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.