6-15 November 2010

We're always fascinated with the flowers around here. Belgians LOVE flowers - check out this big planter box, just on a street corner, full of mums.

The Brubakers told us about a farmers market right by their house so we went. It was rainy, but not too bad. This is just some of the flowers they sell - they sold everything else you can imagine - Moroccan food, olives, clothes, bakery goods, seafood, etc. It was lots of fun. We bought some delicious Moroccan bread, humus, bakery goods, etc.

These are the three sister missionaries in our ward and Anne Marie, a woman they taught who got baptized. She was a really golden contact who was introduced by her best friend, next to her, who's a member. Her best friend's dad baptized her. It was a wonderful service with her bearing a beautiful testimony at the end of it.

After the baptism we went to Katie and Andrew's apartment, up 5 flights of stairs, for dinner with the sisters. We brought the pasta sauce and bread, the others brought the rest.
The sister on the end was in a threesome for about 2 weeks - she's from Hungary, a new missionary, and knows 5 languages.

These are our five departing missionaries who recently left us. Elder Relitz, in the middle, was one we got really close to as he was in the office a lot. We enjoyed their final evening with them at the mission home. I got kind of emotional as I had to say good-bye the next day at the airport.

I don't know if this picture really captures the green moss that is everywhere because it's so moist here. These are the president's front stairs - notice how green the brick is.

We had our second group of visitors come!!! This is our apartment, turned into a dormitory with 4 mattresses on the floor for Dustin, his daughter, Hadley, Carin and Heather. You could hardly walk through the little living room. They seemed surprised at how small our apartment was.

They arrived from Germany on a Thurs night. This is our first full day together. We were headed to see a castle in Gent, but got a call from some of our elders whose apartment had been broken into the night before, so we changed plans as we were only about 30 mins from them, and went out to help them out by giving them some cash, as it got stolen, etc. It was actually kind of interesting to be able to show the kids what kinds of things we do, meet the missionaries, see a missionary apartment, etc. Afterwards we went to this little convent village place in Kortrijk to show them as it's so quaint and picturesque.

Next stop was Brugge. Of course we had to go on a canal ride, which we all loved.
Right at the end of the canal ride it started to rain. We had left all the umbrellas in the car. So we got kind of soaked.

But the rain didn't stop us from getting olliebollens with powdered sugar on them! Everyone loved them.

One day we took them to the office to show them the things that we do - they were so interested and cute in their enthusiasm for our work here - took lots of pictures, videos, etc. Then we had to take them to the kebap place down the street for lunch, which we all enjoyed. After lunch we went for a drive around Brussels to let them see the sights. Brussels is a very visual city, with as much diversity in architecture and neighborhoods as there is in the ethnic mix here.

This is a beautiful little garden with statues all around it, fountain in the middle, close to the Royal Palace - it's called the Petite Sablon. It was designed as a children's garden. We loved it.

This is a cathedral, we think called Notre Dame (not the one in Paris), that you can see is across the street from the Petite Sablon - the gardens are in the front.

It rained the entire day!!! Never stopped. But we just walked around with umbrellas and drove around to lots of sites. The Brubakers were so kind to offer to let us use their van instead of the huge 9 passenger van we were going to use, so driving and parking was much easier.

Belgium waffles with hot chocolate sauce and whipped cream was a must. We found a store awning so we could stand under it and put down our umbrellas to be able to eat our waffles - they're kind of messy but so good.

We planned to get to the Grand Place with some daylight left but also wanted to see it at night. Here's Carin and Heather in front of the historic 800 year-old town hall. You can see how wet it was with the reflection of the lights off the wet cobblestones.

It was so fun to bring the kids to our ward in Antwerpen where they met our missionaries, ward members, and investigators. Loel and I taught the Sunday School lesson and had a really big class. We asked Dustin to participate. Carin went to the Young Women's with Hadley so she could see how it was in Europe - she had quite a time there!! Heather came with me to RS and loved it as Sis De Groot translated for us. This is a picture of a really cool restaurant where we met the Brubakers on our way up to the Netherlands.

This restaurant is small, but we were able sit a table right by the window. President and Sister Brubaker found this little restaurant and we felt fortunate to find a little window in their schedule that we could introduce the kids to them and spend some time with them eating lunch.

After we left the restaurant, we wanted to visit the windmills at Kinderdijk. We didn't know the road would take us to a ferry, but this was an added bonus to our drive. It was late in the afternoon, but it really wasn't as dark as it appears in the picture.

Kinderdijk is a "must see". There are 19 working windmills here. In other places you won't see more than two or three at a time. It was late in the afternoon, but it was still pleasant and we could see the windmills just fine.

We spent Sunday night in an empty apartment near Amsterdam, so we were able to get to Amsterdam earlier in the morning. We parked at the Amsterdam chapel and took a tram to the train station. Near the train station we were able to get a boat to tour the canals of Amsterdam. Amsterdam has about 60 miles of canals. This is from inside the boat.

Along the canal banks, there are hundreds of house boats parked along the bank. They ride their bikes to the boat and park them along side. Some have a smaller boat that they can travel away from the boat. If look closely at this picture you'll see the top is kind of like a patio. There are plants and you can see a barbecue grill in the center of the boat.

This is the last shot of Amsterdam from a bridge over one of the many canals. this was taken close to the Anne Frank House and Carin and Heather were in the museum, so they weren't in the picture.

We did some shopping most every place we went. We walked a good bit around Amsterdam, stopping in many little shops to buy licorice and Stroopwaffles (strope-waffles). Licorice is a big deal here, with many different types - salty, sweet, etc. Stroopwaffles are 2 thin waffle-like cookies with caramel in the middle. I haven't met anyone who didn't like them.

We looked for a place to eat and ended up eating at McDonald's - all except Dustin. He said he wasn't going to eat something in Amsterdam that he could eat at home. They did have some variations on the menu that you wouldn't find in Utah.

We dropped the kids off at the airport this morning and realized as we drove away that this was the second week of saying goodbye to those we love - our missionaries last week and our family this week. This is one of the hard parts about being here, but we feel so blessed that we've had an opportunity to spend time with our family and share some of the things we do and let them feel the spirit of the missionaries and the members here in Belgium.