Transfer

        “I hopped on the train. In Belgium the train system was fabulous.  The Public transportation systems are amazing.  Best food, trains very frequently, (in the direction you need to go), and everybody takes the train, and everybody takes buses, and everybody rides bikes! Whenever we would have a transfer, we’d just take our bikes and the district leader or zone leader would show up on their bikes and would strap your suitcases with a bungee cord on the back of the bikes and we would head off to the train station.  I would say goodbye to my companion, and I would hop on the train with my suitcases and my bike and I would ride to the next town.  None of my transfers were more than a 10-minute train ride.  It’s a small country, very beautiful, very green with red tile roofs, cobblestone streets, just quaint and beautiful.  The food is delicious, and the people are delightful.  Belgium was just the place for me.  I enjoyed it immensely.  So I hopped off the train in [Charleroi or Kortrijk], and my companion I stayed with for a couple of months were Sister Embrey that I had been with in the MTC, and Sister Bunker the mission president’s daughter.  We were there for 2 months and then I was there to train Sister Begany.  She came in my last 2 months together and at that time we were transferred to Lothlian which was the same branch just up to a different apartment.  Sister Begany was there and also Sister Ebuser.  I had a lot of threesomes on my mission, but we made it work! So it was through the winter months – I only had one winter there in Belgium – so it was through the winter months that we were there in [Charleroi or Kortrijk] . Come to find out [Charleroi or Kortrijk] was my favorite place on my mission, after I had been there with my concern that it was not going to be a very good place, it was my favorite place to be on my mission.  One of the reasons for that was because of the branch they had there."
      Lisa was amazed that 100 strong members of the church were working hard to bring people to be taught. She describes them as "stalwart members of the Church." Having an editor to this page would be awesome. She describe the first stake president Somethingbessa and in 2012 had still kept in contact with the family. "He has since been released and is serving in the ward there, he and his wife are just serving faithfully there in Belgium.  There were a couple of small children, the second was born while we were there and it was great! 
      Working through the winter month was tough, not because of snow fall but because of the black ice. Lisa said she wasn't concerned about her scrapped up knees and wiping out so much, as keeping her skirt down. Her elbows and knees got scabbed up and a little rough. Her trainer left her a wonderful warm coat that she said was fabulous and she wore clogs. Wood on the bottom and leather on the top shaped to her feet. She wore them with nylons in the summer and heavy black tights (sometimes a few pair) to keep warm in the winter. It's more humid than cold and it rains a lot.
     "It was expensive to turn on the heater in our apartments.  They would have these little space heaters in that were in…. They looked a little like a fireplace actually they were a little heater.  We would turn those on when we came in, we would turn them on in the mornings to heat the place up a little bit and then we would turn them off before we went out to work, then we would turn them on when we came back in, we turned them on between 2 and 4 or  3 and 5 – in the afternoon to heat the place up and a lot of times when we came in at night we didn’t turn them on again because we had to pay for those utilities and it was kind of expensive to pay for these gas heaters, so we didn’t turn them on at night.  It was on my mission that I got my first hot water bottle. A hot water bottle was heavy leather and we would come in a night, actually before we left in the afternoon, we would put 3 pots of water on the stove and when we came in at night, the first thing we did was turn on those pots of water to start boiling and when they got to boiling we would take out hot water bottles and we would fill them up and seal them up screw in the plug and then we would put them at the bottom of our bed.  We would have our prayers we would have our little planning meeting for the next day, we would get ready for the day as quick as we could, we would write in our journals, and pile all the blankets on because it was cold!  We were shivering but we didn’t want to turn on the heat, sometimes if we were very cold we would turn on the heat but sometimes we’d just live through it and we were healthy and strong so it worked out fine."
     "On my mission we only ate two meals a day.  My first mission president when I first came out was President Allred.  He decided that we could use our time more effectively and better if we weren't eating so much food.  We only ate with the members one day a month and the rest of the time we cooked for ourselves and it was easy we’d just come in and ____  We would eat breakfast and then we would go out at 9:30 am to work - we would eat breakfast before we went out, then we would come in around 3 to five in the afternoon. Or between 2 and 4.  We would come in and we would get our meal ready, and we would have our meal and then we would have study time in the afternoon. Then we would be back out again by 4 or 5 o’clock in the afternoon then we would work the rest of the day until 9 or 9:30.  We had to be in by 9:30 at night.  It took me a little while to get used to that, I was a great eater and it took a little while to get used to that.  Soon it was great and I used to eating two meals a day and it worked out fine.  
     "I remember piling on pillows on the floor because they were hard wood floors they were cold to your feet so we would put a pillow on the floor to say our prayers at night. Because I would be there for 15 minutes praying and my knees would get cold and so it was more comfortable and warmer to kneel on one when saying your prayers at night."
      "Sister Bunker and Sister Embree after two months of being together with me, so that would be through January and February, so sometime in the end of February they were transferred out, both went to other places – I was sad to see them go because we had an enjoyable time together, it was very pleasant working with them, they were hard working, and it was good.  So they went off together to two different places, and then I had the opportunity to welcome Sister Chubbeck."