we love it here...

This mission trip has felt like a time warp. We’ve been here for three weeks, and it’s felt like longer, but in a good way… and we have three weeks left, which feels like not enough time. The days here are so long, because the sun rises around 5:30 and sets around 10pm, sometimes it feels like a good thing… it doesn’t when you want to get to bed earlier, but it still prolongs the process.

Last week was amazing, not because we went on any crazy adventures, but because we got to know our readers so well. The stories that were shared between the three of us and our readers were meaningful and they helped to build the relationship. One of Maureen’s favorites is a woman who came to Belgium as a refugee, and Maureen got to hear that story. These are things that you don’t encounter everyday, or even every week, but here, we do. Hillary met with a woman whose son died in a car accident 2 months ago, and they discussed the story of Mary and what it’s like to lose a son. Hillary shared some of her own story with this woman, and the woman’s response was, “There are some people you know your whole life, and it is easy to share… but we have only just met, and it is easy to share.” I met with a woman, who is not religious in any way, but we discussed the importance of religion and learning about it… and it’s refreshing to see so many people who “get it.” They understand the importance of the stories they are reading.

The three of us came out to Belgium to meet people, and have meaningful conversations. So far, it has been a success. Our readers are incredible, and I don’t know if any of us could have asked for more from them. Also, as a group, they’re growing. By the end of last week, we had 6 new readers with appointments for this week. We do have free time here, but the amount of commitment that we pour into our reading sessions wears us out… but we all love it, and we have all agreed that it’s worth it.

Because we took off last Monday to go to Den Haag with the Brazle’s, we all worked on Friday. We each had readers, and then we headed to downtown Antwerp because we had some special grocery shopping to do… okay, really we just wanted to get some good ol’ American ice cream… and downtown is the place to get it. We each picked our Ben & Jerry’s and awaited the tram so that we could begin our feast. We were on a bit of a time crunch because we had a guest speaker coming to the church at 8. Phil Jackson, the speaker from Monday, was coming to our church to do a seminar about community building and discipleship.

The three of us were in attendance, considering, we live in the building. Paul and Carol were both there, Merlene, a member of the Antwerp church, along with Luk, Peter, and Sue from Ghent. We all discussed how to build the church, based on Bible studies, and it was all very interesting. If you want to know more about the system you can go to www.cpmtr.org, I believe that’ll have al the info you need. After the meeting, the three of us talked with Luk, Peter, and Sue. They told us that their LST team wants to go to Brugge with us on Saturday. We’re thinking this is definitely happening, and we’re all super excited about it! We hope the Ghent team is just as excited. Then we talked with Luk and Peter about living in the same apartment that we’re living in now… those stairs are legendary. Luk headed back to Ghent, and Peter stayed with us for a little longer and watched Scrubs with us. It was a good time.

Saturday, Carol and Paul had plans to go to southern Belgium for a war memorial service through the American Women’s Association. They had asked us the previous weekend if we wanted to hang out with Jesse, their 11 year old, for the day. Of course we wanted to! The three of us love that boy, he is hilarious. So, on Saturday, we headed to the Brazle’s house via tram. This time we had a better idea of where we were going, which made things easier for the walking portion of out journey.

We got to their house, and it was great, just what we needed. Jesse was in the backyard jumping on his trampoline when we arrived, and Carol greeted us and told us to make ourselves at home. She is one of those people who you can tell she means it when she tells you to make yourself at home. Then she told us about Jesse’s plans for us for the day. He wanted to walk us to the candy store down the street and he wanted to go to the shopping center in the suburb next to the Brazles’. Carol set some sandwich supplies out for us while we waited for Paul to get back from the Netherlands. When Paul got home, they were gone within 15 minutes, which meant that we had Jesse to ourselves.

Jesse showed us his legos, they were elaborate. Then, he reiterated the plans that Carol had informed us about earlier. Of course, we headed to his candy shop, he wanted to show us some real Belgian candy… the three of us didn’t end up getting anything, but he got some and shared. Then we got back to the house and watched half of Iron Man before Jesse wanted to head over to the shopping center. So, we all got ready for our 30 minute trek to the mall.

The journey was a good one, we saw some of the Belgian country side as well as some suburbs and some urban businesses. We got everything! Then, Jesse found 50 euro on the ground at a car dealership next to the mall. It was his lucky day! We went to the two toy stores in the mall and the grocery store. We weren’t feeling especially adventurous. We got some chocolate bars for some cookies and some drinks before we started back for the Brazles’. In the time we were in the mall, it started raining. So, the walk back was much more brisk and wet then the walk there.

When we got back, we finished Iron Man, and Hillary started to make some dinner and cookies. Simultaneously, of course. The elder Brazle’s returned soon enough, and we all just spent time together eating and watching Mission Impossible 3. Paul went to bed early, but we still stayed up with Jesse and Carol and got to know them even better. Our love for Jesse has only grown stronger after this day. He has become all of our little brother.

Sunday morning we had church with the Ghanaians. Our goal was to get at least one of the babies to become our best friend. You have no idea how PRECIOUS these Ghanaian babies are, oooh my goodness. This was the third week we’ve had church with this community, so we just hoped and prayed that the little kids had warmed up to us. The icebreaker was a little baby named Gideon. Jesse was holding him and then offered him to me. From there, Hillary spotted me from across the room with the baby, she then joined in on the Gideon holding. Now, we loved this baby, but we couldn’t call him our best friend. So, then Jesse had Matthew, an 18 month old, he was not budging from Jesse’s arms… but then, there was Elliot. He came out of nowhere and grabbed onto my leg. From there, it was history. Hillary and I have a new best friend, and his name is Elliot. When Elliot’s mom tried to get him from Hillary, Elliot pushed his mom’s hands away and held tighter onto Hillary. It was hilarious.

The details about the Ghanaian babies may seem irrelevant, but to us it was extremely relevant. To us, this has been one of the steps in becoming a part of their church community. We’ve also been talking to a few of the younger girls, they want to hang out with us, and we are so excited. We are just happy to be fitting into the church here. This is something that is so important to each of us, and holding the babies that are constantly being watched meant something. Really, we’re all so ecstatic.

So, from there, Hillary had a reader at 2 o’clock, but Maureen and I were free until 6pm. Sunday became the day of rest. We all just chilled out in our beds for a while. There was an acapella group that was meeting down in the main room. We stayed and listened for a little bit, that is until the fatigue set in. I decided that I wanted to play some ukulele, so I headed down stairs, and about 20 minutes into my solo jam sesh, the group left. From there, I waited for the church members to arrive for church. Merlene was the first of the night… at this point I thought that it’d be good to wake Hillary from her slumber.

The sermon tonight was about the empty tomb, and how that is the image that we should think of as Christians rather than the cross. This was something that Phil Jackson had talked about on Friday night. It was informal and nice. Then we did something that I’ve wanted to do since the last Sunday night chapel at Pepperdine. We communed during communion. We shared and ate together and it was something that I knew I needed.

The most important thing that we’ve all learned this week is the importance of community. We’ve been thrown into a completely new place, but we have found a community that is incredible through our readers, missionaries, and churches. We are so grateful for all of these things. This is why we came to Belgium, was to meet people and hear their stories and build a community. This is what we have gotten so far.

Peace, Love, and Jesus,

Dana, Hillary, and Maureen

Some pictures from the weekend! :D

They uploaded in reverse order, from Monday to Friday, so, I will explain!

The first is a picture of out team with J.B. who is working in Ghent with Luk and Holly Brazle. We met him at the Pentecost get together in Den Haag in the Netherlands.

These are both pictures of the town we stopped at on Friday after we went to the police station and the beach. We walked around and got some friets. :)

Here is the beach we ended up at, it was so lovely. Really, it was perfect.

Here's the equally as lovely Antwerp LST team. Standing in the North Sea. :)

What a weekend!

So, I’ve gotten a little behind on the blog, but do not fear! I am back, with some fun stories and experiences from this past weekend. Paul and Carol had invited us Wednesday night to go to the North Sea in Holland with them to go see the delta works. I’m not sure of the exact name, but of course we wanted to go! So on Friday around 1 o’clock (After Carol’s exercise class), we headed out for the Netherlands in the Brazle-mobile.

It was so exciting, because I’ve obviously never been to the Netherlands, so it was just so neat to see something new. We drove through farmland mostly, but everything was so beautiful. The sky was so blue and everything else was so green… it was really quite lovely. When we started hitting water on our journey, Jesse started begging to go to the beach. Earlier I had asked him if he like the mountains or the beach more, he said, “Well, the mountains are nice, and I’ve never actually been to a real nice beach before, but I think I would like the beach more. Definitely the beach.” Hahaha. After this, Hillary and I tried to convince him of Pepperdine, which wasn’t difficult because he has already been there.

After a little while, we found a nice spot to pull over and go to the beach…. On the North Sea! How legit is that? We all packed up the van, slid our stuff under the seats and headed out. The three of us pseudo-California girls felt right at home. The sand was warm, the tide was low, and the wind was a-blowin’. We also were surrounded by the wind energy windmills. It was so cool, I loved it so much, we all loved it so much. It felt like a perfect moment, that is, until we got back to the Brazle-mobile.

While we’d been gone someone had broken the passenger side window and dashed out the back door on the drivers side. Carol, Hillary, and I were all freaking out, we’d all left our purses in the car… but by some miracle, they had only gotten away with Carol’s purse, which is really unfortunate, but that means they had only gotten away with about 20 Euro, and we thought that they’d gotten away with her phone as well. However, later Carol found her phone, which was super lucky. We could have lost so much more. It was a downer, but really, it could have been so much worse.

After all of this, we couldn’t really go see the delta works like we’d planned, so instead we went to the nearest town and went to the police station to file a report. Carol and Paul went inside while Hillary, Maureen, Jesse, and I stayed with the car. Jesse taught us some Flemish while drawing us some comics. Then, we headed to the square of this town… which was an amazing town. There was a river running through it, with sailboats, and the streets were cobblestone, and everyone was riding bicycles, it was beautiful. Anyway, we went to the square and got some friets, because friets make everything better, obviously. We sat and watched the hustle and bustle of the square. Then we headed back to the car, all valuables on hand, and then started off back to Antwerpen. We got back to the church building around 7:30pm, and from there the three of us vegged out and didn’t do anything, except watch Pushing Daisies, of course.

On Saturday, we didn’t have anything planned for the morning, so we slept in a bit and waited for 2 o’clock to come, because we had been invited over to a reader’s house for dinner. There was going to be a Moroccan wedding party at the church building that night, so we were also expecting some ladies to come in and prepare. The ladies came in around 1, so we all stayed out of their way until Myrjam came to pick us up.

When we arrived at her house, we were greeted by Jeff, her husband, he didn’t speak much English, but his smile was welcoming. Next, we were going to meet their daughter, Rekha. We were sure what to expect, but we all loved her almost instantly. Rekha is almost 16 years old, and she goes to a boarding school during the week and lives at home on the weekends. We all sat in the backyard, which felt like a jungle, it was really nice. From there we started talking to Rekha about everything, from boys to health to the proper use of the word “appetizing.” It was so much fun, and of course we ate tonsss of food. We started off with schmotaballah… which is definitely not how it’s spelled, but that is how it sounds. This is the Belgian version of fried dough and powdered sugar… so of course it was phenomenal.

After the schmotaballah, we took a break. It was a short break until Myrjam pulled out dinner, which was fresh veggies and… meat. The most meat I think I’ve ever seen at one dinner party ever. And I wish that I was exaggerating. There were five kabobs with pork on both ends and two types of sausage in the middle… there were also small sausage kabobs, and chicken legs… that were the size of turkey legs. I managed most of one of the big kabobs, half of a small kabob, and some veggies. It was hard. I don’t remember the last time I ate that much meat… if I ever did. Preparation for Buenos Aires next semester? Maybe.

Then we got some games, and played with Rekha more. We seriously loved this girl. She added us on facebook, haha. Then Myrjam brought MORE food. It was craaazy! She brought our drinks, cookies, and candy… then she brought us ice cream. Needless to say, Maureen, Hillary, and I never need to eat again for the rest of our lives. Ever.

We headed back to the church building around 9pm, we sat in that backyard for 7 hours… but it was a great 7 hours. When we came back the Moroccan party was still going strong, so we got our bed time stuff out of there and headed upstairs to our apartment. Of course, we watched Pushing Daisies, and then tried to go to bed… which was difficult, because the party downstairs went until 2:30am, but we got our sleep.

On Sunday we had church in the morning with the Ghanaians. This week Paul and Carol were there, which made things just a little bit easier to get to know more members. Really, the Ghanaians are amazing. They are so kind and welcoming, such a great group of people. After church, Hillary had two readers scheduled, and I planned to go out and pass out flyers with Maureen in our spare time. One of Hillary’s readers couldn’t make it, but Maureen and I still went out on our own to give Hillary some alone time.

Maureen and I conquered three blocks before we ran out of our stash of LST flyers, then we headed back to the church in order to go to the Flemish service at 6pm. We both made some snacks, hoping that church members wouldn’t come until we were done, unfortunately, we were still eating when some arrived. Oooops. It was alright though, we finished before the actual service started. The Flemish service was great, our favorite song was “Doe Je Best.” This is the song Paul’s sermon was based off of. After the service, we fellowshipped with the Flemish church members. It was great, let’s just say that hula-hoops were involved.

On Monday, we went to an area-wide church meeting in Den Haag in the Netherlands. It was for the second day of Pentecost, the churches of Christ in Belgium and the Netherlands do this every year. The gathering was about church planting in Europe, and the speaker was Phil Jackson from Dallas. It was a great day, we met so many people from the different churches in the area, we even got invited to hang out in Eindhoven with a high school girl named Destiny, haha. We also met J.B., he’s apart of another LST team in Ghent, who is working with Luk and Holly Brazle, our Brazles’ niece and nephew! We also met Luk along with cousin Gideon, it was great to make the connection. We’re all hoping to do some LST group bonding, just because we figured that it’d be fun. I don’t know how it couldn’t be!

We got back to Antwerp around 6:30pm, because I had a reader at 7pm. I met with Andrea, an Antwerp native, she is great. We talked about everything, but my favorite thing we talked about was Easter. This is because is Belgium, the Easter Bunny does not deliver the eggs, oooh nooo. Clocks. That’s right. Clocks. They fly from Rome and drop eggs in the yard and the bunnies paint them. Hillary got the biggest kick out of that when I told her… and even when I mentioned it later.

Well, that was our weekend. So fun, right? If you guys have anything that you want me to add to these blogs, let me know! We’re working on talking about the readers more in-depth, and of course, out pictures and video. I’m almost done with the first video, and I just finished editing a bunch of pictures that will probably be up on Facebook today or tomorrow!

Peace, Love, and Jesus

Dana, Hillary, and Maureen

Maureen's hereee!

Maureen arrived on Tuesday morning, and it felt like some glorious reunion. I think Hillary and I were excited for some “fresh meat.” It changed our team dynamic pretty instantly, but in a really good way. Paul and Carol came to drop her off, and stayed and talked with us for just a little while. Hillary was in the middle of her lesson with Tongue (Pronounced: Tongue-yyyy), a Belgian who is fluent in English, so Paul and I showed Maureen around her temporary home of five weeks.

When Maureen saw the stairs, her first words were, “You weren’t kidding!” Those stairs are the stairs of death, I need to take a picture so you all understand, but I don’t know if a picture can instill the fear that these stairs evoke. Maureen was settled in pretty fast, and when Tongue, Paul, and Carol all left, it was time to go on a short adventure.

We decided to throw Maureen in right away, we figured this would be easier for her. We took the tram to downtown Antwerp because we had a little bit of party supplies shopping to do. As I said before: I love public transportation. It never gets old to me! We made the trip really smoothly, and we headed right for the shopping center as soon as we got to Groenplaats.

Because Hillary and I had already been here, we knew that there was a toy store in this shopping center. Our mission: find a hula-hoop for our island themed party. We got lucky and found them in the store right away. After this, we decided to do our grocery shopping downtown as well. We got some bread, cheese, and, you know, the essentials. After this, we headed back to the tram station, and we did all of this shopping within an hour, which meant that our tram right back to the church was free! Yesss!

Maureen made Tuesday a special day, so we decided to go out to eat at the pita place around the corner from the church. Mmm, sogood. Hillary didn’t come with us, so it was Dana-Maureen bonding time, it was good. I only managed to eat half of my pita, so I gave the other half to Hillary when we got back from the restaurant. From there, we waited for Maureen’s first readers. We gave her two for the day, which is a good start for a western European LST trip. Hillary and I didn’t have any readers after Maureen came, so we just worked on our party ideas for Wednesday night.

Maureen’s last reader was from 7-8, and we had Carol’s aerobics class at 8. So we all donned our sweats to participate and talk with the ladies in the class. After the class, we talked with the ladies for a little bit and tried to get them interested in our English lessons, because we’d all love more readers. We made some dinner and went to bed after everyone left. It was a really good day.

Carol also has her class at 10 on Wednesday morning, however, Hillary had a reader during the class, and I had one scheduled for 11. So, Maureen and I were getting ready for the exercise class, but in the midst of that my 11 o’clock appointment showed up at 10. It wasn’t a bad thing, but I just wasn’t expecting it. So, I changed out of my sweats and into real clothes and ran down the stairs to meet with Lucy.

This was the second time that I had met with Lucy, and the first time there was not a lot of talking. She knew less English than I was expecting, so her and Hillary worked out a plan the first week for her and I, and Wednesday was the test of that plan. It worked. Lucy and I worked through the lessons that she had gone over on her own, and then she read through three more lessons to work on pronunciation. She came for two hours, which did not feel long at all. We looked at the lessons, and then we went through and English workbook that she brought. We just talked about everything during the second hour. It was really fun getting to know her. I found out that she speaks Russian, French, Flemish, a little bit of German, a little bit of Hungarian, and a little bit of English… I was really impressed. I also got to hear about her story and her children. I had the same feeling as I did with Palden, this was the reason I wanted to come to Belgium: to get to know people on a personal level. And the fact that the idea of this relationship is based around Jesus, and the best friendships are based around Him.

So, we all worked through the day, and when we were done with our readers, we took a walk to the grocery store to get some more food and some last-minute party supplies. When we got back to the church, we smoothed out our plans and started decorating. After about an hour, we took a break, Hillary and Maureen napped, and I journaled and listened to some music. When they were done, we finished decorating and putting our food together. We just had some simple stuff, some tropical punch, cookies, chips, and pineapple, but it looked gooood. We had some balloons on the ground, it all looked especially festive. We were proud of ourselves. From there, we waited for the guests to arrive. We laid out some leis, I played my ukulele while Maureen greeted people at the door, and Hillary worked the back room.

We had a good group of people there, the Brazle’s, Tongue, Nina, Myrjam, Palden, and Phunsok. We were just glad that we had enough people to play games. Everyone participated, which was excellent. It was so much fun! We started off with a hula-hoop game, where you stand in a circle and hold hands and you have to pass the hula-hoop to each other. That was a success, and a good mixer game. Next we played a game where we each wrote down our dream vacation and we had to guess which was whose. Good times. Next, we played, what I like to call, “Keepsie-Upsies minus your hands.” Last semester at school, I found out that one of the dorms next to mine played this game they called “Keepsie-Upsies” where the goal of the game was to keep a ball in the air by any means possible. This was the same game, but you could not use your hands. That was so fun. We worked up a sweat, and then cooled down with some Pictionary. It was a good party! We were all really proud of ourselves, and we’re looking forward to (rather than dreading) next week’s party.

After all of this had taken place, Hillary, Maureen, and I all sat together on a couch and watched some more Pushing Daisies… we love that show! Haha. We went to bed, happy and ready for the new day to come.

Peace, Love, and Jesus,

Dana, Hillary, and Maureen

What a weekend!

Saturday was our first day off, and both Hillary and I were ridiculously excited to sleep in and not worry about setting an alarm. This was the morning that we both realized that we were still jetlagged… considering that we both slept through the morning and were woken by a phone call that came from Carol. She gave us the name and number of a man that found a flyer and was interested in our English lessons. After all of this Hillary and I got up, dismayed by the fact that we slept in far too late.

We both got some coffee and food inside of us, and then called Annemie, she told us that she wanted to do something else with us and to call her with ideas. Although, we are not Belgian, so we didn’t exactly have any ideas for Annemie. I called her anyway and told her that, and she just said, “Okay, it takes me 20-30 minutes to get to the church, I will think of something on the way.”

She arrived about 30 minutes later and told Hillary and I that we would be going to Lier, a town about 30 kilometers from Antwerp. This town is known for two things in Belgium: The Zimmer tower and the St. Gummarus church community. What was fun about this stop was that this is a Belgian tourist area. There were a ton of tourists there, but they were all Dutch-speaking tourists. Hillary and Annemie talked about how this city was very similar to Brugge because of the cobblestone streets and there is a river running through the city. I wouldn’t know, but I trust both of them. We walked through the city, and then we stopped in a café to get some coffee and listen to some big band music in the square. It reminded me of home, which felt really nice. I’m in Belgium though, so all is well.

After this, Annemie asked if there was anything that we needed, and we had been looking for a plug converter, so she took us to the mall. We ran through looking, and we also went to the Belgian Costco, but no luck. Paul and Carol let us borrow a converter, and we were just hoping for another one, but it was alright. Annemie was going to the theatre at 7 that night, so she rushed us back to the church and got ready for her play here. We sliced up some cheese and cut up some bread, made tea, got some cookies out, and had a baby meal with Annemie until she left.

After this we made a real meal: leftovers. It was a good day, and a good night. Later, the Ghanaians came in and had a men’s meeting, during this Hillary and I sat around and wrote, we couldn’t watch our movies or anything because my computer was so close to dying… but then, we thought that maybe we could make the adapter usable. Hillary had woken up from a nap earlier that week and said, “Why don’t we cut it(the adapter, our plugs didn’t fit it)?!”… She was a little disoriented, so I brushed this comment off… but cutting the adapter became more and more attractive. Now… I’m not going to tell you how we did it, but I will say that we succeeded. We felt extremely accomplished! This also meant that we could watch movies! Our luxury! Haha.

The next morning was church with the Ghanaians. Hillary and I were both extremely excited about this because neither of us had ever attended an African service. This was a bi-lingual service, and it was so great. Hillary and I loved it, and we loved the community we felt in this church. We talked to a few people, but we stuck around with a twenty-one year old named Ernestina. She’s lived in Belgium for nine years. She was fun, and she said that she might come hang out with us in the church building! Yay! Friends!

From there, Hillary had two readers still coming, so I just napped upstairs and chilled out. Then Hillary and I sat around for a little bit, made dinner, the usual. At 6 we were expecting Paul and Carol, because that is when the Flemish church meets. The Flemish church is much smaller than the Ghanaian church, but it still has a strong community. It consists of just a few families and a few kids, but it was a good service. Afterwards, Hillary and I talked to Richard and Jona, a father and son who are fluent in English. Richard was telling us that Jona is being sponsored to attend Harding University next fall, which is exciting. I also thought that it was kind of funny, but in a good way.

We also talked with Annemie, her best friend Nicole, and Nicole’s husband Rudy. They were a fun group, although neither Rudy nor Nicole are able to speak much English. Hillary and I still enjoying meeting them and talking with them, even just a little bit. After everyone had left Hillary and I watched some more Pushing Daisies and went to bed.

Monday was a pretty typical day, we got up, did a devo, prayed, ate, and met with readers. However, we also had to do some shopping for our party that we will be having on Wednesday night. It’s going to be Island themed, we’re pretty excited about it. We found all the decorations we needed in the church building, which was awesome because that meant that we didn’t have to spend much of our budget! Score! Anyway, Paul and Carol came over to show us how to get certain places, such as the post office and other grocery stores in the area. They also asked us to go out to see if we could distribute more flyers in the neighborhood.

This turned out to be more of an adventure than we both had anticipated. We made our first stop at Aldi, and we got some food and drinks for the party. It’s a little funny, Aldi in Europe is exactly like Aldi in the States… a little dirty, a little sketchy, and SUPER cheap. We spent less than 5 Euros in total… Hillary thought the checker woman was wrong, bahaha. Not at Aldi, she’s not. We then walked, what seemed to be aimlessly, until we found the post office. From there, we bought some stamps to send letters to America… because we love yallz… and then, it started raining. We stayed in the post office for as long as we could, but they were closing for lunch about 10 minutes after we’d gotten there… so we braved the storm. We then put flyers in mailboxes, and from there we miraculously got back to the main road and made it back to the church building. I still have no idea how we managed that.

After we dropped our groceries off at the house, we went to the corner of our block and got our first frieten of our trip. We had about an hour until I had a reader coming, so we started up an episode of Pushing Daisies. Paul and Carol then came over to set up their new sound system, so Hillary and I joined them downstairs until Palden came for his lesson. This lesson was slower, but Palden seemed really tired. He’s been getting better with his English though, which is really good! He’s also been teaching me some Dutch, annnd he wrote my name in Tibetan. Best. Ever. Haha.

I had one more lesson on Monday, it was Andrea, a Belgian woman who has done LST before, and she has very good English. I tried to get her to use the Luke book, but she wouldn’t really have any of it, so we just talked. She brought me some of her homework from adult school to look over, correct, and discuss… it was almost a little too formal, but I’m sure that will change for the better. From there, Hillary and I made some dinner, and finished up the first season of Pushing Daisies. Then, we just talked, and it was a good talk. One of those friendship-building talks. We were both super excited about Tuesday morning though, because that is when Maureen comes! We’re so excited to include her in our English-teaching-triad.

Peace, Love, and Jesus,

Dana, Hillary, and soon to be Maureen

What a nice end to the beginning...

Friday morning, I had a reader at 10am and 11am. The first was Palden, my Tibetan immigrant. Thursday morning was a little rough with him, just because I didn’t think his English was as advanced as I found out that it was this morning. We had a really good talk, I feel like I learned a lot about him. I mean, it basically epitomized why I wanted to do LST to begin with. I love meeting people and hearing their stories, and Palden has an amazing story. It’s been a good start so far.

Hillary and I both had appointments at 11am, but neither of them ended up coming… on time. Hillary’s wasn’t a for sure thing, he’ll probably end up coming later. I had an appointment with an older lady named Annemie who is a member at the church. She ended up coming around 11:30 looking for Carol. She is quite possibly our new favorite person ever. She brought us new oven mitts and dishtowels. Then she asked us if we wanted to see some of Belgium, this question took us both a little off guard. Then she said, “Well, I guess not…” To which we both responded, “Yes! We want to go some where!” Hillary had an appointment at 2pm, so we had a bit of a time crunch. If Hillary hadn’t had that appointment, Annemie said that we could have gone to Holland or something like that. Whaaat?!

Instead, we headed out to a little place called Lillo, one of the last real villages in Belgium. This village was about 30 minutes outside of Antwerp. The car ride was fun, talking with Annemie was so great. She was telling us about her travels and Belgium, she has an amazing life. So, we got to Lillo, and it was… perfect. We both loved it instantly. All of the other villages by the harbor had been pushed out by the boating industry, all but Lillo, which is now protected by the Belgian government. This place was just like, magic, haha. There were the cobblestones, and it was tiny. Hillary asked Annemie how old Lillo was, she told us that it was 800-900 years old. Hillary told me that it’s the villages like Lillo that make her love Europe… well, one reason for her love, haha. We took a little break in a restaurant, and sat and talked over coffee. We learned about how Annemie got involved in the church and just different things. We left the village, and really this was just the perfect outing. It was something different, and not extremely cliché.

When we got back to the church, Hillary and I made some lunch and then waited for her 2 o’clock. After that, we headed to the grocery store to get some ingredients for Shepherd’s Pie. Hillary felt the urge to make some. This is the first real cooking we’ve done since being here. I mean, eggs, spaghetti, and frozen spinach are great and everything… but it was nice that those weren’t the main components of our meal.

We composed the pie before Hillary’s final reader of the night came. Phunsok, one of Hillary’s Tibetans, who has been utilizing the lesson time more than any of our other readers. He really wants to learn English. I chilled out up in our apartment while I waited for the lesson to be complete. Hillary was interrupted by some Ghanaians about an hour into her lesson, but she was okay with it because the Ghanaians are fantastic. We’ve both decided that they might be our favorites. So, Phunsok left and we then began our feast, haha.

Because the day before we had gone to the Brazle’s house, I was able to charge my computer, which meant that we could watch a movie or something. This seemed like such a luxury, because we’d been without technology for longer than the average American… and probably longer than the average Belgian as well! So, we started to watch the first season of Pushing Daisies, a short-lived dark comedy that used to be on WB.

In the middle of the first or second episode, I noticed something… on the wall. This was something that Hillary and I had yet to see while being in Belgium. It was the orange glow of a setting sun. It has been overcast and hazy since we got here, but not on Friday night. The clouds had cleared, and we could see the sun setting and it was… perfect… not unlike Lillo, the Belgian village. It was like God saying, “Welcome. Feel good about the work you are doing here.” That’s what I got from it anyway. It was the perfect end to our first week. God is good. God is love.

Peace, Love, and Jesus,

Dana and Hillary… and soon to be Maureen. :)

the mission work begins...

Thursday morning: we had our first readers come in. It was exciting! Both Hillary and I had appointments at 10am, two of the three Tibetans, Phunsok and Palden. Hillary and I were worried that the 45-minute session would feel like a long time, but it went by much quicker than we both had anticipated. We then waited for our 11 o’clock appointments. Both of which were Belgians. I had a fun, older lady who spoke Flemish and French with Hillary and me. Hillary waited on a high school girl, who was hilarious. We both thought that she was great. However, she made a 3 o’clock appointment and left in about 15 minutes. We both really enjoyed working with our readers, we'll get more in-depth later. :)

After that appointment, I was done for the day. Hillary and I made some lunch and waited for Hillary’s next reader. After that, I went upstairs and vegged out, I’d been extremely tired and nodded off to sleep. Fact: Napping is not good when you are jetlagged... but that nap felt SO GOOD. I went back downstairs to check on Hillary and Nina (the high schooler). Nina had been there about 30 minutes longer than the appointments actually go, but it looked like they had been having fun, so I just joined in on the conversation.

After Nina left, Hillary and I sat next to our little heater upstairs. Hillary took a nap while I made some dinner. We were just sitting and eating when Carol called to tell us that she cancelled her exercise class due to illness. She’s been fighting a throat infection, so she has not been feeling well at all. Then she asked if we wanted to come over to her house in case we needed internet, because we don’t have it at the church building. Needless to say, we accepted the offer. She gave us directions via the tram… after we got off the phone, I walked up to Hillary and said, “This is going to be an adventure.” But we were up for the challenge.

It wasn’t as bad as either of us thought that it would be. After we got off our first tram, we had problems finding the stop for the other tram, but we found it and all was well. We only ran into trouble when we got off the tram and had to actually navigate and walk to the house. We got a little mixed up… but we got there eventually! The excursion took less than an hour, and Hillary and I were impressed.

We did what was needed, contacted friends, family, and of course, LST. We skyped with my brother, Reese (Holla!), and facebooked, you know, the essentials. Poor Carol was wrapped in a blanket on the couch watching TV. We liked keeping her company, but we didn’t like keeping her up, so we tried to be as speedy as possible. We were about to leave when Carol offered us a ride back rather than having to take the tram. At that point, that was quite possibly the sweetest thing that she could have ever done. Hillary and I tried to refuse, just because we wanted her in bed. Carol managed to take us back though, which was fantastic, just because Hillary and I were convinced that we would have gotten lost in the dark. When we got back to the church, we went to bed. Thursday! Done!

Peace, Love, and Jesus

Dana and Hillary