August 1 - 6, 2010

Last Sunday I was asked to give Benjamin Freeman Wasiu a name and a blessing. His parents are a young African couple that we have become friends with in the Antwerpen Ward. They are the sweetest people and a tremendous help in missionary work. There's a 20 year-old young man that's close to joining the Church that is taught in their home. Last week they brought a Polish sister that they shared the gospel with, as Grace cut her hair.

Here are Sister Brubaker and I in PARIS for the weekend!!! She needed a companion to take a car there to a family and her husband couldn't go, so she asked me if I wanted to. I said, "Well, I guess somebody has to do it." Just kidding, I jumped at the chance! She and the Pres served there as public affairs missionaries just before this mission, and they loved it. She was very excited to go back. We drove 3 hours and went straight to this is a flea market - she's holding up some old keys that she buys and gives to the departing missionaries to remind them that "love is the key." She speaks French and is a great person to have at a flea market because she knows how to bargain - we had a blast there, buying a few treasures.

After the flea market, we drove through Paris streets, just taking it all in - fascinating place! Course we had to stop at a little boulangerie/pattisserie (bakery) and got sandwiches and French pastries!

Another reason we went to Paris was to attend the wedding of a friend they got really close to while serving here. They got married at the city town hall, pictured, then took lots of pictures, then we all went to a park and took more pictures (the park was right by Euro Disney), then to the hotel for a little break, then back to a church service where they meet at an LDS church and have a meeting where they tell all about our church, what we believe, etc. It was pretty cool as all their friends and family came, who aren't members, so there were about 75 non members there.

It was a pretty hot day and we were roasting in our nylons, so while the wedding party was still taking pictures, Sis. B suggested we take our nylons off in the car, which we did. She said she's gotten really good at it! We also wanted to eat the French pastries we had bought but hadn't had time to eat yet. We had no spoon, though, and one was a custard that was melting, so we used this little chocolate square thing that was on one of the pastries for our spoon; getting pretty messy as our chocolate "spoon" slowly melted in our hands. It was still good.

After the church meeting we had a short break and she took me to another bakery that had been a favorite and we bought some pastries and bread to bring home to our husbands. Then we returned to a different LDS church where they had a reception. This is a table full of just the hors d' ouvers (?) - they had another huge table full of main dish food and then desserts, too. Here are lots of open faced little sandwiches, sausages, etc. The party was still going strong when we left around 11:00 pm. We were too tired to do the night driving tour of Paris that we had planned.

But we did it the next day! Here's the Eiffel Tower from the bottom looking up - it's pretty huge. Sister B. was amazing in how well she could drive around the crazy streets of Paris. Course we had our trusty GPS, thank goodness! We drove by the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, some other big palaces, the Seine River, and more. It was quick, but it was great.

This is a sideview of the Arc de Triumph - the huge roundabout around it is incredible - no lanes, traffic just driving everywhere! We ended up going around and around a few times as we couldn't figure out which street to get off on!

Sister Brubaker wanted to get gelato at their favorite place near where they used to go to church, but there was no parking, as is typical in Europe. All of a sudden, she just pulled over, doubled parked, turned on her hazard lights, and said, "Are you okay to stay in the car while I run a block or two to get gelato?" I said "sure, I just hope that policewoman we saw down the street won't make me move the car as I don't think I want to drive in Paris!" Luckily no one questioned me being there and I just waited for Sis. B's return. As we drove off with our delicious gelato, I said, "It doesn't get much better than eating gelato while driving through Paris!" We returned to the family friend's house, ate dinner, and they drove us to the train station where we took the fast train back to Brussels - only took 2 hours. It was a great trip.

We attended church in Paris and ran into 4 missionaries who used to be in our mission - the sisters threw their arms around Sister Brubaker and cried, they were so happy to see her again. They had been together for 8 months before our mission split and then all the French speaking missionaries were moved to the Paris France mission. We drove the sisters home to their apartment after church and had a really nice visit with them. I loved the cool neighborhood they lived in and where the church was. Little narrow cobblestone streets, little gardens, big old houses. I really loved the little towns and neighborhoods in France.

Loel and I were invited to present an hour long workshop at a JOVO camp (young adult camp) in a really pretty wooded area about 1.5 hours away in the Netherlands. We prepared long and hard for it and it went well. Our topic was kind of on reaching your potential, career stuff and life beyond a career - Loel and I switched off so one of us didn't have to talk too much and I did a little interest test exercise in the middle, which went well, to break it up. These are the other two senior couples who were up there for the week with their JOVOs - young adults. They are both serving as young adult outreach center leaders. One of them attended each of our workshops - we had to do one after the other (same workshop twice, for different groups). We had lunch with them afterwards and got to experience a Holland favorite - bread and butter with chocolate sprinkles on it!! Just like we would normally put on cookies - the Dutch love to put chocolate sprinkles on everything. It was interesting because we had the same exact breakfast before as we had for lunch after the workshop! Bread, cheese, sandwich meat, juice, milk, buttermilk, some spread kind of like nutella, and chocolate sprinkles!

This is what the area looked like as we drove to the JOVO camp - very pretty.

These are some stick horses - literally made out of lots of little sticks, that we always pass on our way to the base for our monthly shopping trip. They're pretty cool looking. They're in some little town in Belgium - might be Brugelette.

Another view of the stick horses with a cool church in the background.

This is a sign as you drive through this little town. It means no parking on this side of the street from the 16th to the 31st of the month. There's a sign on the other side of the street that says no parking from the 1st to the 15th of the month. This was taken on August 4th, so parking is OK.

Thursday we were asked to bring half the lunch to this church in Rotterdam, for a leadership conference with the Assistants and zone leaders and and Brubakers, of course. I was asked to take notes so we were there the whole day and actually really enjoyed the meetings. These missionaries are so amazing, so dedicated, always so positive, as are the Brubakers. There is never any criticism of anyone or other missionaries; only positive feedback. A lot of compliments and great comments. These are the Assistants. Everyone loved our pulled pork sandwiches (Julia's recipe!) and my jello fun cake. Sis. B made two great salads.


There's a park near the Rotterdam South Chapel that has three of these concrete cows standing around in various poses. I thought they were unique and different. Elder Relitz told us that the elders played frisbee here one day and Elder Wood got up close and personal with one of these cows. The cow won and he was hurting for a few days.