First Week in Brussels

We are actually here! We flew in this past Tuesday morning, tired, a little anxious, but happy to finally have arrived. The current office couple, the Pankratz, met us at the airport along with Pres and Sister Brubaker. They were all so happy to see us; it felt wonderful. The Pankratz showed us around the office, took us out to lunch at this kebop place, which was kind of like a spicey chicken wrap with lots of things in it and the famous Belgium fries with mayonnaise sauce. then they took us grocery shopping, showed us our apt. and then left us alone to unpack and take a much needed nap, after almost no sleep for the past 2 nights.

Our apartment is small, but not too small, and nice. Everything is small in Europe - the streets are narrow, the cars are small, our bathroom with tub and shower has our washing machine in it and Loel and I together couldn't fit in it at the same time. The other little toilet room has barely enough room for the toilet with a teeny tiny little doll size sink in the corner! Our bedroom and kitchen are small but not too tiny. Our kitchen has our dryer in it. We have big sunny windows along the whole side of our apt which is nice and bright. Notice the picture of me in the tiny elevator - it barely can hold 3 people!

The Pankratz came back to get us and took us to the mission home where we had a wonderful leisurely visit and dinner with Pres and Sis Brubaker. She prepared a delicious meal and we had a nice visit, just the 6 of us. I was amazed at how much time they spent with us when they had one of their daughters and her family coming to visit the next morning. The mission home is big and beautiful in a very nice neighborhood about 20 mins from the office.

Pres Brubaker then had us come into his study and interviewed us. Told us again how excited and happy he was to have us serve. Said he’d like us to do all the things the Pankratz do (apartments, cars, cell phones, ordering supplies, referrals, etc. They have an elder who does secretarial and legality (visas, etc) stuff and one who does finances. Yet the Pres wants us to learn these things, too, so we can be the ones to train the new elders instead of having 1 elder spend a 6 week transfer in the office and time away from proslyting to train the next one (this happens for both the legality secretary and the financial secretary). He said if we see something that can be done better, etc. then do it. He wants us to have a great experience and said we are welcome to get involved in some missionary activities, too, not just apts and office stuff. He recommended we attend the Antwerpen ward as they have lots of English speakers there and we can help there and get involved. It’s about 30 mins away from here. We told the Pres in our interview that we would do anything he wanted – we want to be a help and a support in any way that we can. He was just so genuinely happy to have us that he wanted to hug me at the end, but couldn’t, so shook my hand instead and hugged Loel. He said he knew we had a wealth of experience that would be great to draw on in many ways. He mentioned that we are the first senior couple that has come since he has been the President - the others were already here. I think there are 4 others. We met the Elder & Sister Phair - he's the brother of a man in our ward. They are serving in Brussels but are now in the Paris France Mission since the mission split in March.

Pres Brubaker said they would like to move the office and mission home closer to the center of the mission – they’re trying to get out of their leases in Brussels if they can. The Brubakers travel around the whole mission every month, interviewing each missionary. They are gone about 4 nights a week, so would like to be more centrally located. So we could move at some point, but I get the impression it won’t be real soon.

So on Wednesday and Thursday we were receiving training in the office with the Pankratz. We're learning a lot about how much goes into running a mission office - it's pretty amazing. It's making me wish I had paid more attention to all that my office staff was doing as I am now working with Word, Excel, ordering things, mail, referrals, etc. It's all important. Loel's learning how to find apartments, close them down, maintain them, do the vehicle reports, etc etc etc. Their internet has been down in mission office for the last 2 months, but it got fixed the day after we arrived! We were very happy. They all said we were bringing good luck. The office is in a nice office bldg with plenty of space for us on the 8th floor - very nice view.

We got our own car on Wed night and Loel is pretty good at driving around this crazy place! I haven't attempted it yet! With all the street signs being very hard to find and very hard to read (they're listed in both French and Dutch), the roads so narrow, the traffic is wild, etc, it's going to take me some getting used to. Our car is very small, of course, like everything else here! You absolutely HAVE to have a GPS here; i don't know what we'd do without it. It gets us everywhere and when we miss our turn, it tell us how to go a different way. We couldn't exist without it. It also warns us of when a safety camera is coming up and what the speed limit is so we won't get a ticket! Lots of people get tickets here and they're expensive.

Friday the Pankratz had family in town (every senior couple we've talked to so far has lots of family come visit, it's great), so we were on our own. We stayed pretty busy all day, trying to go through computer files, paper files, etc. I have a huge list of questions for Sis Pankratz on Monday. They will stay here to train us as long as we need them to and then will move to Amsterdam where they will serve in a young adult outreach center. He speaks Dutch from his former mission.

We've posted some pictures of a walk we took around our neighborhood. The big bldg is our apt bldg and there's one of me standing in front of the entrance to it.

The other pictures are of our fun sightseeing adventure today (Sat is our P-day) to the Grand Place, kind of the center of Brussels and the most famous place tourists go. It reminded me a lot of the big square in Venice. Big old churches, a town hall, the king's house, etc. There's a picture of me eating the famous Belgium fries with mayonanise and ketchup poured on separately. We also had to get a Belgium waffle with strawberries, bananas, chocolate, pistachio ice-cream, and whipped cream! Very good. I want to experience as much of the culture as I can while here and enjoy learning about this country and the Netherlands.

We've found that it's a lot different to live in a foreign country than it is to visit one. We tried to get some food from a deli last night and were completely lost - tons of people all around us, all speaking French, we didn't know how to get our food, how to pay, etc. We figured it out, and most people do speak some English, which is nice, but all the instructions for anything (washer, dryer, cooking things, signs in stores, street signs, etc) are all in Dutch or French. Even my cell phone - the instructions are in Dutch so I can't figure out how to get my messages! But we're trying to learn - we'll go to a Dutch speaking ward tomorrow, so that should be fun! There are two elders and two sister missionaries in that ward so they'll help us out.