26 June - 2 July 2010

We had 8 baptisms this week in our mission, which is a record - last time we had that many in one week was a year ago! We attended this one in St. Niklaas, one of our favorite little cities near by. This sister is Columbian. We actually went first with one of the office elders to Leuvan, a city about 30 mins away, picked up one of their investigators, and brought him with us so he could see the baptism. It was wonderful to listen to Elder Bell talk with this investigator from Nepal in the backseat about baptism, the gospel, etc. This man really enjoyed the baptism and on the way home spoke of his own baptism coming up, which we told him we would love to attend. He was very appreciative of us taking him with us.

This week we went to Ghent, a cool city in Belgium, which is somewhat similar to Venice as it has lots of canals going through it, guild houses, cathedrals, etc. We needed to look at a new apartment for the elders there, so we went a little early so we could enjoy some of the sites. This is a view from St. Michael's Bridge, looking at one of the main thoroughfares of the city. This the old port of Ghent from the 16th century.

We took a canal tour and these are some of the things we saw. This was a lock where the water could be raised in the canal.

A picturesque little boat by someone's house on the canal. You see boats docked by homes all along the canal. Most of the buildings are being converted to clubs and restaurants. Ghent is a city of about 250,000 and there are a large number of students that live here.

Colorful flowers on the canal. This is just someone's balcony overlooking the canal.

The guild houses along the canal. The guilds were the most powerful institutions in the society in the 1500's and 1600's. These were organizations that organized for their particular industry; cloth makers, butchers, bakers. This port had a very high tax and one house was just for the storing of grain that was taken as an import tax.

I didn't want to go into this castle - it's called Gravensteen, the gloomy castle, as it's famous for it's torture chamber and different ways of killing people! They say it's popular but that people are always glad to leave. I've heard that it's been turned into a hotel, or there's a hotel by the same name nearby.

More picturesque scenes along the boat ride.

This is St. Niklaas Cathedral and a big central square area of the city. We got there and saw a big screen TV (it's the pink thing in the back), and we just happened to get there in time to see Kim Clijsters playing a match at Wimbledon! We got some Italian ice-cream while there, also.

This is St. Baffs Cathedral - it was huge and very ornate. It houses some special altarpiece, which is known as one of the 7 wonders of Belgium. I guess I've seen too many ornate cathedrals, as I didn't want to spend too much time in here. It was cool; very gothic.

This is Elder Owens in the office, dying in the heat. Brussels has been having unseasonably hot weather and our A/C doesn't work very well in the office - except for my office! I'm very comfortable, but no one else is! Poor Loel has a little office with horrible ventilation so he's roasting, along with the office elders in our lobby area.
This week the office elders invited us to lunch at their apartment, which is across the street from the office. They live with two elders from the Paris France mission who serve here in Brussels. One of these elders, Elder Duarte, is from Portugal and is a wonderful cook. He made us a great lunch and then Loel did an inspection of their apartment - routine, has to be done every 3 months. We were so impressed with the elders' apartment and how clean, organized, and tidy it was. We were also very jealous of it as it's over twice the size of ours! Very roomy, 3 bedroom, 2 baths, big living room area, nice kitchen, they even have a dishwasher!!! We asked them if they wanted to trade.

This is a funny picture of our district after a meeting in Antwerpen. We all lined up our cameras, put on the timers, and then you can see Sister Fritz was dashing to make the picture and didn't quite make it! We have a lot of fun with the missionaries - we always have lunch together first and get to hear lots of funny and inspirational stories of how their weeks are going. Then we have a good meeting. This week Elder Owens, our district leader, divided us into two teams and we had to ask each other hard questions about the Gospel that we could only answer with scriptures. One question we got was about why a person couldn't live with their boyfriend. As soon as the question was asked, all the elders on our team turned to Loel and said, "Bishop Tibbitts . . ." Kind of like, you answer this one!! We all got a good laugh.

This is a crane thing with a little motorized platform on the ladder that they use here to move furniture in and out of apartments. The elevators are way too small to fit anything big in them so they do this and go through outside windows. Very elaborate system. Loel took this picture right out of our office window. The extension ladder is on the back of these little trucks and you see them driving all over Brussels. They send this big platform up the ladder, take the furniture out through a door or window (the windows are big here), load the furniture on the platform and lower it to the moving truck. You've seen the pictures of our elevator and stairwell. That's why you need these lifts.

The flowers are beautiful on the streets of Brussels.

More flowers - our apartment building is in the background. This is a little park thing with a statute of the mayor in this part of Brussels!


The Netherlands and Belgium are really lovers of flowers. Apartment houses will have little flower boxes on the porch railings. We see very small, but beautifully landscaped yards as we walk, as I look over the railing at our apartment, and the apartment on the ground floor has a little private garden hidden by a hedge that is full of flowers.


These are some orchid plants that Sister Pankratz left in our apartment - they are really beautiful and grow profusely. At home, if we got one or two flowers, we were happy, but these produce many. They must like the Belgium climate.

We went to Waterloo on P-day - the place where Napoleon's last battle was fought. It's just about 20 minutes from where we live. This is a hill with the monument on top - see the steps going up? We climbed them!

This is the Lion's Mount monument at the top.

It's a beautiful view of peaceful farmland all around - hard to imagine that 45,000 soldiers died or were wounded in this battle in 1815. It involved 6 or 7 other countries and changed the course of European history - and was the end of Napoleon's reign. The weekend before we visited they did a yearly re-enactment of the battle.

I read about this old 13th century castle, called Kasteel van Beersel, just 5 miles outside of Brussels, so we went to see it. The 5 miles took us 45 minutes through Brussels traffic, but upon arriving, we were the only ones there, along with some workers taking down booths from the night's festivities before. We had read about all the cool things you could see inside, but as we walked across the drawbridge over the moat, we got inside to see nothing - only old bricks, no tour guides, no brochures, no entrance fee, no English guidebook, no mausoleum with alabaster effigies, nothing. Maybe it's under renovation or something, but we kind of laughed, felt kind of stupid, and walked around the whole thing taking a few pictures. It was a cool looking castle from the outside.