20-26 November 2010

Last Sunday we attended a baptism in St. Niklaas and were invited to Sonny's house afterwards for Indian food. He's the ward mission leader and does an amazing job. He joined the church about 3 years ago, married Saskia, this Belgium woman with 2 kids, and they've been sealed in the temple and are so faithful. All the missionaries love Sonny. He made us a delicious meal and kept telling us over and over what an honor it was to have us (and Sis Brubaker who was with us) in his home. We enjoyed the afternoon so much with these sweet members.

The senior couples in the mission all got together at the mission home on Tuesday for our Thanksgiving dinner. Sis Brubaker always sets such a beautiful table. We all contributed something - Loel and I bought the turkey at the base as it's difficult to find one around here. We had such a good time, sitting around the table after dinner, sharing things we were thankful for. We hung around all evening, enjoying each other's company and laughing a lot.

We got another new car!! This is our third new car since we've been here! It pays to have Loel in charge of cars! I like this car a lot - it's a little bigger than the others and has that brand new smell. I love waiting in the lobby of the car dealer's while Loel spends about an hour checking it all out and trading in the old one. I drink hot chocolate and type in my journal and relax.

After picking up the new car, we met the Brubakers in Delft, a cool city in the Netherlands, for a little outing. This was a neat mosaic, done all in Delft blue tile, on a building we noticed as we drove by.

Delft is one of my favorite cities in the Netherlands. It's just a quaint town with a really great feeling. The center of Delft, like all other towns, has a big town square with old churches, lots of shops, town halls, etc. This is called the new church - even though it was built around 1375! That's pretty old to be considered new. We wandered around the shops, stopped at a bagel place and got lunch, and just enjoyed the afternoon.

Delft is famous for its Delftware porcelain. This is one of the factories where they make it. We went in for a demonstration and watched the artists hand painting everything. It was fascinating. The porcelain is beautiful and very expensive.
After leaving Delft we headed up to Leiden, where we would spend Thanksgiving the next day. We first went to the chapel there and set up the table and brought in all the food for the dinner. We made lots of food on Tuesday and brought all the extras on Thursday - great plan!

We stayed in one of the Brubaker's favorite bed and breakfast places in Leiderdorp, a town nearby. This is the little balcony off of our room - you can see a canal in the background. During the night we could hear the barges going by.

This is another view from our balcony of the canal. I watched a barge go by and a jogger was keeping up with it. They don't move very fast.

This home was recently remodeled and the rooms were so pretty, spacious, so light, all light colors except for the splashes of bright colors in the beautiful art work they had in each room, as you can see above our bed.

We loved relaxing here after a busy day - we even had a nice flat screen TV which we enjoyed watching some English stations. We had driven to Den Haag the night before with the Brubakers to a wonderful Argentinian restaurant they love there - we had steak and potatoes! Plus this dessert called "Chocolate chocolate chocolate." Some choc cheesecake, choc mousse, and choc ice-cream - all outstanding!

This is the breakfast that greeted us in the morning - traditional Dutch breakfast of hot bread, meat and cheeses, bowl of fresh cut up fruit, fresh squeezed orange juice, hot chocolate, a hot hard boiled egg, and lots of other bread toppings, like chocolate sprinkles, of course. It was wonderful.

This is what the outside of the house looked like where the B & B was. I think it was built in 1923

After breakfast we got to attend a special program put on every Thanksgiving in Leiden, honoring the pilgrims who actually lived in Leiden for 11 years before they sailed on the Mayflower to America. They loved it in the Netherlands and were accepted and embraced, but were afraid their kids were becoming too acclimated in the Dutch culture and losing some of their own so they left.
This is Pieterskerk, the church where our program was and where the pilgrims attended church. The Pilgrims built a little community in the area of this church and there is now a Pilgrim museum owned and run by an American that's considered the expert on the Pilgrims.

Abigail Adams (John Adams was the first Ambassador to the Netherlands), on entering the church, wrote the following: "I would not omit to mention that I visited the church at Leyden, in which our forefathers worshipped when they fled from hierarchical tyranny and persecution. I felt a respect and veneration upon entering the doors, like what the ancients paid to their Druids."

I loved this big, beautiful, old church, I think a lot because it wasn't a gaudy Catholic one. It is a protestant church and the program was very inclusive with many different churches being represented - Protestant, Evangelical, Catholic, even a Jewish rabbi, all taking part in the program, along with wonderful musical numbers mixed in. Some we got to sing to. It was very patriotic feeling as we sang American the Beautiful and God Bless America - mostly Americans were there. We all got to sing a rousing rendition of "God of our Fathers" with the organ in the background. It was a lovely program and very emotional.
Pres Brubaker tried to get our church on the program but didn't have any luck. He'll try again. We talked with the organizers and they have been doing this for years and it's obvious they take ownership for the program and exercise complete control. President Brubaker talked with one lady that said that change comes slowly and it make take some time, but we my be able to be able to participate eventually. Since their point is a celebration of religious freedom, we'll see how long it takes to include the Mormons.

We were there with all 9 of our district leaders and the assistants and the Brubakers. I felt so blessed to be there - to really experience the very beginning of our country and the place where the pilgrims started off. I felt like we were able to experience the true Thanksgiving - it was a day I will never forget. I will have many years of feasts with the family, as I already have; this was such a unique opportunity for us to be here in Leiden where it all began.

I loved this paragraph written by Thomas Boyleston Adams on the first Thanksgiving. It was on our program:

"For one brief moment of Indian summer, that gives each fall promise of another spring, on that first Thanksgiving red man and white sat down together in peace and cheerfulness. The golden afternoon arrested the spirits of all men. Savage competition was for a moment stilled like the sea currents resting at full flood before they are seized with the madness of the ebb. Freeborn American and freedom-seeking European, under the same magical sky, shared equal plenty, rejoiced in hope, forgot the miserable past and perched on the narrow edge of an unmeasured land, cut off from the custom by ocean and the shock of new ideas, dared to believe in the brotherhood of man and a loving God. It was but a moment. And Bradford put it in words of immortal measure, 'As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation."

I loved the little cobblestone streets around the church. This is one of them all decorated for Christmas.

And here we are afterwards, having our second Thanksgiving feast with our missionaries at the Leiden chapel. Everyone loved it. Loel and I and Sis Brubaker cleaned up while the district leaders received their training from the President and the Assistants.

It's been a good week. We had an interesting experience today in the office. We got a call telling us that 4 elders were stranded in the Brussels airport, having missed their connection here that would take them home. So they needed a place to stay for 24 hours. Loel and the office elders picked them up at the airport, brought them to the office, had them phone their families to let them know they wouldn't be home today after all, took them to our favorite kebop place for lunch, and then Loel dropped them off at the Grand Place for a few hours, as they wanted to experience Brussels! They had been serving in the Baltic States mission - Estonia and other exotic countries. They said Brussels was beautiful compared to some of their cities that used to be communist - lots of concrete gray apartment buildings. We'll be returning them to the airport in the morning, for their happy reunion with their families, one day late. They'll spend the night with the office elders and some French elders' apartment nearby. They looked really tired and I asked if they wanted a nap and they said, no way, we want to experience Brussels!