July 24 - 30, 2010

Paula's preparing for her trip to Paris this weekend, with Sister Brubaker. I'll start writing and she can explain her trip and why she's leaving me home. (I'll write about my trip next week - Sis Brubaker invited me to be her companion as she needs to go to Paris for the weekend and the President can't go. I jumped at the chance.)



This is Kai. He was born on the 20th of July to Dustin and Mia. We had a chance to see him on Skype yesterday morning as Dustin was up on night duty trying to get him to stay awake a little longer. It looked like he was sleeping just as soundly yesterday. Kai's the number 20 grandchild.

This is JJ. He was born to Tara and Jesse on July 25th. He's number 21.

This is Paula here now. So this is the happy family on the day JJ was born. It hasn't been easy to be gone and miss 3 babies (Shelly's Jane was born one week after we got here) being born. So I've shed a few tears. One morning we were reading scriptures and read the one in 2 Nephi 21 about Adam and Eve before the fall and how they "knew no joy, having no misery." I felt like in some ways that's what I'm experiencing. I know that life is full of contrasts and you have to have the hard times to appreciate the good times. I know we're where we should be - even our kids who are having babies tell us that. And as Brad said one night, "Mom, you are in the right place. There will be plenty of time for you to help your kids and your grandkids when you get home." I realize that this separation is only going to make the reunion even sweeter.

About every six weeks we have a group of missionaries that have to come to Brussels to complete some legal requirements. They always walk to the Kabop place down the street, get some sandwiches and bring them back to the office to eat. One of the benefits of the office is seeing our missionaries periodically.

We went to Leuven last week to inspect an apartment and we drove by the town square. This is the church in the square and like most other old cities, the church is a focal point of the center of the old city.

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The town hall is another impressive building. Leuven is a university town with a world recognized university and a very large medical school.

This has been kind of a "slow news" week so I'm going to add some pictures of a process that fascinates me. We've shown you pictures of out tiny elevator and stairwell. In order to move furniture in or out of apartments above the ground floor this little truck is required. The truck rolls up.

It extends a boom that reaches to the floor that the furniture is being moved to/from.

We live on the fifth floor, so this lift is going to about the seventh floor.

Once the lift is in place, the platform is extended and the goods to be lifted are placed on it. In this instance they were just delivering some kitchen things that we, in the U.S., would just carry through the front door. Here it's a major project to get it into the apartment.

You can see that the delivery is pretty small. But too big to get in the elevator.

All the way to the top.

This past week I had a chance to go with the elders on a visit to a man who is really interested in the Church. Right now he has a baptismal date for the 8th of August. It's always a great opportunity to go with the elders and watch them in action. These is our Office Elders and they are really good young men. We get to be with them all day, every day and we love it.

Paula again. I had a neat experience this week - a Peruvian lady came into the office to have me help her with her English - she's been coming in and seeing lots of senior missionaries over the years. I helped her for over an hour and then I was able to bear my testimony to her and told her that our mission is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the people here. I told her that if she really wanted peace and happiness in her life, it wouldn't come from learning English better, but from listening to our message. I really felt the spirit as I shared my testimony with her. I felt like I was putting into practice what we had just learned in our district meeting the day before. I gave her the sister missionaries in Brussels number and gave them her number afterwards and she agreed to see them. I don't know what will come of it, but it felt good.

I was also able to teach with the sisters last Sunday. We had a good experience with a man from Portugal, sharing the message of the Gospel. When we got home, I got the phone call from Tara telling me that she had had the baby. It kind of softened it a little to feel like at the same time she was giving birth, I was also participating in a "birth" of sorts of this man as we shared the message of the gospel. I also had a good experience on the train with the sisters on our way over, sitting by and talking to a nice lady and then giving her a pass along card as we got off the train. The sisters were real proud of me!

We were invited to dinner at the Seckler's this past week! Since we really don't know anyone in Brussels, this was pretty cool. They are friends of the Ellertson's that we met before we left, but since we don't go to church here, we've never seen them - but they invited us over to their very nice apartment - very big and shared a lovely dinner with us and their two twin 17 year old boys. David, the father, LOVES UVU and wants his boys to go there, so he had me doing some major career counseling after dinner - it was fun to feel like I was back in the saddle again.

July 17-23, 2010

Brad and Emily were still with us this week so be prepared for lots of pictures of many sights!! Saturday we spent first taking them to our favorite farmer's market where we bought lots of veges for the salad we made on Monday - Emily was so excited as she found some spices she bought that she can't find in the US.
This picture above is in Brugge, which is where we spent the rest of our day. It's the Michelangelo sculpture "Madonna and Child" and is the only one of his that has been taken from Italy. It was purchased from Michelangelo by a Brugge businessman and given to a very old church in one of the main market squares.

Of course we had to go on a canal boat ride and take more pretty pictures like this one. Everywhere you look is another photo opportunity.

More cool houses along the canals. We spent the day mainly wandering around town and sampling lots of fun food. The weather was perfect. The crowds weren't, though. We're looking forward to going back when it's not the height of the tourist season.

Cute Brad and Emily near a bridge.

Pres and Sis Brubaker had told us about this shop and we found it and it was true! It was the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted! And only 1.75 euros. We were in heaven.
We actually took a tour of a chocolate museum that was a little boring. We wished we had just spent that money on buying more chocolates - we couldn't believe how many chocolate shops there were - we also got gelato and had a nice dinner right near the canal - getting Flemish stew and another traditional dish.

On Sunday we took Brad and Em to our ward in Antwerpen - it was really fun to introduce them to many friends there. They enjoyed our African Sunday school class, just like we do, with some investigators and great teacher. Julie (my friend from the ward) asked to come with us to this baptism after church to Leuven - a town about an hour away from Antwerpen. The office elders had taught this man from Nepal and we had taken him with us to Sint Niklaas to witness another baptism a few weeks before. It was a wonderful service. He was so happy and there were other investigators there that we visited with. It was fun having Julie with us on the way there and back to Brussels as she told her story to Brad and Em. They really enjoyed having her there.
That night, Brad, Em and I went for a nice walk to our favorite park and around our little neighborhood. It was a delightful evening.

Tuesday we headed off to the Netherlands for 2 days, staying in an empty apartment in Rotterdam so we wouldn't have to drive back and forth to Brussels each day. This is a picture of me in front of many bikes in the town of Haarlem. Two story bike racks are really common. As we said before, bikes are every where and they have their own bike paths. If you walk on the bike path, they'll run over you. We mainly wandered around, got gelato, shopped a little, etc.

This is in the Hiding Place museum where Corrie Ten Boom hid the Jewish people from the Nazis. It was interesting to listen to our tour guide who kind of had her own agenda to preach about her religious beliefs. I felt like she used her being a guide as a podium for her own beliefs which I'm not sure were really the same as the Ten Booms. Loel gave her a pass along card as we left. This picture shows how the people would crawl through this little cupboard thing and they were hidden in this false wall (cut out so people can see). Corrie's whole family was captured and sent to a concentration camp where she was the only one to survive. Man's inhumanity to man is incomprehensible.

Brad and Em in the main centrum of Haarlem. We liked this city but didn't love it.

This is the city of Delft - the place where they make the blue and white Royal Delftware pottery. We really liked the feel of this town - the canals, cute houses, etc.

Loel drove down this little street quite a ways, only to find out it was blocked off so he had to carefully back all the way back. Along the way, these big swans were out on the street so Emily jumped out to try to pet them!?? Brad yells, "Watch out, Em, they're mean!" They were arching their necks and Brad was saying, "That's their war cry!"

I had looked everywhere for an oilcloth table cloth like this one - Sister Brubaker had one and I loved it. I finally found it in Delft - at a hardware store in a big roll. Emily liked it so much that she got one, too. I've got it on my kitchen table and I love it.

We were able to meet up with Pres and Sis Brubaker in this little town of Broek in Waterland, which we all fell in love with. We had breakfast with them before they raced off to interviews for the day - in the backyard of their bed and breakfast place. It was the most beautiful, peaceful settings I've ever been in. Right on a lake. The breakfast was amazing - warm hard boiled egg, fresh fruit and yogurt, a meat and cheese tray, many different kinds of bread and rolls, fresh squeezed orange juice, hot chocolate - Brad was in heaven and he and Em loved getting to know the Brubakers a little more. Afterwards, Brad said, "It's nice to know you're in good hands."

Just one of the many beautiful scenes we saw as we wandered around this darling town. It's only 12 minutes from the Amsterdam chapel, but feels like you're in another world.

This was the view from our breakfast table.

Us in front of the Brubaker's bed and breakfast place. I could live in this town.

We headed over to Edam, the little town they named the red balls of cheese after. This is just one of the cute houses we passed on the way as we walked to the center of town where they were having re-enactment of a cheese market.

Just a pretty bridge over a canal on our walk through Edam.

This is a boat, bringing the cheese to the market. Yellow for the local market, red for export.

At the market they unload the rounds of cheese and carry them around on these funny little things. The buyers look at the cheese and bid on it. This market is daily for tourists, but there's a real one in another city that's only held on Friday. Everyone in the market is dressed in traditional dress. We bought some green pesto cheese and little round of a garlic cheese.

This is the fishing town of Voldendam - this is the little harbor - lots of shops and stores where you can put on Dutch clothes and get your picture taken. We wandered around for a while. I don't think there's much going on in these little towns in the winter without the tourists.

Out next stop was a nearby island that had these cute little baby ducks swimming in a canal. This town is named Marken.

And it's famous for it's green and white houses - they're all this color in the whole town. Very picturesque.

We wandered through very narrow streets and then out to the pier.

Our last stop of the day on our way back to Brussels, was Kinderdijk, the place of 19 windmills. We were so tired from walking all day, I wondered if we really wanted to make this detour - and then when I saw how far the walk was to get to the windmills, I wondered if I wanted to walk again. It was well worth it. The windmills are majestic and some date back to the 1500s or earlier. There was one here with a date of 1740 on it.

Spending this time with Brad and Emily visiting these sites in Belgium and the Netherlands makes us realize how blessed we are to be serving in these beautiful, historic countries. We saw so much beauty and learned so much. We realize we've just scratched the surface. We started making plans to travel back to the Netherlands on weekends late this summer and this fall.

More windmills at Kinderdijk. Cool reflection. The water was calm and the late afternoon lighting was good.

On Monday for our luncheon that we always bring to the office, I asked Emily if she dared to make her famous cinnamon rolls in our crazy oven and tiny kitchen. She readily agreed, so Brad and I helped her and they turned out incredibly good. They came with us to the office for lunch and the cinnamon rolls smelled so good that the president and the elders came in and ate them before lunch, even though they were kind of dessert. We also made spaghetti, french bread, and a big green salad. The cinnamon rolls were definitely the hit. Turns out Emily knows some of the Brubaker's kids and they knew some of Emily's sisters. Small world - they do come from the same stake in SLC.
After lunch we took Brad and Em out to Breendonk, a prison/concentration camp not far from Brussels. It was very informative, but so stark, with the audio guide telling us about all of the torture and death that went on there, plus starvation, beatings, illnesses, bugs, etc. I was very glad when it was over and wouldn't go back. Way too depressing.
After we took Brad and Em to see the Spy House and they loved seeing a traditional straight up and down narrow European apartment. Then on to get kebops - we tried to get Brad to order one of the huge sandwiches the elders get with fries stuck in them, but he said he couldn't eat it all.
So Thursday morning it was time to say good-bye as we took Brad and Em to the airport to fly home. I only cried a little. It had been such a wonderful time together and felt like just the right amount of time. It actually felt good to get back to the office and start getting caught up on things that needed to be done. Several French missionaries came to the office for legality work and it was nice to meet and talk to them. Friday a whole group of elders, two sisters, and a senior couple, the Langevelds,(all from our mission) came to the office for legality issues. I made some great banana bread (thanks to the ward cookbook which we brought with us that we have used constantly!), and brought it into the office - it was a big hit and was gone pretty fast. We have so much fun with all the missionaries - we're all good friends now.

July 10-16, 2010

On our P-day, the elders had invited us to go to this Tall Ships Race in Antwerpen. There were about 100 tall ships docked in the Antwerpen piers that we were able to look at, and actually go on board and look around. The ships arrive in Antwerpen each year from around the world to participate in a race from Antwerpen to Norway to England. Many are crewed by young men as a nautical training experience. We actually got lost trying to get there as we had left our GPS in a different car and it was locked in our office garage - so this is not a good situation in Antwerpen, the 2nd largest city in Belgium, trying to find your way without a GPS! Luckily, the Brubakers were coming, too, so they guided us with their iPhone to where they were and we parked. We met up with our whole district there, including a member couple and an investigator the elders are working with.

More pictures of tall ships. They were really cool looking - some were as old as 1915 - they were from all different countries. Unfortunately, we were still having unseasonal hot weather and it was in the 90's that afternoon, so it wasn't real comfortable.

Kind of a cool picture Loel took of the old way, with the compass, and the new way, with the GPS! On this ship, a young adult aged girl came up and started talking to Loel, thinking he was the captain of the ship since he had a name badge on!!! Sis Brubaker was with us at the time and so of course, she's really great about joining in the conversation, explaining who we are, what we do, our message, the Gospel, etc. Loel and I joined in at times, I found a pass along card in my purse which we gave to her, Loel told her a little about the Book of Mormon, etc. We tried to get her phone # but she said she'd call the sisters if she wanted to learn more. She kept talking to us for about 25 mins. It was pretty cool.

This is a really sweet Russian family that we visited after the tall ships, taking the sisters from Antwerpen with us as they live kind of far away and it's hard for them to get there on the train. Only problem was, we had to find it without our GPS!!! We followed the Brubakers to the freeway and then used the elders' directions and we made it pretty well. We had a really nice visit with them (although it was was very hot still) and then took a few pictures afterwards.
Now came the fun part - getting back to Antwerpen, which we did, but we got lost trying to find the sister's house with no GPS. It was starting to really cloud up and had gotten very dark (even though it was only 8:00 pm), so it was practically impossible to read the street signs - the sisters don't drive anywhere so they only know the way home on trains, and we were driving around in circles - one time ending up on tram tracks going the wrong way!!! Finally, the sisters said, "There's the train station; we know how to get home from here. Just drop us off and then you can just try to find the freeway home to Brussels." So we did that, both of us praying the whole time that we would make it home okay. I suggested we just drive to a main street and then maybe we could find some signs to the freeway. We actually did just that! Loel started to recognize the area we were in, and all of a sudden, we were on the freeway driving home to Brussels. It was kind of a miracle. It poured buckets on the way home. We had to stop and get fries by our house to take home and eat for the dinner we had missed.

On Sunday we attended a correlation meeting with our wonderful ward mission leader, Brother Nuyens. He is around 72, so dedicated, carefully would review each investigators with the 6 of us missionaries in the meeting, discuss which members should work with each one of them, etc. He speaks no English and we speak no Dutch, so the elders and sisters translated. It was really a pretty special meeting. At the end, Loel asked the elders to translate and he told Brother Nuyans that he had been a bishop and he was very impressed with his dedication to a calling as a ward mission leader. He got kind of emotional and so did Brother Nuyens. At the end of the meeting, Brother Nuyens gave Loel a big hug.

Guess who our first visitors were???? Brad and Emily! This is the happy reunion in the train station with all their backpacks, where we picked them up. I couldn't stop hugging Brad and crying! Emily's looking on, and behind Brad, you can see Tiffany, one of their friends who came with them watching and smiling. Pres Brubaker is so great about having family come to visit the senior couples - we worked hard before they arrived to make sure we were completely caught up on all our work and always keep our cell phones with us in case we're needed.

We took them to the Grand Place, where we take the new missionaries, (which they were very impressed with) and then to the Greek restaurant where we also take the new missionaries. They LOVED the food! Big gyro type things with tons of fries and 5 different kinds of fry sauce. The owner loves missionaries and I think gave us extra portions of fries. We couldn't eat all our food. Course we walked around for a while and then had to get Belgian waffles - again, a big hit.

The next morning we dropped Brad and Em off bright and early at the train station so they could use their Eurail passes one more time and go to Luxembourg free for the day. We also then took Mike and Tiffany to the airport as they were flying home that morning. They gave us the sweetest note as they left, thanking us for being the best host and hostess of their entire trip! (I think we were the only ones!!) This is a picture of the airport - instead of "Park and Ride" it's "Kiss and Ride" here.
We worked at the office today and then came home to make some dinner from Brad and Em when they returned around 9:15 pm to the train station. Except they called while we were waiting to tell us that their train had been delayed because of a big storm we had that night and wouldn't be in for another hour and a half maybe. Then later they borrowed another person's cell phone to call us around 11:00 pm to tell us they were not coming to the train station we thought, but a different one we had never been to.
So we took off pretty worried with our GPS at 11 pm at night into an unknown part of Brussels (not a very good part of town) hoping we could find them - the worst part is trying to find each other at a huge train station when they didn't have a cell phone and we didn't know even where to park or where they might come out. Loel parked illegally, left me in the car, and took off to find them. I was terrified, praying, and in about 1 min, they found each other and returned!!! kind of a miracle, really.
The next day we took them to Antwerpen with us for Zone Conference - they helped us carry in all my boxes of supplies and got to meet lots of our missionaries - plus the Brubakers. It was so fun to introduce them to all our friends! Then Loel took them downtown Antwerpen to hang out for the day while we went to zone conf. It was a great conf again - we loved it, and then we picked them up at the end of the day and went to dinner at a yummy Italian restaurant in Antwerpen that a member is a cook at - but he wasn't there that night. We ate outside and it was great.

Here we are on the balcony of our office building - we had to stop and pick up the zone supplies for the next day that we were taking to Amsterdam. It's about 2.5 hrs away so we left early, got the supplies all set up, got to introduce them to more missionary friends and then we left to all go site-seeing in Amsterdam. We left our car at the church, bought a day pass for the trams, and got on a tram to downtown - it worked great for the whole day and was well worth the 7 euros.

Brad and Em loved Amsterdam, as did we. They loved walking around, and we did that a lot, and loved the canals, the buildings, the feeling, everything. This is just a cool picture along one of our walks.

We went to the Anne Frank house, which was very inspiring and sobering. While we waited in line, Brad and Em walked around, scoping out where we would eat lunch. This is a picture of them returning to meet us in line as we were about ready to go into the Anne Frank house.

Our "Post Card" photo of a canal in Amsterdam.

Standing in front of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. There are always long lines, but they move quickly. We stood in line for about 30-40 minutes and it was worth it. The impact of Nazi Germany on the Netherlands is visible in reminders and museums all over Amsterdam.

Another "Post Card" photo. There are flowers everywhere.

This photo shows the bikes in Amsterdam. Most Dutch cities are like this. We've been told there are more bikes in the Netherlands than cars. I believe it. The streets are small, there is very little parking and there are "millions" of people.

Lots of bikes all over Amsterdam.

In front of the train station and a big tram square in Amsterdam.

A plaque on a wall describing what the Jews had gone through under the Nazi regime. If you can read it, this building was an entertainment center in the old Jewish area of Amsterdam. during WWII, it was turned into a deportation center for thousands of Jews. Most did not not return.

In the Netherlands, there are bike paths in pink brick along all the streets. These bike paths have people zooming by constantly, so you have to make sure you stay off of them. They are "roads" for bikes and they treat them as such. They'll run over you if you don't get out of the way. There are cross walks on them and you're expected to us them. This picture even shows how they have little stoplights for the bikers - the big green light is for the cars, and the little green light is for the bikes. There are places where the bike roads are larger (wider) than the auto roads.

Brad and Em on the tram in Amsterdam.