Experiencing Belgium

        "After arriving in Mechelen, one of the first things we did was buy a bike.  I had this good Dutch bike it was brown, and it was awesome. It served me well throughout my mission. We were a biking mission and fortunately I was able to ride a bike, there were a couple of other sisters, one I know was in my group that did not know how to ride a bike so she had to learn to ride a bike when she got out there. It was a little challenging, but we did it.  Nowadays sisters don’t have to wear nylons, but we did. It was great to be on a bike, it was May, it was Springtime, it was a wonderful time to be serving in Mechelen. We were heading to summer and serving in a branch of the church, good solid members.  We were able to teach people; we were able to baptize some people and I was there for four months. It was a great experience. About two or three weeks after I arrived one of the sisters from our group, Sister Kimmel, Marcy Kimmel who was from Alaska, she had not been able to come when we did because she had been having some health problems, after she arrived a few weeks later she was sent to be in our companionship as a threesome. Sister Offler was amazing, training two different people.  Sister Kimmel and I were a little different and I was not always very compassionate when she would have her health problems. We would drop her off a lot of times to stay with a member, then Sister Offler and I would go out to work. It was at this point I realized that I     was not a very patient person. I think I’m doing a little better with it through the years, but that is something I’ve always been very obvious to me that I’m not very patient with people."

      "Come to find out Sister Kimmel had too much calcium in her system and so she kept passing kidney stones, of course excruciating pain, back and forth to the doctor and definitely very challenging for her, very challenging. But she worked really hard and they eventually transferred her to Ohio to finish off her mission and Sister Kimmel was able to finish out honorably, they found out while she was there and were able to get her the medical help she needed so she could serve."

“After serving in Mechelen, in September I was transferred to Antwerp. And oh was I excited to be in Antwerp! I would say Mekeland was more of a small town you have a lot of outlying areas, you went to Antwerp and boy we did a lot more teaching there, there was a university there, people because they were from a bigger city were a little more willing to listen to us.  People in the small country towns were afraid to talk to anybody and they couldn’t understand our Dutch they would accuse us of speaking English. “No I am speaking Dutch I’m not speaking English”. I loved being in Antwerp.  I was companions with Sister Coons, and Sister Ebeling. Sister Coons was only there for a month and we just had a great time together, it was another threesome and I’d know Sister Coons from the MTC and got along great. Sister Ebeling was hard-working, she was very diligent, she was from California, worked really, really hard, wanted to follow the Spirit, and she was a good companion. She also had some health issues she had something called a spastic colon where things were not going down through her system easily as they should, so she would have a lot of pain, but she wanted to work, and stayed working, It was really hard for her to be on a bike, physical activity and also in a lot of pain. Once again, my impatience flared because I just wanted to be out serving the Lord and I didn’t want to be stuck inside. Sister Ebeling, now that I look back, she, bless her heart, she had it so hard especially when she was having physical challenges."

"Great Elders to work with there in Antwerp.  We saw missionaries a little more frequently than we did when we were in Mechelen and it was great. 

Coming up to Christmas time, I got transferred there in September, transfers were coming up right after, before, somewhere around Christmas, I was very excited, we thought for sure the Sister Ebeling would be transferred.  Sister Coons had been only a month with us and then she was transferred to somewhere else. Sister Ebeling and I continued on we were preparing Christmas songs to sing at a Nursing Home or hospital at Christmas time. There was another Elder in the district - I can’t remember his name, just a nice, nice Elder, he was one of the Zone Leaders he had a nice tenor voice and he and I had been working on some duets together, because I like to sing. It was very fun. We got a phone call, actually Sister Ebeling had called the head office in Antwerp, the head office to find out about transfers around Christmas time. She thought for sure she would be transferred, and she needed more time than just one day to pack, normally we’d get the call on Sunday night and you’d be gone on Tuesday morning.  She felt she needed a little more time and they told her that I was being transferred not her. I was devastated, we knew one of us was going to be transferred, but I thought for sure I was going to stay in Antwerp and that she would be the one transferred.  I loved Antwerp we weren’t having a lot of success with people being baptized, but it was a good branch of the church and it was awesome."