19-25 March 2011

Last Saturday's weather was beautiful and it was really nice at the outdoor market. It was fun to wander around without an umbrella and we spent our time looking at and tasting some different Moroccan food. The flower vendors had all their flowers out for spring planting. I enjoy looking at plants that we don't have many of in Utah - Camellias, Rhododendrons and Azaleas. I know we have some Azaleas in Utah, but not the variety of colors that we see here.

These are all tulips. Just boxes and boxes of cut tulips.

More flowers.

I really liked this group of bouquets. Yellow, orange, red and pink. And they're pretty cheap - maybe $14-$15 each.

We went downtown Brussels to a little park called the Petite Sablon. We were here last winter and this was dramatically different. It's considered a children's park, but I'm not sure why. It's very manicured with dozens of small statues around the park.

This is a picture across the park of the Notre Dame Church, or the Church of Our Lady of the Sablon. Look at the blue sky. We count these days in Belgium because they are so rare.

This is a well-known antique market in the Grand Sablon area of Brussels. We're not really into antiques, but it was fun to wander around.

We went out to get something to eat with the Assistants, in their P-day clothes! We love this little French bakery/restaurant within walking distance of the office.

Wednesday we went up to the Netherlands to our storage units and got some furniture for some of the elders' apartments and for ours. Three other senior couples joined us and helped us get things out of the units and start organizing them more. Here are the two elders in Gent, enjoying the new couch and chairs we brought for them. They were so happy to get rid of their old stuff and have this nice practically new furniture. We also went to Kortrijk first, hauling away lots of junk from their apartment, too.

We literally crammed the van full of junk from these two apartments -old couches, chairs, bikes, recliners, appliances, clothes, etc. We were very proud of ourselves and Elders Calkins and Alexander were a huge help.

Here we are at a Belgium recycling center or container park as they're called here. At home, we just drive up to a dump and empty out your car or truck and we're done. Here you have to have a special card to even get in, then you have to go to many different sections of the place to dump certain things. The elders literally had to heave couches up over their heads to get them into these huge containers!

Here they are at the container for metal. Then there was a special station for electronics, and another station for wood. We teased them that they were the only people in white shirts and ties at a dump! When we were through, we all had sandwiches at a little bakery place in town. We felt like it was a very successful day of making two apartments look much better than before with new furniture and clearing out tons of junk.

I felt like this was a week of beautifying apartments. We also are working on another apartment in Leuven that will soon have elders living in it again. We were able to bring a new dining room table, living room chair, new toaster oven, mattress pads, pillows, clean bedding, two rugs, etc. for this apartment. It is looking so much better than it used to.

After our district meeting in Antwerpen this week, we went on two joint teaches with the sisters. One was to a new African investigator, and the second was with an investigator soon to be baptized. The sisters felt like it would help to have Loel explain the priesthood to this man. It turned out very well as this man has really bonded with Loel. It's so cute how the Africans often refer to us as their father and their mother. This investigator is so excited and enthusiastic about his upcoming baptism and especially receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was really fun to be able to help with the teaching process with the sisters.

12-18 February 2011

We had a really fun district P-day with George (in orange) from our ward giving us a walking tour of Antwerpen. Here we all are in front of the Steen, the oldest building in the city. George is a life long resident of Antwerpen, born of an English father and a Belgian mother. His family joined the Church when he was about 10 years old.

This is the shield of Antwerpen - it was on the Steen. I don't remember all the symbolism, but it has the Steen on a gold and red background with a two-headed dragon.

The Steen castle again.

We think this is a Robin Hood tavern. One of the oldest in the city..

Antwerpen has a big monument in it's centrum of a man throwing the hand of the giant away. Well, several blocks away, here's the hand!

A huge building that's been re-done very ornately and turned into a inner city mall and restaurant.

A picturesque church, from a narrow street.

The Church of our Lady. This was a very unusual day with blue sky. This is the first time we have seen the church when it wasn't a gray sky.

Another view of the church with the narrow streets in front.

It was Elder Keith's birthday - he's holding the non-alcoholic champagne bottle over his head. He's our financial secretary and he went to Timpview.

It was transfer week and these are our two new missionaries at the airport. It was fun to have lunch with them at the mission home and feel of their enthusiasm.

No, this is not a palace or a castle - it's the Antwerpen train station - one of the most beautiful and ornate in all of Europe. We drove some of the missionaries up to meet their new companions and to ride out to their new areas. The king decided he wanted a train station in Antwerpen that looked like a castle and here it is.

More of the Antwerpen train station.

Loel liked this one because you could see three levels of trains at once. On the very bottom level you can see just the corner of a yellow train. Behind the stairs is the second level. Then at the top of the picture another train is parked.

We said good-bye to two missionaries - Zuster Sharp (she was being interviewed at the time of the picture) and this is Elder De Meester, from Sammamish, Washington. He got permission to stay a couple of days longer so he could go through the temple with one of his converts. Here we are, holding some of the Brubaker's cool wooden shoes. As always, we enjoyed dinner at the mission home on their final evening and a wonderful testimony meeting and kneeling prayer together. We will really miss these dedicated missionaries.

You can tell it's been a slow news week when we put pictures on our blog of the new coat I bought at the outdoor market! That was about the most exciting thing that happened on P-day. We love the outdoor market, though. We bought vegetables, and nuts, and winter coats. (It's the first week of March. Look at how green the lawn is. The forsythia is all in bloom.)

I don't think you can see how many frites we have here, but this was our lunch today. They put a ton of fries in these cone things and then we got our favorite sauce, which is curry ketchup, mayonnaise, and fresh onions. Elder Marshall went with us to clean and de-junk a missionary apartment in Leuven, a town about 20 mins away that has been empty of missionaries for a year but will soon have more missionaries there. We literally packed our car full of junk to get rid of, did a lot of good cleaning, brought lots of sheets, towels and blankets home to wash, and threw a lot of things away, too. Later we'll return and take away their old couch and chair and bring them new ones and finish the last of our cleaning. Elder Marshall is in a threesome now so could go with us as his companions stayed back at the office. He'll be leaving us next week, which makes me very sad; he's been an excellent legality secretary for the office - he's such a can-do guy, always positive, so helpful and efficient. And he's been a great District Leader, too.
Elder Marshall helped me make all the posters and fliers for the Osmond firesides and we got them distributed to all the zone leaders.

And here I am after my haircut and color in front of the little shop just a few blocks from our apartment here in Brussels. I finally found a hairdresser who is wonderful! She doesn't speak much English, but enough to communicate with as to what I want.

We had a wonderful Zone Training in Antwerpen for our zone this week. The President and Sis Brubaker do the entire training. They both spoke about gratitude and counting our blessings each day, thinking about what is going well, instead of what isn't going well, etc. It was very good advice for everyone.

Afterwards, we drove up to the Netherlands to meet the lady who's over Public Relations for the Netherlands who I have been working with a lot on the Donny Osmond firesides. She invited us to dinner - they have a beautiful home and she made us a wonderful traditional Dutch meal. Slow cooked beef and then put them in little pots by each of our plates, mashed potatoes, applesauce, red cabbage, salad, and the cutest dessert - three different kinds of custard in this darling dessert dish. I'm so mad I didn't take any pictures of the evening! It was delightful. She commented on how we need to get together more often when we move up there. Again, it's very difficult to do many things like this when we live 2 hours away in Brussels.

(Loel) It's a small world. As we talked with Marianne, we found out that they had lived in Saudi Arabia at the same time as our daughter-in-law Mia. Mia's dad was their bishop.


Here is the poster and flier we made up to put up in the chapels and to hand out to investigators. Now we're working on cutting and pasting 600 of Donny's testimonies, picture, and signature into Books of Mormon to give out to interested visitors at the firesides.

26 February-4 March 2011

This is a huge bell tower attached to an old church in the town of Mechelen, which is about 20 minutes from Brussels. We went to climb this bell tower with the Assistants on our last P-day. It was about 317 feet tall.

The church was started in the 1200's and completed about 200 years later. The bell tower was started that year and it took nearly another 100 years to "almost" finish it. The tower was supposed to have a slender spire on top, but the spire was never placed on top.

This is inside the big church - this is a wooden pulpit with incredibly ornate carvings all over it - Adam and Eve are carved into it, the serpent, Mary, Jesus on the cross, etc. There's a squirrel and a snail carved into it, along with detailed carved leaves. It appears that this was carved mostly out of a single tree.

I love this picture of the inside of the church, with the stain glass windows and the big organ pipes. This really is a beautiful church. So many of the churches are dark, but this one is very light.

As we climbed the bell tower, we could stop along the way to six different chambers or floors. This was one that had an opening where you could look down into the church and the organ pipes. You can start to see how tall this bell tower was.

These are the stone steps we climbed, and climbed, and climbed! 538 steps.

Notice the big and little bells in the picture. This was another level we stopped at close to the top.

The Clock Chamber houses the clock and the mechanism that makes the carillon bells ring. This drum was was built in the 1700's and is one of two carillons in the tower. In 1981 a second carillon was added. Mechelen is known for it's bells and carillon. Classes are held on how to play the carillon and many come here for training.

Notice how big these bells are.

We made it to the top where there's a nice lookout - you can see the Belgium flag above our heads (the Assistants and I). It was a rainy, cloudy day, so the view wasn't as clear as we would have liked, but it was still pretty spectacular. The wind was blowing hard enough for the flag to stand straight out and provide a really good look at the Lion of Flanders.

Happy climbers.

The view looking down on the rooftops.

You can see the bell tower behind us.

We had a wonderful baptism this week - the young couple in the middle - they are Joseph's best friends - he baptized them, he's on the left. The sisters taught them. They are in a threesome now with the sister on the far left who is actually from the Netherlands, called to serve in Philadelphia, but is waiting for a Visa, so she's serving in our mission for 5 weeks until her Visa comes through. She's delightful to have around. How special for her to be able to be a part of this baptism one week into her mission.

I love this African family. They are all investigators that the Assistants are teaching. The father joined the church in Ghana, but his family has never joined and now they are coming and taking the lessons. They are such a beautiful family - 6 girls and one boy - darling kids.

The little girls are so cute with their braids and they are so well behaved. We watched them walking to church with the Assistants - the little girls were running and skipping along, holding the elders hands, as they walked from the tram together. They stayed the entire 3 hours and then for the baptism after.

This is a picture of many of our African friends in our ward, after the baptism. You can see the sister missionaries in the back, dressed in their African clothes.

This is our great district - we had just finished a district meeting in Antwerpen with Elder Marshall, the redhead in the back, giving us a wonderful lesson. He will be leaving the office this next transfer, and you never know who else might be leaving in two weeks, so we had to take a picture. We made a new chili recipe for our lunch this day that everyone loved.

Here's Loel, sharing instructions to the Elders in a Zone Leadership Council on how to take good care of their cars. He is showing what's in a box that he made for each companionship, for taking care of their cars.

He's showing them the windshield wiper fluid, the window cleaner, tire gauge, etc. They loved their boxes!

I love these bicycles. This is a bicycle that has a place for kids and a plastic covering to keep them out of the rain. You can't imagine how many kids they can get on one of these bikes. Pretty cool.

This is a picture of our new office - it's only about 2 blocks from the train station in Leiden. It's right in the center of town - we're on the main floor, right on the street level. It's so nice - we park in the back and walk right in - no going up 8 floors or down 6 more below ground, like what we've been doing in Brussels. It is much smaller than our Brussels office.

This picture shows the inside of the the office conference room area. You can see the little kitchen in the back - we will have a microwave/convection oven, a fridge, sink, and a dishwasher!! A big improvement over what we have now. Right now we only have a microwave with a broken knob so we have to use a pair of pliers to turn it on. We have no oven, no hot water, and very small counter space. This is going to be a big improvement.
We are getting ready to make the move to the Netherlands - probably in about a month's time. We are very excited - we'll be in the Netherlands in the spring!

After looking at the new office, we went to dinner with the Brubakers - we walked a few blocks, past this cool windmill, to a nice Greek restaurant that we all loved.

It's so fun to see the colorful crocuses sprouting up in the grass all over! Spring is finally coming!

Another view of the windmill. This windmill is a molen (mill) museum located right in the middle of Leiden, on a canal. You can't get much more Dutch than that.

This picture doesn't do this sunset justice. This is from our Brussels office, looking at the Cinquantennaire monument in the distance with the sun going down next to it. The sun was a giant red globe right next to the monument.