Getting Busy

This week our mission changed from the phase of getting started to the phase of getting things organized to spend the next 20 months here.  The big change is dealing with home teaching versus crunching through the membership list looking for less-actives willing to let us come back.  We found that most members on the list had moved many years ago.  A few don't want contact with the church anymore.  We have also found some wonderful people that we are becoming good friends with.  Some have not been visited in 20 years. The ability to speak Flemish (Nederlands) is absolutely necessary to work with most of them, so we feel blessed to still have the language.

We returned from the Stake Family Day on Saturday with Elders Walker and Silva.  We put them on the train in Mechelen back to Leuven, but felt they needed something to eat.  Unfortunately, there is a McDonalds on a convenient corner, so we had to stoop to this low level of feeding the Elders.  They didn't seem totally disappointed.  Due to the transfer, they have both been running low on funds and seem grateful for almost any food.

Returning from the Stake Family Day with Elders Walker and Silva

On Sunday, Sister C gave her first full sacrament meeting talk in Dutch.  She bore her testimony the first Sunday that we were here.  She got everyone's attention by talking about flying (taking a page from President Uctdorf).  She was followed by a stake auditor and then by the 1st Counselor in the Stake Presidency, President Leman who we had met the day before.

On Monday, August 31, Elders Walker and Silva came over to do their email again and Sister Caldwell discovered that they both had great tenor voices.  Elder Walker had never sung parts before, but he has a good ear and a nice clear voice.  He took to it like a duck takes to water.  Sister C decided that they should join us on our rest home gig this week and we spent a few minutes practicing.  Elder Silva is very musical and plays both the piano and guitar by ear.  We decided to meet a few minutes early before district class the next day to polish things up.

As we arrived at district class, Elders Walker and Silva were there ready to go.  The Sisters from Turnhout, Sisters Vos and Young soon arrived and we all began singing hymns together.  A few minutes later, the Elders from Genk arrived and we discovered that Elder Thornock could follow a bass part with a little assistance.  We were soon sounding quite good together.  We are surprised at how few missionaries know how to sing parts these days.  It certainly set a nice tone for the district class.

This was Elder Hosea's first district class since becoming a district leader and he did well, despite a few beginning jitters.

On Wednesday, we returned to the Egmont Rest Home for another musical program.  We received a telephone call from another volunteer (Simone) who we had met the last time we were there.  She had offered to help us finding Flemish songs and rearranged her schedule to be with us this time as well.  This time we sang to a group of people who were in a little better shape than those on the other two floors we visited.  We had learned two songs that are popular with the Flemish people and it was fun to see many of them singing along with us.  We are so impressed with the kindness and efficiency of the staff and volunteers who run this rest home for more than 300 residents.

Our wonderful audience. 

Ready to Perform.  We mostly did all right with a couple of minor problems.

We are also in the process of inspecting missionary apartments again.  These need to be done every three months.  This time we will be doing the apartments in two zones since our great friends, the Butlers are returning home in about a week and a half.  This week we inspected the apartments in the Antwerpen District.  This included apartments in the Sint-Niklass area and the Antwerpen area.  It took us two days.  The missionaries have worked hard to clean up and maintain their apartments and we are proud of them.  The Antwerpen apartments had a reputation of being pretty bad, so these Elders and Sisters deserve a lot of credit for cleaning things up.

On Friday, after completing our apartment inspections, Sister C wanted to go past her two old apartments in Antwerpen (from her first mission).  The first one had been sold long ago, but Sister C still rang the doorbell and the nice lady told her that she had bought it 20 years ago, but that the daughter of the previous owners still lived across the street.  Sister C knocked on that door and was greeted warmly by this lovely lady and her husband.  They spent about 45 minutes talking about her parents and old times.  We then drove to the second house and discovered that it had sold multiple times.  A nice neighbor came by and told us that it had been recently sold again.

Sister C in front of her old apartment on the Rode Leeuwlaan (Red Lion Lane)

Knocking at the door.  The door used to be on the front.

Sister C with a friend from long ago.  Wonderful people.

Sister C's second apartment in Antwerpen

Sister C pointing to where her bedroom was.  Unfortunately, the house
was not finished at the time and had no heat in the bedroom and no running
water in the bathroom.  It was a cold miserable winter for her and she had
big circulation problems.

We went to the Saturday market again on September 5.  Sister C selected four ears of corn that were almost up to US standards.  There are three vegetable vendors at the market and two weeks ago, we found the best.  They have both the best products and the best prices.  The difference is surprising.  We also passed a Leonidas shop right on the "Grote Markt" (Main Market).  We had to take a couple of pictures for Mark and Laurie Andersen.

Not bad for factory made chocolate.  We are definitely partial to Sjolaa,
our local chocolatier with 40 years of experience and amazing recipes. 

Leonidas has the primo location, at the intersection of the main
shopping street with the Grote Markt.

Sunday evening, September 6, we went to our first stake Young Single Adult (Jovo) activity at the Antwerpen Stake Center.  The Antwerpen Stake has members from a number of units in the southern Netherlands as well as Belgium.  They told us that there are usually about 17 in attendance, so we were surprised to have about 50 there.  Many of these wonderful young people we had gotten to know at the camp this summer, so it was fun to see them again.

As we did the apartment inspections this week, we also invited the missionaries to attend, based on the advice of the Kleyns (the longest serving Senior couple in the mission at the moment).  This was also emphasized by Brother Hans Noot, the CES representative for the area.  All of the missionaries from the Antwerpen District and the zone leaders attended.  Sister Boegaerts from the Antwerpen ward prepared the meal (for 30).  She had contingency plans in place and no one went hungry.  We ended up feeding folks in two shifts.

The first shift of Young Single Adults getting to dessert.

After the dinner, the fireside was presented by the Branch President of the Brugge Branch and his wife.  They discussed the topic of heros and drew on a talk from President Harold B. Lee.  They gave a very interactive presentation and the Jovos enjoyed the discussion.  We were also blessed to have Sister Sanna Brandenberg with us on the ride to and from Antwerpen.  She is doing an internship in Brussels and caught the train to Mechelen.  She is a great young lady and also spent some time in Bergen, Norway with Elder and Sister Allphin.  She feels like part of the family now.