23-29 October 2010

Here we are on our fun P-day activity, in Oostende, a resort town on the coast in Belgium - about 2.5 hours from Brussels. It's right on the North Sea and on this day it was cold, windy and, as you can see, it was raining! Here we are at the pier with Andy, who came with us and the Assistants.

It wasn't just raining, it was POURING!! Here are the Assistants, huddled under one umbrella on the pier, and me, next to them under my umbrella. You can see how wet we were getting. Our pants, skirt, shoes, socks, coats, everything was getting soaked.

Here are the Assistants, wanting to document this event! Elder Brockbank, on the right, is from our home stake, and Elder Relitz is on the left. Elder Brockbank insisted on running to the end of the pier - quite a ways away. Andy went with him; neither of them had an umbrella as Elder Relitz, Loel and I returned to the car.

We were so wet, it was comical. We couldn't help but laugh - notice the rain on my coat, my hair; even my umbrella was leaking!

A cool boat went by as us crazy people were standing on the pier in the pouring rain. And then the thunder started.

Notice Loel holding down his umbrella - several times the wind blew so hard, it blew his umbrella inside out!

This was inside a neat church in the downtown area of Oostende - lots of stain glass windows. We went inside to escape the rain and to look around.

Here is the outside of that church, with a ferris wheel in front of it - kind of a blending of the old and the new. By now it had started to hail!

But we were hungry and had to stop at this stand and get frites (fries) and olliebollens - a Netherlands treat usually served around Christmas time. When the elders saw they had it, they insisted we had to get some.

We were not disappointed. They're kind of a deep fried doughy thing with powdered sugar on them, plus we opted for the chocolate sauce, too. They were delicious!!! We can't wait to have more. We then drove home, having a great discussion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with the Elders and Andy. Andy used to be Muslim so it was really interesting.

It was Elder Brockbank's birthday, so we celebrated at our Monday lunch at the office. I made a sort of pecan pie thing with whipped cream and chocolate sauce for his cake, putting a couple candles in it before we cut it. They seemed to enjoy it.

We spent two days up in the Amsterdan/Den Haag area this week at our temple Zone Conferences. The temple is in the little town of Zoetermeer. Half of the mission came each day, then we went to this chapel, had lunch, and had our Zone Conference after. It was wonderful to spend those two mornings with all of our missionaries in the temple. It was all in Dutch! This is a picture of the door going into the chapel - it's a rented space, in a building, in a shopping mall! You'd never guess a church was there - it's up on the 2nd floor. You have to park in a parking garage for the shopping mall in order to get to the rented chapel. The parking gives three hours free. After that, it's $4.20 an hour.

I was asked to give a 10 minute talk on the importance of referrals, since I'm the referral person who sends them out, gathers the results, and sends on referrals they give me, that go to other missions.

The Brubakers asked if we wanted to go to dinner the night we were up there (we stayed over two nights in an empty apartment near Amsterdam). We went to a cute little Italian restaurant that was very good. This is a picture of our fancy chocolate souffle dessert - very tasty. Dinners in Europe take a whole evening sometimes, as they are not rushed at all - this probably took 2 hours at least, but it was very enjoyable.

Here we are at the end of our delicious meal. Sister Brubaker and I had this homemade ravioli with pears, cheese, asparagus, and other exotic things - very different yet very tasty! After dinner we had to drive over an hour to get back to our apartment so it was a late night. Then up again, fighting early morning traffic for 1.5 hours to get back to the temple. Traffic jams are a fact of life around here - we spend a lot of time in them. If the GPS says you should get there in 50 minutes, you usually double the time.

This is a mission tradition to honor the birthday people at each zone conference. You will notice Loel up there on the far left. Each person is in the spotlight for 1 minute while anyone who wants to jump in with anything nice to say that they appreciate about this person. Many, many nice things were said about Loel - he's spiritual, warm, funny, selfless, and on and on. It was very heartwarming.