Brussels, I mean, Waffles, Belgium

We have been oh so busy this week, gelukkig:)  So, our electricity was fixed last Monday night so no more showering in the dark, unfortunately...

One of our investigators only speaks Arabic and the most basic Dutch ever and the missionaries before us were teaching him mostly with Google Translate, but that's never really great...do you know what the law of chastity translates to in Arabic?  Neither do we, but hopefully something halfway normal.

Anyway, on Wednesday, we had an amazing lesson with him (no, we didn't receive the gift of tongues and start speaking Arabic), but rather hooked him up with a member in Hoogeveen who is from Jordan and speaks fluent Dutch and Arabic...*little mind explosion*. So we had a lesson with them and the ever regal Brother Thies de Jonge (who is the ultimate Dutchman in all manners of dress and decorum), finally cleared up all of the investigator's questions, which were many, as you can imagine.  But everything's continuing to go well with him and we're hoping to get everything squared away so he can be baptized on Saturday (ideally).

On Thursday, our district leaders (we have 2) came up from Emmen to work with us in Assen for the day, so we did a ton of street contacting and doors.

District leaders visiting Assen

Then we had a lesson with a member who recently received the priesthood.  And boy is he a talker!  But he is really sweet and I love being able to be someone to listen to a lonely man's stories that may not have any relations to each other, and let him know that we really do care about him. The elders were only here for about 4 hours and we spent up to 2 1/2 hours with this brother, but that was that:)

Waiting with Elders at the train station in Lelystad

 Then Thursday night, we took a train down to Lelystad to sleep over at the sisters' apartment because we were going to Belgium on Friday!  So we got to Lelystad station and had to wait with some elders from our district who were also going to spend the night at the Lelystad elders' apartment. Anyway, eventually we got to the apartment and I got to see/talk in the dark (while we were supposed to be asleep) to Zuter Begazo from my MTC group so that was ah-mazing.

Beautiful, Historic Belgium

Main Square in Brussels

Friday morning we took at 7:40am train to Leiden and there met up at the  mission office with the elders and other missionaries that were coming with us.  We drove down to Brussels in a van which took about 3 hours and listened to one CD the whole time. We had plenty of CDs but for some reason we listed to the same CD over and over again.  

Happy Missionaries travelling for hours via a van to
and from Brussels listening to one CD!

But we got to Belgium!  And the first thing we did was have lunch:)  We got some killer Belgian frites with mayonnaise (yes..), some broodjes (Broetchen/rolls) and the piece de resistance, my strawberry, nutella and slagroom (yeah, that's whipped cream *shaking head*) waffles.  Just glorious in so many different ways, and yet the same way.  The only way to describe them is with sound effects, so y'all will have to just imagine the sort of sounds I generally make and use that as a reference.  But me oh my and for the love of Eliza, everyone should just come to Belgium for these bad boys.

Belgian Waffles - the real deal!

Pure heaven - translatable even!

So after being translated and then coming back down to the real world (aka finishing my waffle), we all went over to the Belgian legality thingymobobber to register to live in Belgium should we be called to serve there.  The whole process took about 30 minutes with all of us that came; so a 6 hour drive there and back just to do some paperwork, but it has to be done in person, so what can you do?  I know!  Eat waffles:)

Very famous statue, called Manneken Pis

While considered typical Brussels art, not really sister missionary appropriate....

 So after that, we were on our way back up to Leiden, with the same CD playing the entire way back.  No one was pleased. But then that also begs the question: why did no one say anything?  No one knows.  So, we got back to Leiden, sang a quick, "Do you want to build a snowman" with an Elder at the piano and we were back on a train to Assen (which took another 2-3 hours). So we were gone the entire day and were pretty darn tootin' tired when we got home.

Saturday should have basically been Wednesday, or as Pooh bear would say, Windsday.  So. much. wind.  

So Zuster Voss and I sang  "Colors of the Wind" several times and at several different intervals during the day.

We visited our newest investigator who really enjoys having visitors and always buys us hot chocolate at the little cafe place in his rest home. So cute.

Saturday night was when be came true independents.  My back tire had a minor hole in it and one of our investigators had shown us how to fix a tire before and so we decided that we could do it too.  

Developing all kinds of talents!

So I hauled my bike into our kitchen, flipped over that bad boy, and we totally fixed it all by ourselves. Just *wow* in so many ways - we had a minor dance party to some pretty funky soulful black Gospel to celebrate and then had dinner.  Just an amazingly, awesomely, crazy busy week!  

We DID it! We can do anything together and with the Lord's help:)

I couldn't ask for anything better and like always, the members are so great and we have some outstanding (the highest score you can get on the OWLS) joint teaches.  It makes every lesson so much better and just hits investigators.  And the members, their own testimony most definitely grows as they bear their witness of what they know to be true.

We updated an older missionary health guide to be more currently accurate 

We read about Charlie Hebdo on Thursday night on the train; and everyone, especially the people in Beligum and the Netherlands are shocked.  It's so close to us and it really does make you stop and reflect.  But with every catastrophe that occurs, we can only hope that it will bring us all closer together, to strengthen and support. 

Paris is only a couple of hours from Brussels; we saw similar signs in Brussels

People ask us, if there is a God, why does he let awful things happen in the world?  We read in the Book of Mormon that God doesn't so much as give us trials and suffering in our lives, but rather a lot of things happen due to the free agency of others.  If God were to interfere with that, then he would cease to be God, for He is just and merciful.  He cannot be one without the other. Other trials do come, without any cause or warning, but that is because we live in an imperfect world, but we already knew that, now and before we came to earth. We knew that we would be coming to an imperfect world but we chose to come anyway.

The world is only as bad or good as the people; and we can always make our own little worlds as good as we want them to be depending on how we choose to respond to things and what our outlook on life is.  I'd always like to think that for every bad thing in the world,t here are 10 good things, we just have to look for them and pray to our Heavenly Father to be able to recognize those things.

Have a wonderful week!  Januar is fast vorbei...I mean, januari is beine klaar, ugg, January is almost over!  How time flies when we're having fun, eh?

Hugs and butterfly kisses (just a reference, don't get any ideas!) 
Zuster Dobler