May 16 - 21, 2010

This is a picture of me, Sister Holbien and Sister Gulliver having our companion study hour in their apartment in Antwerpen. I spent 24 hours with these sisters on an exchange, and had a wonderful day, experiencing first hand what life was like as a young missionary in our mission. Sister Holbien, on my left, is a greenie of 6 weeks and Sister Gulliver is going home next week. Both are dedicated, excellent missionaries.



Of course, they had to take me to get a Belgian waffle at their favorite place, which is at the train station. It was warm, kind of sweet and crispy, smothered in warm chocolate and topped with whip cream. You can hardly imagine how good it was!!! I told them that I wanted to experience very traditional Belgian cuisine, and this was it. Unfortunately it didn't sit well with Sis Holbien's stomach as we had had fries or "friets" the night before.



Here is a picture of us eating dinner at the friets shop outside on the big central square. I asked what was truly Belgian that we should have for dinner and they said, "fries!" So we did - with mayonnaise, ketsup, and fresh chopped onions on top. But we didn't only eat on our exchange, we did some serious missionary work. I was so impressed with how we would pray, plan, then proceed with our plan, with goals set, etc. We took lots of trains and trams all around town, walked a ton (I got blisters), ran for trains, checked out referrals, street contacted, etc.



This is a fairly new member family we went to visit from Africa. Grace has the cutest baby; this is her mom next to her. We gave them on member lesson on the importance of the Sabbath and taking the Sacrament. On our long walk to check out a Temple Square referral (he wasn't home), we stopped a man walking down the street and actually had a great discussion with him. Course it was all in Dutch so I didn't understand much, but the sisters were very excited as they gave him a Book of Mormon, got his phone number, etc. We even had a prayer with him, the 4 of us, right on the street.



this is the incredible train station in Antwerpen. It used to be a king's palace or something, and they couldn't afford to keep it, so it was bought by the city. It is rumored to be the most beautiful train station around. I wouldn't doubt it.








This is the inside of the train station. Notice the posters of the girls in scantily clad swimming suits. These posters are everywhere, but this is mild compared to some of the others we see all the time.









Here's Loel in his office in the mission office. It's a very nice office building; we're on the 8th floor. Both Loel and I don't have windows in our offices, but right outside our offices are the big lobby and reception area and it is lined with huge picture windows that overlook the city - very picturesque.






This is my office. I have a very large storage room attached to it with all the missionary supplies. There are hundreds of Books of Mormon in languages that I never heard of - today missionaries came and took 5 Books of Mormon in Lingala. I also have tons of pamphlets and other books in numerous other languages.






These are the office elders. Elder Owens is sitting down. He's the secretary who handles all of the legality issues. Elder Bell is standing up and is over all the finances. They both are from Idaho and have been a huge help to us as we are learning our jobs.








This is a picture of our little stairwell in our apartment, looking down the spiral stairs. Makes you kind of dizzy to walk down them.









Just a pretty house we walk by each day on the way to the park that we walk in.











Lots of baby ducks we pass on our morning walk - there was a huge pile of them climbing all over each other here. The next two pictures are more of the park.

We call this huge church and school "Hogwart" as that is what Sis Pankratz named it. We pass by it on our way to the office each morning. It is huge and very beautiful. It's real name is St. Michael's.

Here is the Antwerpen district that we're in. This is at one of our district meetings we have about every other Tuesday and sometimes more often. Our district is pretty amazing with the assistants, office elders, the sisters, and two senior couples! We always have lunch first, here in the kitchen, and then have about an hour lesson where we role play different aspects of missionary work. The senior couples always get to be the investigators or the members; the missionaries get to be the missionaries. I think our district is leading the mission in baptisms. We attended two baptisms this past week where one young man was baptized, then two women. we have another scheduled for this Sunday.

As a side note, Loel and I traveled out of our mission to Mons, Belgium, to a military base and got our "yellow cards", which is no small feat! i felt like an illegal alien getting my green card! We had a really nice senior couple (the Browns) who work in the archives for their mission there in Mons, take us with them to help us. They were so nice - it took about 4 1/2 hrs to get the ID's, show us around, and then take us to the commissary to shop, which was about 20 minutes further through a couple little towns. I felt like a kid in a candy shop when we got to the commissary - American food, labels I could actually read, a check out procedure I could understand, etc. We bought a ton of groceries since we are going to be cooking lunch each Monday for the office staff, and the Pres and his wife, of 8 - 10 people. It was lots of fun making numerous trips up the 6 floors to our apartment, carrying all of our bags. We were in our tiny elevator, thank goodness; we didn't to walk up the stairs. This yellow card not only allows us shopping privileges, but we can use the clinic, get prescriptions, get our teeth cleaned, and some PO privileges. We thanked the Browns profusely for helping us and they said it was nice to have a diversion, as they spend every day entering marriage and death records in on the computer in this government archive building.