Here is Conner, buying more pens from a flea market, this one in Delft. We went there on Saturday and had a good time exploring the city. Too bad the flea market was shutting down when we got there. Conner LOVES flea markets! (Loel: I love flea markets, too, so this gave me an excuse to go.)
Before the market, we went to the temple with Andy Thomas from Antwerpen who was taking out his endowments and asked Loel to be his escort. It was wonderful to be there in the temple with him. I loved it. Gail loved being there, too, and listening to the session in Dutch - we had our headphones, but they didn't always work very well. Conner enjoyed doing baptisms while we did the session. We ran into several other friends from our old ward and stake and had some wonderful reunions. Victor, a man that Loel had baptized a few months ago, was there with his girlfriend doing baptisms. (Loel: One of the real blessings of this mission has been the opportunity to watch the commitment and progress of new members. Andy has received a mission call to the England Manchester Mission and will go to the MTC in England on 15 September. Paula told him that we want to be involved in his progress for the mission every step of the way. Andy asked her if we could arrange to serve a mission in Manchester.)
These are two nice guys we've made friends with each time we go to Delft and bring different family members by the flea market. One of them is from Texas, the other from here.
This is a cool house we liked in Delft.
Conner in front of one of the many canals in Delft.
We went for a walk along the North Sea on Sunday morning in the town of Katwijk. There are all these little beach bungalow things along the beach.
And a famous place for taking your picture.
We had a lot of fun on Sunday night going to dinner at a very nice member's home along with the 3 office elders, Gail and Conner, and an old missionary and his fiance. This is the sunset we noticed on our way home from their house.
Gail and I pretending to ride bikes in the Netherlands! This is one of the Brubakers' bikes in front of their house, but both of us were too timid to ride it as it was pretty unsteady and kind of hard to ride. Conner wasn't very happy with us.
Gail loved the Mission Home- here's a picture of one of their guest bedrooms upstairs, looking out the window.
Another picture from the living room window, looking across their back yard canal into a neighbor's yard.
The Mission Home's back yard, right along the canal.
We were there with our entire zone for a service project - helping several neighbors with their yards. Here's Conner, working along side the other missionaries - there were about 35 of us in our zone. They worked for over 2 hours.
This is the Mission Home's newly planted front yard.
Just part of the wonderful lunch we all prepared for that day! Pres Brubaker grilled lots of hot dogs and brats in the back yard.
Monday was Gail and Conner's last day so we went back to Amsterdam to see the Rijks Museum after doing the zone service project. This is a pretty famous touristy place outside the museums - It says "I amsterdam." Gail and I are sitting in the front.
A Vermeer painting in the Rijks museum. Unfortunately, I missed it on my audio tour - very disappointing!!! So I took a picture of a picture in a gift shop after to pretend like I had seen the original.
Another very cool Vermeer painting that I missed in the museum! We all were walking around individually with our headphones on. So I snapped a picture of this from a card in the gift shop.
Just a cool building I liked in Amsterdam by the museum park. After the museum, we went to the Amsterdam Chapel to attend a young adult dinner and activity. We stayed for dinner but then went home to pack as Gail and Con were leaving the next day. It wasn't hard to say good-bye, knowing we'd see them again in a couple months.
One day this week we went back to Brussels to get a car inspected and I went to my favorite hairdresser's for my last appointment. Loel decided that driving in Brussels was worse than dodging bikes in the Netherlands. (Loel: We've also been really spoiled by all the people that speak English in the Netherlands. The first five people I talked with in Brussels didn't speak English. Somehow we survived for 12 months.)
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