counselor in the temple presidency here in the Holland temple. They are so service oriented - doing so much to help our missionaries. It meant the world to Loel and I to have a Dutch couple help us like this.

President Brubaker asked me (Loel) to train the Zone Leaders on the calling of a bishop. I loved the opportunity. These young men are so willing and anxious to learn. Afterward, President Brubaker gave them assignments as members of a Ward Council and had them conduct a Ward Council. It was a great opportunity for them to see how hard it is to keep everyone on task and to help them develop some empathy for the Bishop or Branch President and all the responsibility they have.

This a very pretty window at the Mission Home, with snow covered pines outside.

This coming week we'll have four Zone Conferences for all the missionaries in the mission. Here, Paula and the Office Elders are wrapping some little gifts that will be given to each missionary.

This weekend, President and Sister Brubaker invited us to get away and visit some of the Belgian Christmas Markets away from Brussels. We started in this little town on the German border that was delightful. The three official languages in Belgium are French, Dutch and German. Here Paula and Sister Brubaker are walking in town.

We stopped in a bakery that was to die for. This is a heavily carved display case for candy. We shared a fantastic apple strudel, and a chocolate mousse cake.

The Christmas tree in the town center. We found a store selling beautiful hand carved nativities and purchased one. This little town and Christmas market were truly magical.

Remnants of an old castle on the hill above the town.

An old church in the middle of town.

The river through the middle of town with the castle in the background.

Paula eating her first chestnuts "roasted on an open fire". Jack Frost was nipping at our noses, too.

We drove to a little town called Durbuy (dir-bwee), which calls itself the littlest town in Belgium. It's a quaint little town built of gray granite from the area and we stayed in an old hotel. This is a view from our room onto the street below. The stands for the Christmas market are already set up. We visited them all later in the morning. Note the brick and beam construction of the old building next door. We had a wonderful meal at a restaurant the Brubakers enjoy before going upstairs to our little rooms.

In the morning, we walked to breakfast past this castle. The castle is privately owned and so it's not available to visit. It was really cold. Freezing feet and hands, even with warm socks and gloves. Paula and I both bought hats the night before, because we didn't have them with us. I bought a scarf and became converted. Now I see why all the missionaries wear scarves. Sister Brubaker picked out this hat for me and then liked it so much, she bought one for herself.

Paula and Sister Brubaker stood for a lo-o-o-o-ng time squeezing oranges for fresh orange juice for us at our breakfast at a nearby hotel.

This is a meat stall in the Christmas market. The hams hanging are Ardennes hams and are a different color and texture than the ham in America. They are ready to eat as they are, and they are sliced in very thin slices, kind of like the Italian Parma ham.

This man had these two huge cookers of mushrooms and also cookers of a pasta with a tomato sauce and another with kind of a carbonara sauce. The other thing we see often at these markets are big cookers with something that looks like scalloped potatoes.

These are a cookie topped with kind of a marshmallow and cream mixture and covered with a pretty thick shell of chocolate, or some other flavor. The candy to the right are marshmallows covered in chocolate (Belgian, of course).

Around the town, they had several of these old bikes, parked and decorated with pine boughs.Paula, Sister and President Brubaker with the Christmas market behind them.

Paula, me and the Christmas market. See the steam coming off Paula's cup of hot chocolate.

Another one of the little bikes decorated with pine boughs.

This young man had a booth and was selling a large variety of wooden things he had made himself. We purchased two of his nativities and the Brubakers purchased several also. What a nice young man.

At another stall a man had a large number of creches he had designed and built himself. They were very unique and really well made. Both the Brubakers and we bought one. It's nice to be able to purchase directly from the artisans that make these items.

This is Durbuy from an overlook above the town.

After Durbuy, we drove to the city of Dinant. This bakery has been in operation since the 1850's. Dinant is the birthplace of Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxaphone.

Above the city is a large Citadel. We took a tram to the top and walked around the displays. It was really cold and the wind was really blowing. There are old cannons at many of the openings around the outside wall. They had a really impressive display inside the Citadel with mannequins representing the kitchen and the bakery area. Displays of old uniforms, armor and weapons. Then there was an area that replicated World War I trenches. A really impressive display. (Sis Brubaker and I sat inside a warm gift shop and drank hot chocolate.)

The view of Dinant from the Citadel is really impressive. The city is on both sides of the River Muese. The original bridge was built in the 1100's and then destroyed during World War I. It was later rebuilt. The city was originally given a charter to produce brassware.
From here we drove back to Brussels. As we said good-bye to the Brubakers, we thanked them for a truly magical time. It was so wonderful to have them plan this little getaway, make the reservations, show us their favorite places, speak French so that we could understand what people were saying to us, and just enjoy their friendship and experiencing this amazing country at Christmas time.

This week we "decorated" our apartment. We found a little fiber optic tree in our basement storage room. Carin brought us a little "Potato People" nativity and we have purchased some more at the Christmas markets this week. Our little apartment has a nice Christmas feeling as we enter this wonderful time of year. Loel bought a little DVD player so now I can watch my Christmas movies!! That made me very happy.