MTC then Belgium

“Getting called to the Belgium Antwerp Mission was fabulous, it was wonderful, it was also very sweet because of the fact that my dad served in the Netherlands, Amsterdam Mission many years ago. When I got my mission call and it said Belgium Antwerp Mission and we started looking at a map, we realized that I was going to be speaking Dutch and he was thrilled, so thrilled. I was very happy. Of all the kids, I think I had one of the closer connections with my dad and so it was very sweet.

I entered the MTC on March 19, and was assigned to a wonderful companion, Julie Kruse and the other two girls in our room were going to Belgium. Sister Kennedy and Sister E[I hope someone can edit this] . We had a great time, we worked hard like crazy. Come to find out there were 15 of us learning Dutch, a group that came in the same time we did.  You spent 9 weeks in the MTC, and there were 9 sisters and 1 elder going to the Antwerp, Belgium and the rest of them were, eight – four and four were going to the Netherlands Amsterdam Mission. It was a great experience, we worked hard, we cried, we laughed, we learned, we just had a wonderful experience. One thing that was also kind of great was that our new mission president who was going out July 1, Gary Bunker and his wife, Carol were living in the Orem area and she was coming in to have Dutch lessons with us.  We got to know her a little bit. Oh, what a wonderful person! We were so excited to have them as our mission president and his wife and get to know them and Sister Bunker a little bit. They had 9 kids ranging in age from two that were married down to two that they had adopted from Guatemala.  And the Bunkers were all blonde until little Nate who was very dark haired. They were taking five of their children with them to serve in the Belgium Antwerp Mission.  They had two sons, one that was married and one that was just back off his mission.  They had an older daughter, Kari who was going to be serving in Italy on a mission and they had a daughter Kelly who was nineteen and she was going to actually be serving as a missionary in our mission. I was able to be a companion with her later on as I served my mission.  

 We left the MTC at the end of May, and we traveled to Belgium. Hopped on the plane, my parents were able to come see us off from the airport there on a bright and early morning and we hopped on the plane and flew to Chicago and then we got on another plane flew to the Netherlands in Amsterdam. The thing about arriving there is we missed our flight down to Antwerp and so we just hung around - we had been up all night flying through the night but we said goodbye to those other missionaries that went off and served in Holland and we shortly thereafter arrived in Antwerp.  Beautiful city!  Europe is just gorgeous, the history and the culture, the buildings, and it was wonderful. I had the typical experience of when you get there you think they taught you the wrong language because your ears are not quite attuned to everything coming out, you just keep trying and it works. My trainer was a wonderful sister by the name of Sister Offler who was absolutely wonderful, a smile on her face all the time and we were assigned the city of [can't understand]land.  So after we finished up our training there in [something]land, we hopped the train and went on down to Mechelen, Belgium."