O.K. it's time to take a breath. We are getting way too old to be doing this but it was a great weekend. We started off on Thursday by heading to Apeldoorn about two hours south of here for interviews with President Brubaker and a day of teaching. We were both asked to help with some of the training probably because they want to make us feel useful. It is good to watch these "young ones" get excited about learning more about the scriptures. I love rubbing shoulders with them because it always gives me a boost.
After training we headed north to Giethoorn the Venice of the Netherlands. President and Sister Brubaker wanted all the Dutch speaking senior couples to spend a weekend for a conference and a chance to mingle and getting to know each other better. The whole village of Giethoorn can only be reached by water. Even the cows are transported from the field to the barn with boats. There are bike and walking paths but no roads for cars. Even the ambulance and fire services use boats. We all got on a small tour boat that took us through the village and it was so peaceful we felt like we were in a different world. We had dinner and spent the night in a beautiful Hotel on the edge of a canal where we were able to watch the boats go by during dinner. It was so relaxing, we almost felt guilty.
After heading back to our apartment for one night, we headed south again, this time for Antwerp. The ward there was having their annual Bar-B-Q and we had promised some of the members as well as investigators that we would come back down for that. We were invited to spend the night with a family in the ward so that we could go to church on Sunday.
It was surprising to see the welcome we got. So many people were happy to see us it was like a homecoming. We really got to love "some" of the people there and it was great to see them again. Not much has changed in the short time while we were away however because the new couple serving there now seem to be just as frustrated as we were in trying to help this ward.
Sunday night we headed back home. We can hardly walk after spending more than 11 hours in the car in just a couple days. Shell oil stock probably just went up because we are spending almost eight dollars a gallon on gas. Wednesday we will be heading south again but this time we have to go clear to Brussels to renew our legalization papers in Belgium. Even though we are living in the Netherlands we still have to stay legal in Belgium because the mission headquarters are there. Next week we get to become legal in the Netherlands (with a price tag of over a thousand dollars a year just to stay here and dump more money into their economy).
Well, off to bed because in the morning we head to Groningen for district meeting and feeding the Elders. I really do love cooking for them because they are always so grateful and love what ever I serve them. I will also probably get an armful of mending from them to keep me busy during the week because they do not want me to get bored. We still have a bunch of families to visit this week so we will really have to schedule our time.
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