16-21 January 2011

Loel and I decided to go shopping the European way. Here he is with our little rolling bag - we walked about 10 mins to the grocery store, didn't have to worry about parking hassles or traffic, loaded up our groceries and rolled them home with us - even got a little exercise in the process.

This is a wonderful member in St. Niklaas who is always there at all the baptisms since he's the one who fills the font. He is so sweet, always welcomes us in his broken English. He told me last week that he does this for his best friend - then he pointed upward, meaning Heavenly Father. We were there last Saturday as we drove the mission van to Gent to pick up the elders and this wonderful family of 4, then drove them to St. Niklaas to get baptized, had a great service there with wonderful talks, then drove them back home and then we drove back to Brussels. This family who got baptized was a mother and her 3 teenage children. She was a referral from the last family of 4 we took to get baptized last November.

We had a little extra time on Sunday before we attended a missionary fireside in Amsterdam, so we walked through this darling little town of Monnickendam. Loel liked this little car that can even drive in the bicycle lanes, it is so small. You can see by the sign on the back that it's limited to 40 kilometers per hour (about 25 miles per hour).

As we wandered through the streets of Monnickendam, the little townhouses were so cute, I had Loel take a picture of this one where I'd like to live. The streets are so narrow and picturesque. Notice the street and sidewalk. Everything is a colored and patterned brick. Different patterns and colors for the places cars can drive, where people walk and where bikes travel.

Couldn't resist taking a picture of this little boutique with Carin's name on it! Carin will have to come back so we can take a picture of her in front of the store.

A view of the street we walked down.

A cool bell tower with carillon bells that started chiming right when we walked by. Very pretty.

If you look carefully, you can see the bells - but it was also neat to see the little angel in blue, come out and move around with some other figures below her as the bells would ring. I loved the open, kind of Russian-style "dome" at the top.

Notice the date on this building - 1614. So the name of the cafe is "Cafe 1614". The Pilgrims hadn't even landed in America when this building was built. This style building would be "Oude Dutch" (Old Dutch).

I love all the canals and bridges in these little towns.

We met up with the Brubakers and had dinner at their favorite pannekoeken house in Broek en Waterland - this is a picture of them showing off their banana split dessert pannekoeken.
Afterwards we attended a fireside where one of our missionaries spoke - his actually lives in Amsterdam and the President had him come back to his home ward to help the members get excited about missionary work. Another missionary from the Netherlands who had just gone home in December, came back and spoke, too. They both gave wonderful talks. It was so sweet to see the elder who had gone home again - he's now the ward mission leader in his home ward, which is just north of Amsterdam. He had a real longing in his eyes as he visited with his missionary friends who are still serving - said he'd come back and serve again in a minute if he could. These two elders from the Netherlands, serving in their home country, really have made and are making a contribution to the work here.

I've been spending a lot of time this week looking online and calling agents for an apartment we can move to in Leiden, as the mission office will be moving there this spring. This is the last one we saw as we went up for the day on Thursday with the Pankratz to look at some. We loved this one and hope to finalize it. It is the upper right corner, on the 2nd floor, in a darling little town called Rijnsburg, close to Leiden where the office will be. We'll put more pictures on later and give more details once it's for sure we can get it.
The day before this we spent the day loading up two vans with lots of furniture, etc, that we took up to our two storage units in the Netherlands. The Andersons helped us and we got it all unloaded and finally arrived at the Pankratz that night at 10 pm to spend the night, tired, but glad it was done. They are so hospitable, letting us sleep in their comfortable guest room, making us homemade waffles with chocolate pudding sauce for breakfast, and then spending the day with us looking a 5 apartments. They were so helpful as they've done this lots of times.

We drove by this Japanese Tower on our way home from an appointment tonight and stopped to take pictures - it's a pretty impressive sight at night, all lit up in red. We showed pictures of this tower in the fall with the fall colors. It's just an imposing site as you drive down the road. All of a sudden it's there - and then you're past it and it's gone.