11-17 Sepember 2010

We ended up with 12 people for lunch on Monday at the office. The Brubaker's daughter, Rachel, (on Sis Brubaker's left) is visiting from Philadelphia, and two French sister missionaries (on Sis Brubaker's right) dropped in to pick up supplies.

Elders Owens and Marshall helped me get all my missionary supplies together - behind them are the stacks they piled up as high as they could get them. They were a huge help and saved me lots of time.

A couple of elders came in for legality and threw a going away party for Elder Owens since he'll be leaving on this next transfer.

We had a Zone Training meeting in Antwerpen and then we had some time before another appointment with an investigator, so we did some sightseeing in Antwerpen. This is one of the boats at the maritime museum on the Scheldt River.

This is called the Steen - an old castle, the oldest building in Antwerpen, built in the 12th century, and is now the maritime museum. The boat behind Loel is an old barge that is in the maritime museum.

Across the street from the Steen is an example of an old building next to a new one. The one on the left was built around the beginning of the last century and the one on the right is obviously very new.

Another picture of the different ages of architecture, side-by-side, in Antwerpen. The building in the middle, back, is an old guild house built by the butchers in the 1500's. The guilds were protectionist bodies and political forces for the various trades in Belgium. The buildings in the foreground were built in the early 1900's. The building on the left is undergoing extensive renovation.

This is the front entrance to the Steen.

Afterwards we ate at this restaurant, which was one of many right on the Grote Markt, or the plaza, in old part of town. This is a huge container they gave me for my leftovers! It was a rainy, kind of cold day with bits of sunshine here and there - typical Belgium weather.

Last Sunday we enjoyed more general authorities - Bishop Edgely of the presiding Bishopric and Elder Teixeira of the Area presidency and member of the Seventy, and their wives, spoke to a special stake conference for the Antwerpen stake; but it was in Brussels so we didn't have to travel so far. They gave wonderful talks on the theme of rescuing those who are lost and not jumping off the ship (leaving the Church) if something goes wrong. We sat by Anya, the Russian investigator family, and her two boys. Pres Brubaker was asked to speak and he spoke for about 8 minutes in Dutch and then switched to English. We were very impressed! Just the week before we listened to him give a talk in French. Pretty amazing.

We were up in Antwerpen another night as the sisters asked if I would come and help them teach a new investigator that I had met earlier. Loel got a haircut while up there. I made peanut butter rice krispie treats for the investigator, for the sisters, the elders in the office, and for Anya's family.

The second night we were in Antwerpen we visited Anya's family with Elder Relitz - his companion went on a split with another member. Again, we had a wonderful visit with Anya and her boys. This time I brought up the ingredients to teach her how to make the traditional rice krispie treats with marshmallows. We had a fun time making them together in the kitchen.
Before making the treats, we had a wonderful lesson on family prayer and we gave them a review of the stake conference talks since they didn't understand them all. I'm amazed at how fast her 3 boys are picking up Dutch! Incredible. We had a sweet kneeling prayer at the end with the family. I loved listening to Elder Relitz explain things in Dutch for the boys as I explained them in English to Anya.

We spent a lot of Friday working down in the "cave" (French for cellar), our storage area 6 floors below our building, with the office elders. I told Loel that it's ironic that he has to clean out another basement, like we did at home before we left! This one has been collecting stuff for 15 or 20 years or more and there's a lot to get rid of as we prepare to eventually move the mission home and office to the Netherlands.