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.