2-8 April 2011

Here's grandchild #22, the fourth one born while we've been on our mission. Here's Heather with little Averie Schnegelberger, born April 1, 2011 in Raleigh, North Carolina. All is well and we've talked on Skype so we've got a first hand look at this cute little girl.

Our P-day last week was a trip to Ostende, a beach town on the North Sea - about 1.5 hrs from Brussels. We drove with the Assistants. It was 70 degrees and sunny and the beach was packed - Belgiums love the sun when it comes out.

As the elders were running around on the beach and throwing baseballs around, we went for a walk along the ocean and then along the pier.

There were many of these colorful booths selling seafood - it looked just a little scary to me, but a lot of it looked more normal.

Here we are along the beach.

Monday we celebrated Sister Brubaker's birthday - we made a rich chocolate cake in the crockpot with vanilla ice-cream.

We were in Leuven one day, finishing up the apartment we're fixing up as elders will soon move back to that city. I liked this old boat, filled with flowers, right beside the canal with other boats in the water behind it. We got the apartment all fixed up and cleaned up so that was a good feeling.

Yay, more family came to visit! Shelly and Jonny arrived on Wednesday from Paris at the Brussels train station, where we hugged and cried a little and then were off! It's been so great to have them here.

Of course the first place we took them was to the Grand Place and wandered around for a while - here we are in a candy shop, buying a few treats for their kids.

Here we are in Brussels, near the Grand Place.

And of course, their first taste of Belgian waffles - they're always a hit.

The next day we went to Brugge - here we are, wandering around, and I'm being the tour guide.

The weather couldn't have been better - almost 70 degrees, blue skies, everywhere. And this particular day was the least crowded we've ever seen Brugge. This is one of the pictures from the canal ride we took. In the background is the bell tower - one of the Brugge landmarks.

We climbed the bell tower - about 375 steps up and this is one of the views of the city we saw looking down. This is the first time we've climbed this tower.

We wanted to show the size of some of the bells at the top.

This is the bell tower that we climbed. Three hundred plus steps on a really tight spiral staircase.

The stairwell was super tiny, winding, and if you came across someone going up while you were going down, you really had to squish to get by. Once we encountered about 30 school kids yelling and screaming as they ran down as we were going up. That wasn't so fun.

This is the little tea room above our favorite hot chocolate store - We got huge cups of hot chocolate and these pretty Belgian waffles with strawberries.

Here's the size of the hot chocolate that Jonny got - it's delicious! Kind of like drinking a chocolate bar.

The horse and carriages are everywhere in Brugge, taking people on tours of the city.

This is a little convent in the middle of the city - gated, very peaceful and quiet. The daffodils are growing in the lawn.

This is called "the lake of love". We got a kick out of it, but it was very pretty.

This is the castle we stayed in for the night, about 10 kilometers outside of Brugge in the country. It was built in the 12th century.

It's surrounded by a moat, of course, and very picturesque.

This is the front as we walk in. Notice the old gas lamp.

We had a kind of family room with 3 bedrooms, all antique furniture. We had to climb up several flights of stairs as we were at the top - this is the sitting room area off of our bedroom. It was kind of rustic, a little rough around the edges, a little cold and dark, with high ceilings, winding staircases, hallways going everywere - I felt like I was in Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre! Then at dusk we noticed bats flying all around outside! Added to the eeriness of it all.

This was our bedroom - see how the bed had these curtains around it?

Loel took this picture outside our bedroom window in the morning as the sun came up.

We had a great Belgium breakfast in our castle in the morning.

Here are Shelly and me (Jonny's taking the picture) on a cool bike ride through the countryside around our castle B&B. It was really fun until right before we got back and I crashed! I was talking to the Assistants on my cell phone and hit the handbrake too hard with my other hand and crashed. Now I have a swollen front lip, bruised cheekbones, a sore rib, and some sore hands, but no major damage, thank goodness. My vanity was probably more hurt than my body! Jonny helped me clean it up while Shelly sat on the ground getting faint at the blood! So this was the first time I've ridden a bike on my whole mission and I crash. I probably won't ride again - or else I won't talk on the cell phone while I ride.

This is the Chinese pavillon in Brussels that we drove the kids by to see. - and showed them the Japanese tower, too.

We always have to show our visitors our cool view of the Brussels skyline from the office. It was fun to show Shelly and Jonny where we work.

We wanted them to see the cool wooden elephants outside the African Congo museum in this big park. A fisherman caught a huge fish from the lake right as we were walking by and we got to watch the whole process - taking pictures, etc and then he threw it back, which made me happy.

Pretty flowers in front of the African museum - notice the elephants in the background.

This is a really interesting fountain of African animals playing musical instruments in front of the museum.

26 March-1 April 2011

Here we are with our best friends on a P-day at the Atomium, in Brussels.
At 102 metres (334 feet) high, with its nine interconnected spheres, it represents an elementary iron crystal enlarged 165 billion times.It was built as an exhibit during the 1958 World's Fair of Brussels and is quite the landmark. You can actually go into all the spheres of the crystal, which are museum rooms, but we didn't take the time.
Another picture more close up. They have escalators running between the spheres.

Our wonderful Antwerpen sisters came to Brussels to the office on Monday for their P-day and also to have interviews with the President. They stayed and had lunch with us and also were a tremendous help in getting my supplies ready and gluing Donny Osmond testimonies into Books of Mormon. We glued a total of 600 testimonies into Books of Mormon to be distributed at the Donny Osmond devotional firesides.

This is the Fourjour family - the father was already a member, but the three children who were old enough were baptized last Sunday in our ward. The Assistants each baptized one and Andy Thomas baptized another. The younger little girls were squealing with excitement and wonder as their siblings went under the water.

The day after the baptism, we volunteered to help the Assistants with their American hamburger night they had planned for the Fourjours. Here we are cooking burgers, cutting up onions, tomatoes, cheese, and lettuce, at their apt. to take over to the Fourjours.

As soon as we walked into their modest apartment, the little girl in red ran up and gave me a hug. It melted my heart. They were so happy to have all of us there at their home and so excited to have American hamburgers!

This family LOVES the elders and have so much fun with them. You can see one of the little girls planting a big kiss on Elder Matthews' cheek, much to his surprise!

Everyone is always fighting to see who gets to sit next to the elders. It's so cute. The children are 15, 11, 9, 7, 5, 2, and almost 1.

Here's Loel with three of the little girls - they are all beautiful children. They kept thanking us all for coming. The mother speaks just a little English. She kept saying, "I am so happy. I am so happy." The little kids speak mostly Dutch so the elders would translate for us.

This is the Leiden chapel in the Netherlands - the one we'll be attending when we move up there the end of April. I wanted to catch the daffodils - they are growing everywhere, coming right up through the grass all over town - it's becoming very beautiful and colorful.
We were there to help with a district leader council and to move a few more things into our apartment up there. We actually held the meeting in our new office, although nothing is in it yet. The Assistants moved chairs and tables over from the Leiden chapel and we helped move them back.

Another view of pretty flowers and green right beside the Leiden chapel.

We have been busy this week cleaning, packing, and de-junking a lot of our current office and the cave (cellar) in the basement, getting ready for the move. It's getting exciting yet kind of sad as we will really miss the Antwerpen ward.

I had the unique experience of teaching Relief Society in the Antwerpen ward on Sunday. The RS president translated for me so people who needed it in Dutch had headsets on. Most of the women spoke English and we had a great discussion. If a comment or question was made in Dutch, another sister was sitting right next to me and would tell me what they said. Later, several of the African women came up and thanked me, saying how wonderful it was to have a lesson they could understand.

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.