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)!