Our Second Zone Conference and Meeting the New Mission President

Zone conferences are definitely a highlight for missionaries of all ages.  There are six zones in our mission, and the last two zone conferences have combined two zones.  We are in the Antwerpen Zone and the Eindhoven Zone travelled to the ward building in Antwerpen to join us for the last two conferences.  At the last zone conference, we had been in Belgium for two days, so the Butlers (the couple working with the Young Single Adults or Jovoos in Eindhoven) prepared sloppy joes for the roughly 70 in attendance.  This time, it was our turn.

Sister C decided to prepare chicken salad sandwiches on croissants as the main course.  We supplemented this with potato chips, vegetables, chocolate chip cookies and drinks.  We had anticipated this assignment coming, so we had been stockpiling chicken breasts, potato chips and drinks for a couple of weeks.  Fortunately, our apartment has a larger refrigerator in addition to the normal small one installed in the kitchen.  The final preparation required a full day of work on Wednesday to prepare everything.  We started off with a 10:00 AM visit to the Makro store in Machalen (a suburb of Brussels near the airport) where we purchased fresh croissants, veggies, and a 5.5 lb bag of chocolate chips.  This was also the day that we attacked the fresh Zeeuwse mussels for lunch that we talked about in the previous blog.

Since we have a tiny oven, Sister C had to keep it busy most of the day cooking the chicken and then baking cookies.  She has now perfected the cookie recipe using a combination of other recipes and they were the best ever.  They certainly disappeared rapidly at the zone conference - all 8 1/2 dozen.  The chicken salad disappeared at a fast rate as well.  It was a warm day, so we ate lunch on the lawn at the side of the church building.  The weather was perfect for an outside lunch.

President and Sister Bunnell arrived early for the zone conference and warmly greeted the missionaries as they arrived.  I think they had the hearts of the missionaries before the conference started.  Sister Bunnell introduced their family and bore her testimony with a little Dutch.  President Bunnell then spoke and indicated that he didn't foresee any major changes and had Sister Bunnell introduce the mission theme, which is "Hearts to God, Hands to Serve, Love the One".  She is a quilter and had a nice design to tie it all together.  They supported the theme with scriptures and quotes from the Apostles and Prophets.

The Assistants then conducted some training on contacting throughout the day.  The morning finished up with Brother and Sister Jansen from Turnhout talking about Belgium customs and culture.  Sister Jansen is from the Netherlands, so they provided a perfect perspective to talk about the differences.  After lunch, we broke into four 15 minute mini-classes conducted by the zone leaders on learning the language more effectively.  The zone leaders did a great job.

The concluding session was opened by Sister Bunnell talking about obedience.  Then President Bunnell took the stand and asked the missionaries to turn to page 47 of the missionary handbook.  Loud groans could be heard throughout the chapel as he introduced this subject since the missionaries had some inkling of where he was heading.  He had an Elder read the third paragraph which starts, "Always wear a helmet".  This has long been a sore subject in the Belgium-Netherlands mission since there are more bicycles than people in some cities and both countries are well set up for bicycling with dedicated bicycling paths protected from car traffic.  Generally the only people wearing helmets are those on racers.

President Bunnell pointed out that he had been given specific instructions that he was to tell the missionaries to purchase and use helmets.  He then proceeded to show a number of bicycle helmets and had the missionaries say if they were appropriate or inappropriate for missionary wear.  This turned into a humorous event that took most of the sting out of the announcement.  President and Sister Bunnell then modeled their new helmets, purchased the day before.  The missionaries have a couple of months to comply because many will have to write home for the money to purchase them.  The afternoon was capped off perfectly when a brand new missionary was called upon to say the closing prayer.  He had the courage to say it in Dutch and in the conclusion of his prayer asked, "That we will accept the guidance of President Bunnell and not cry too much about the helmets."  His Dutch was not perfect, but it had the missionaries snickering as the prayer was concluded and set the perfect tone for obedience.

After the meeting, I pointed out to President Bunnell that Sister C and I had purchased bicycle helmets before our new bicycles arrived and that I insisted that we wear them (over the objections of Sister C at the time).  He was quite pleased and I was glad that we had taken this small step.  They cost us about $32 each.  Needless to say, after this meeting, the mission belonged to President and Sister Bunnell.

As we were leaving, President Boom of the Antwerpen stake showed up for a meeting with President Bunnell and we were able to snap a picture or two.  We have really enjoyed getting to know President Boom and hope we can do a good job of helping him to build the stake here.

President Bunnell and President Boom

On Friday, July 17 we took another bicycle ride along the canal for our morning exercise.  We also drove to Leuven to look for inactive families.  As usual, we found that the people had not lived there for many years and there was no other information.  One of the addresses was a business office building and another was an abandoned building.  The Elders in Leuven have been overwhelmed with the long list of inactive members and are relieved to have some help.  We have been able to look up four to six in a session because we have a car.  Our problem is that parking in the downtown area is quite difficult, so the Elders will take those addresses and we will focus on the outlying ones.  We have now learned to use Google Maps to plan our visits more effectively.

On Friday evening we visited a member of the ward from Nepal.  He is a very spiritual man and we enjoyed his hospitality and visiting with him.  The Elders invited us to go along.  We were very happy to meet him.  His family is back in Nepal at the moment, but will probably return to Belgium soon.  On Saturday, we attended the baptism of a young lady from the Genk branch.  Her grandfather flew in from Lima, Peru to do the ordinance.  It was a lovely service and we enjoyed visiting with the grandparents.  Saturday afternoon, we attended a ward activity planned by Sister Early Kim (from Taiwan).  She taught paper folding and cutting and then prepared a delicious chinese meal.  We also looked up a few more inactive members in Leuven.

Brother and Sister Alvarez flew from Lima, Peru so he could baptize his granddaughter.
Their daughter is an engineer, married to a Belgian and they live in Genk.

Elders Clukey and Walker showing their potato peeling skills

Sister Early Kim (from Taiwan) supervising the Elders blowing up balloons

The Verschuure girls excited to start folding paper

A delicious Chinese meal prepared by Sister Kim

Sister C with one of her five piano students

Brother Verschuure leaving for home

Brother and Sister Verschuure - wonderful parents!

On Sunday, we picked up Brother Van Es for church and drove to Leuven.  Because they are working on repaving part of the freeway, we had a fairly long detour getting to another freeway entrance.  Brother Van Es is the only member from the former Mechelen branch who has been faithfully attending the Leuven ward.  He is the ward clerk and we have enjoyed getting to know him.  I had to speak in sacrament meeting.  There were two other speakers and neither took much time, so I had more time than I wanted.  I felt impressed to use a conference talk from President Boyd K. Packer several years ago, called "The Golden Years".  I did not have a copy in Dutch, so I had to do a lot of translating.  I believe the message was well received and the Bishop was happy with the topic.  President Packer talked about the difference between being active in the church versus active in the gospel.  As my grandparents aged, they remained active in the gospel, even when they could no longer serve in callings.

We are certainly grateful to be serving in Belgium and working with such wonderful young missionaries.  We love our little town of Mechelen and enjoy living here.  We are hopeful about finishing the final steps of our residence in the next couple of weeks.