20-25 June 2010

This is a baptism we attended last Saturday in Eindhoven, Netherlands. We like to attend baptisms when we can and this was the only one in the mission last week. It was about 1 1/2 hrs away and of course, we got lost. We thought we may have missed it, but when we got there 15 mins late, it was just starting. We love going to baptisms. I was able to download a picture for Sis Brubaker to put on the mission blog along with the story that Elder Matthews, above, wrote. Of course we got lost on the way home, too, since the GPS kept trying to put us back on a freeway on ramp that was closed.

This is my new toy - a little notebook computer. I really love it. Now Loel and I don't fight over who gets the computer. I love it, also because I can fit it in my purse and I can take it with us when we have to drive and I can work on my journal, etc. I've taken it to zone conf and took notes on it - later Sis Brubaker asked me for my notes so I was able to quickly send those to her. I can download pictures on to it quickly and put them on the blog or send them on. I'm becoming really high tech!

This is an apartment the church rents near the office that the elders call "The Spy House." It's like something out of a Jason Bourne movie. Even the neighborhood feels that way. It used to be used by a public relations couple to oversee European Union family issues, but now it is empty. The Pankratz stayed in it until just last week when they moved up to Amsterdam. It's quite interesting - you can see that it's very narrow - yet it's 5 stories high so it's straight up and down. It even has a cool address - 7 rue Fulton. As you enter there is a basement office and bath down a flight of stairs, then it goes to a landing with a living room and parlor, then another flight up to the bathroom, then up to the kitchen and dining room, then a half flight up to the bathroom, another half flight up to the two bedrooms and a ladder to a loft.

Loel went there today to do an inspection and to water the plants, which we have to do once a week. This is what you see when you first walk in the front door - it has about 13 or 14 rooms in it, so it's a good size, but very narrow and tons of stairs. I wouldn't want to live there, even though you do have lots of space - too many stairs!

Just another picture of this interesting apartment - kind of typical of European places. When the Pankratz moved a week ago, we volunteered to help them. Loel helped Elder Pankratz load the van and I vacuumed and dusted all 5 floors! It took me two hours.

This is a basement room, 6 stories down from the main floor (we're on the 8th floor, so it's quite a ways down from our office) called "The Cave." Cave (kahv), in French, is cellar, and this definitely feels like a cellar. It's where we store all of our mission supplies, so I frequent this place a lot. Behind me are lots of Book of Mormons in many different languages.

We have so many different languages, as seen here - many that I had never heard of before. Not only do we have many Books of Mormon in lots of different languages, but also lots of pamphlets, pass-along cards, etc.

This is another view of all the boxes of Books of Mormon and other supplies in the cave.

This is the view of the cave as soon as you open the door. Loel has to start cleaning all this junk out and he's not real excited about it! There are kitchen supplies, beds, frames, tools, microwaves, sheets, old mission records, you name it, it's here. Today he found 7 huge boxes of braille Books of Mormon! (Straight back with the tan tape on it.) He's not looking forward to this project as he barely finished cleaning out our garage before we left.

I had an interesting experience last Saturday when I got my hair colored - I went to a little shop in our apartment building, and of course, the lady spoke no English. She was very nice, but we had to decide on color, etc, all with gestures and a word here or there that I understood. I told Loel that I hope I don't come back with purple hair - he said, "I hope you come home with hair!" It really turned out okay, but was a little nerve-racking.

(Loel) I went shopping for a new cordless drill (the last one was left in France when the mission split) and some car stuff (windshield washer fluid and oil). this doesn't seem like a big deal, but I had TWO sales people (one at the hardware store and one at the auto parts store) willingly speak English and wish me nice day as I left. Paula was talking to one of the French elders in the office, about customer service. He's currently working in Brussels and he said Brussels is pretty nice. He said he served in Paris and customer service in Paris is really bad. We see a huge difference between Belgium and the Netherlands and between Flemish Belgium and French Belgium. President Brubaker was talking about how public transportation is the best way to meet people. (We were in Flemish Belgium at the time.) He said the Dutch (and Flemish) want to talk to everyone. It's easy to start a conversation. The French think your literally crazy if you try to talk to them.

12-18 June 2010

This is a little bakery/ice-cream shop that we discovered walking around our neighborhood one day. The owner speaks very good English and is very friendly! Amazing! So we buy pastries, bread, and homemade ice-cream here. I'm holding a pistachio ice-cream and some bread that we bought on Saturday.

This is the Triumphal Arch du Cinquantenaire, which was built on the 100th year of Belgium independence. It's just a couple of miles from our apartment and we see it all the time, but we finally stopped and walked around and took some pictures. It has two huge museums on either side and some other big maybe government buildings around it, too.

One of the museums is an automobile museum which we walked into. This is Loel in front of a new Mercedes SLS AMG that is coming out this year - probably will cost around $200,000. We're going to tell the elders that this is the new car that Elder Tibbitts has chosen to replace their old ones (right after I get one - I saw one on the highway a couple of weeks ago)! The other museum we went into was a military one with lots of old cannons, uniforms, guns, etc. Loel's favorite was the aviation part, of course, with lots of airplanes. As we walked back to our car, Loel noticed he didn't have the keys. I ran ahead and saw that we had left them, in the ignition, with the doors unlocked - my purse in the trunk. It all could have been stolen, but we were blessed. We notice many things like this where we feel we're being watched over.



We decided to go to a well-known flea market in the Marolles district of Brussels. We were warned that it was a pretty shady part of town, and that was correct. We drove around for some time trying to find a parking place and finally found one which we hoped was legal - it was, as we didn't get a ticket! We can never read the signs. This is Loel on one of the streets close to the flea market - notice the mural behind him, the graffitti, and the trash. Not a neighborhood you'd want to walk around in after dark.

This is what it looked like - a big cobblestone square in the middle of this neighborhood, with tons of junk everywhere that anyone can bring and put out to sell. All different races and languages heard everywhere. Lots of African stuff for sale, in addition to old clothes, old kitchen things like tons of knives and forks, dishes, etc. Lots of shoes, old electronics, etc, most of which we weren't interested in. I did buy a small leather purse for 8 euros and two scarves for a euro each. We were tempted to buy a piece of tapestry, as we've been wanting one since Belgium is famous for their tapestry, but we didn't know if it was worth the 55 euros he was asking. To talk to him, I began with, "parley vous anglais?" He said "No. A problem." Yes, it was as we couldn't communicate much. Other people spoke English well, though.

Some people had nice tables with their stuff displayed nicely and orderly. Others just threw piles of stuff down on the cobblestone (maybe with a tarp underneath). As we walked back to our car, we stopped at a bakery and the owner didn't speak any English so we just pointed to what we wanted - I tried lots of different yummy little baklava kinds of things that were really good.

These are two of the 4 elders who put on a music night in the town of Sint Niklaas (pronounced kind of like Saint Nicholas, but mostly like cint knee claus) to try to attract more investigators. This is Elder Cox and Elder Favero, holding a plate of fudge that they made, all by themselves! It was delicious! All it had in it was Belgium chocolate and sweetened condensed milk. They kept saying, "You can't go wrong with Belgian chocolate!"

This is Jeff, in the middle, a newly baptized member, with Elder Sanford, who sings and plays the guitar on one side, and Elder Wood, from Alaska, who plays the violin. (These are the companions of the two elders who made the fudge.) The three of them played mostly church hymns and primary songs, but with Jeff's incredible electric guitar skills, they sounded like they could make their own CD! It was really a very moving and wonderful experience to listen to them play together. The bishop was so happy, taking pictures of the crowd of around 70 who attended. There were lots of investigators there, in fact, a saxophone player also joined them for some numbers, who is investigating the church. Sint Niklaas is a cute little town around 40 minutes from Brussels. This was a Friday night program that we were invited to attend by the elders and their ward mission leader, a very friendly man, named Sonny, from India. He kept hugging us as he thanked us so many times for coming.

Here are the sister missionaries in Antwerpen, Sister Fritz and Sister Holbein. I spent a day and a night with them, doing missionary work. This is a picture of a discussion we taught in the huge train station in Antwerpen, with lots of noise and confusion all around us. It was a pretty incredible experience to spend the time with them.

Of course we had to get frites or fries for dinner, as usual, in a little shop right near the train station or centrum. These are just two small orders but we couldn't eat them all. They are so wonderful - one has a curry ketchup sauce with fresh onions, and the other a white garlic sauce. Frites are amazing here!

Here we are on one of the many trains we took to get around to different appointments this day. These sisters talk to everyone they see - on the street, in shops, as we get fries, on the trains. They are very bold and friendly. We had two appointments that fell through, both in pretty shady parts of town, but that doesn't stop them. They are enthusiastic, positive, have a lot of fun, and love their missions. When we tried to find one of their investigators and he wasn't home, they talked to his roommate and got his phone number to try to contact him later.

This is a picture of all the Flanders missionaries who serve in the two districts in the Flemish part of Belgium. All the other missionaries in our mission serve in the Netherlands. This is a Flemish flag. We had just had a joint district meeting with Pres and Sister Brubaker attending as they conducted interviews while the meeting was going on. They go around to visit every missionary in the mission every month - they travel a ton.

This is Julie, my wonderful friend from the Antwerpen ward. She's half African (mother from the Congo) and half French. She invited us to lunch after church and we had a wonderful visit with her. Here she is showing me her photo album and telling us her story - it's pretty incredible. Loel told her she needs to write it down. She loved having us over and we loved being there. She always gives me big hugs and kisses whenever she sees me. Her English is really good. She always says, "We are sisters. We have a bond."

This is kind of a funny experience we had on our P-day. We went to one of our favorite little farmer's market not too far from our home, and were buying lots of different pastries, spices, and vegetables (we found a very nice man who spoke great English as this stand, who was very helpful and friendly!) If the French people would only learn about customer service and the importance of being nice, they would have a lot more business from us Americans!!! We also bought some yummy chicken and some cheese. Anyway, we needed eggs for the lunch we're making on Monday for the office, so we thought it would probably be cheaper to buy them here at the farmer's market. I noticed a big flat of brown eggs with the sign 2.7 euros. There were 30 eggs, so we thought this is a good price. So we told the lady, who started loading up just 6 of them. We said, no, no, we want the whole flat. She looked kind of surprised, but kept on loading up more. Then Loel noticed the sign said, "2.7 euros for 6"! It was too late to stop her, so we bought 2 1/2 dozen eggs for around $15! We're going to tell the elders they better appreciate these "golden" eggs! They must be some kind of special organic ones laid by superior chickens or something.

Here are some of Loel's thoughts on driving here. You'll understand why I don't attempt it much:

Driving is an experience in Belgium and especially Brussels. If I tried to describe it I know everyone would say I'm exagerating, so I'm going to quote from Frommer's travel guide.

Belgium: The behavior of many Belgian car drivers could easily described as "hoglike", a moderate term employed because finding the pertinent adjective would tax even the considerable powers of the English language as an instrument of personal abuse.

Part of the blame attaches to the priorite de droite (priority from the right) traffic rule, whereby in some cases (not always), traffic from the right has the right of way. You won't believe how this plays at multiple-road intersections, particularly since Belgians will give up their priorite under no known circumstances, cost what it might be. Be ready to stop instantly at all such intersections.

At rotaries (round-abouts), traffic entering the rotary has the right of way over traffic already on it, unless stop lines on the road indicate otherwise. This system has caused so much mayhem it's being changed at some accident hotspots and obvious danger zones. Not everyone knows about the changes or acts according to them, so stay alert.

Brussels: Driving in Brussels is akin to life in the Stone Age: nasty and brutish - though it's rarely short. Normally polite citizens of Brussels turn into red-eyed demons once they get behind the steering wheel. Driving is fast, except at rush hour, and always aggressive. At rush hour (which actually lasts about an hour to either side of 9am and 5pm), it is almost impossible to move on main roads inside the city and the RO outer ring road (beltway). Sunday and early mornings are better, and evening is not too bad.

Park your car either at your hotel or one of the many public parking garages - and do not set foot in it again until you're ready to leave the city.

I have to get a picture of a major traffic jam and post it here. Unfortunately, I'm usually driving and in the middle of the traffic jam.

Back to Paula: I rarely drive here. I try to drive to church on Sundays as there's no traffic, and to and from the office some days. I'm getting really good at those two destinations.

June 7-11, 2010

This week is zone conference week. We rotate around the four zones and go a different place each month. This is the chapel in Rotterdam; one of the oldest in the Netherlands. There are four zones in the mission and two meet one day and the other two meet together the next day. Even though this wasn't where our zone met, we came to this one to deliver zone supplies (boxes and boxes of them!) and Loel had to distribute all the new cell phones that they had ordered for all the missionaries. The missionaries were so excited to get their cell phones, but the only problem was, the cell phone provider hadn't taken the internet off their phones as requested! So the missionaries quickly figured out they all had the internet!!! The Pres hurridly made an announcement for everyone to turn off their phones until we got this fixed. Missionaries only get about 30 mins a week to use the internet to read emails and write them a week, so this would not have worked.  Plus our mission budget couldn't support the additional cost.

We are so impressed with the missionaries in our mission.  They are so intelligent and dedicated.  Today I was talking with an elder from Maryland that finished his degree in Elementary Education-Special Education and then decided to serve a mission.  He had been offered a teaching position at the school he interned at, and insteaad chose to first serve a mission.  This is the kind of commitment we see in all the missionaries.  Zone Conference is so special because this is the one opportunity each month that we see all the missionaries in our zone and have an opportunity to hear from President and Sister Brubaker.  We are so impressed with both of them and feel so blessed to be able to associate with them.  Serving in the office we get to see them all day every Monday, as that's the one day of the week that President and Sister Brubaker are in the office.

These ladies are fast becoming my best friends! From left to right: Sister Salden, Sister Pankratz, Sister Langeveld, me, (all senior missionaries) and Sister Brubaker (Pres' wife). We all helped get the zone conf lunch ready, which the missionaries consumed quickly. They leave very few leftovers.

This is a Spanish braille Book of Mormon! All of these binders are one Book of Mormon. It fits into a huge box! Just one of the many supplies I order for all of the missionaries. We bring them to zone conf once a month to distribute, along with all the mail I've collected. We also deliver the mission newsletter, where I now have a column entitled, "Sister Tibbitts' Tidbits."

 These are the four sister missionaries in our zone and the Apeldoorn zone, and myself and Sister Brubaker.  This was our zone conference day and so we stayed the entire day and loved it.  The theme this month was using teaching records to help commit our investigators to baptism right from the start of teaching them.  We practiced with two sisters; Loel and I were, of course, the investigators!  These two sisters who practiced with us are on either side of me - the one on my left is brand new - we just picked her up at the airport 3 weeks ago.  They were incredible teachers!!!  I was going to try to be a hard-nosed investigator who didn't want to commit to baptism, but they were so loving, kind, accepting, strong, etc, that I got emotional and felt like saying, "Yes, yes, I want to be baptized, let's set a date!"  The Spirit was very strong in that little room we were practicing in in the chapel in Apeldoorn, a beautiful city 2 1/2 hrs north of Brussels in the Netherlands.

This is our cute little car - a Renault, Modus. Small is very important as you weave in and out of traffic. Loel is getting very good at driving here. I can drive to church on Sunday (when there's no traffic!) and to and from the office, which is about 7 minutes away, but in traffic jam times, it takes 25 minutes. And Brussels has lots of traffic jams. I'm trying to become more comfortable with the driving here.

This is a very cool old church we discovered just walking around our neighborhood one morning. I loved the look of the stones. I'm standing in front.

Side view of same church.

Another view of same church.

This was a picture taken on a drive out to a military base near Mons, Belgium, which is actually part of the France/Paris Mission. It was a beautiful drive in the country and a nice break from the big, noisy city of Brussels. We load up on supplies at the base.

This is Elder Conder, a new elder in the office who is learning how to be a financial secretary. They will often buy these huge sandwiches from the kebap place down the street from the office. They are full of meat, veggies, tons of sauce, and fries!!! I can't believe the elders can eat the whole thing!!!  The picture is not an optical illusion.  Elder Owen's comment was, "Sister Brubaker would not approve of this.

Our Antwerpen District had another baptism this past week - an 80 year old man whose been coming to church with his faithful wife for 30 years! He just decided he was ready. It was very touching to see how happy his wife was. He was a big man so two men (members of the ward) went down into the font with him; one to baptize him, and the other to help lift him up out of the water.  Sister Brubaker put a picture of Brother Willems on the mission blog and an unidentified person commented, "No way.  I taught him 15 years ago".

I bought a new little notebook computer at the base last week and I love it!  Loel downloaded all my programs on it, hooked up the modem so he and I can both do emails, etc, in the evenings now.  So now I use my little laptop to write in my journal, download pictures, and even type in my journal while we're driving.  I brought it to the office the day after buying it, and all the elders were really jealous of my new toy!  I even took it to zone conference and used it to type up my notes.  It fits in my purse.

May 29 - June 4, 2010

There are also some additional pictures of Valkenburg and The Netherlands American Cemetery at: http://picasaweb.google.com/loelbt/Valkenburg?feat=email#. You have to cut and paste this into your browser to see the pictures.








We went on a senior couples retreat over Memorial Day weekend to Valkenburg, a little town close to the German border in the Netherlands. Loel was asked by Pres Brubaker to represent him at a special Memorial Day ceremony that they do every year at an American cemetary where 8301 American soldiers are buried in the town of Margraten. This is a statute on the grounds at the cemetary.


You can kind of see Loel behind the white podium, bowing his head as he presented the wreath ordered from the Church. He had a military escort walking him to the front and back again. It was a beautiful and moving ceremony. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was present, the U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands was there and the U.S Director of Veterans Affairs was present. Both the Ambassador and the Director spoke along with representatives from the Dutch government. The speeches focused on the tremendous sacrifice from those who lay in the cemetery and how grateful the people of the Netherlands are for the Americans who gave their lives for their freedom during the Second World War.
The flowers were beautiful around the cemetary of white crosses. It was a very rainy and windy day, so as Loel and I sat in our special assigned seats towards the front, sometimes all the umbrellas would come up as it started to rain and blow. It was pretty cold. Yet for most of the ceremony, it didn't rain. After all the wreaths were presented, it started pouring!
All the wreaths were laid out before the ceremony - there were some really pretty ones, but ours was one of the very nicest! The Queen even came to the ceremony, although I couldn't see her. There were many dignitaries there with musical numbers interspersed between their speeches.

Here is Loel, walking to the front to lay the wreath with his military escort.


Elder Tanner Brockbank (the missionary holding the blue umbrella) is from our stake and we had attended church at his little military ward in Heerlen, a town nearby. Sister Brubaker invited he and his companion to come with us to the ceremony. We were grateful we had two extra coats to loan to him and Elder Black.
This is a picture of our whole group of seniors (and the young elders in the middle) before the ceremony started. Notice the umbrellas! We were eating our lunches, huddled under umbrellas as the rain poured down, but then it would clear and be okay.
I was in charge of finding a hotel for all of us to stay in on Saturday night in Valkenburg. It proved to be quite a feat as it was packed this weekend for a music festival. This is a picture of our hotel and the breakfast that was included - it was a typical Dutch breakfast of everything you can imagine - lots of meats, crepes, pancakes, eggs, granola, yogurt, bacon, fruit, juice, etc. Very delicious.


On Saturday we were taken on a 5 1/2 hour walking tour of Valkenburg and the surrounding areas. It was fascinating. This was in an old church and was a beautiful mosaic wall.
This is the back of the church that the mosaic was in. It had beautiful fresco paintings all over the ceilings and walls in honor of a particular saint.

These are little homes built into the side of the mountain - kind of little cave homes. No one lives here any more.
Just a picturesque hotel that we encountered on our long walk.
Another cool house along the way. Below is a little farmhouse in Valkenborg that the owner just let us walk around her gardens, courtyard, and even showed us into her house with lots of antiques, etc.
This is Elder Salden (with missionary tag, of course!) who is one of the senior couples in our mission. His brother is next to him and he was our tour guide throughout the day. He knew everything about the area as he lives nearby. Elder Salden is Dutch and his family lives in this area, so he's completely at home on his mission. He and Sister Salden now live in Santa Cruz and plan on returning to the Netherlands for a 2nd mission soon. They will probably go home in Oct and return in January for a 2nd mission. They love it here!
This was the Hotel Scheepers; it was cute and nice and clean. We loved it. Pres and Sister Brubaker were able to join us Sat night for dinner and then Sis Brubaker stayed with us all day Sunday but Pres had to spend his day in meetings with general authorities. We loved having Sis Brubaker drive home with us in our little car with the Pankratz - the three of us women were squished in the backseat for 2 hours, but we loved having the chance to visit and get to know each other better. We are all great friends.



This is a random picture of a meat truck that comes and delivers meat to our deli right by our apartment. We walk by it every day that we walk as it's on the way to our park.

This is a really cool old LDS church in Dordrecht, Netherlands, which used to be an old mansion. The parking is terrible, as there is none, only street parking, and it's really close to the middle of town. We had a leadership meeting here this week that we helped with lunch and Loel had to give the elders a presentation on cars and inspect some of their cars. I went for a walk with the Langevelds, another senior couple who works in this city. They are so nice; took me all around the centrum, helped me find the book I was looking for on Holland, showed us their apartment, etc. They love it here; he served in Holland as a young man.

This is the cool stain glass window that is in the front of the church in Dordrecht.
This is a little drawbridge that we could look down on from a balcony of the apartment in the town of Leeuwarden, which is about 4 hours north of Brussels. We were helping to clean out this apartment and close it down since the senior couple left and we won't be putting any other missionaries in that city. It's a nice town and we enjoyed being there for two days, spending some of our time with two other senior couples. We spent the night in the apartment.

While we were there, a nice 80 year old Dutch lady who lived next door took us to this Chinese restaurant where we had an Indonesia dish called rijstoefel (spelled wrong). Look at the variety of foods we were able to try! This was just for the two of us! We had asked Elder Salden to ask Siska, this Dutch lady, where a good restaurant would be. She spoke no English and we don't speak Dutch. She offered to lead us there in her car, yet when we got downstairs, she motioned for us to get in her car. We wondered if maybe she was going to have dinner with us, or maybe we were going to a takeout restaurant? But when she walked into the restaurant with us, she chattered away in Dutch to the waiter, giving them her phone number so they could call her when we were finished - then she came back and drove us home! We pretty much drove in silence since we don't speak each other's language, but we did say "bedank" lots of times (means thanks)!