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