Spending time in Belgium

Sunday and Monday we stayed mostly in the Brussels area with Mom and Loel and took it easy. They turned out to be two really enjoyable days. On Sunday we went to church with them and met lots of the nice members there (pictured is mom and Em with Julie, a really nice member who is good friends with mom). We also went to a baptism that afternoon and met more really nice people. The rest of the evening Loel made some chicken (very tasty – reminded us of home) and we took a walk around the neighborhoods.

On Monday Em and I went running again and in the afternoon we had lunch with mom and Loel’s mission office. There were ten of us total and the night (and morning) before Em made her famous sweet rolls (pictured with mom helping) – they were a huge hit. Everyone had multiple servings and the missionaries were thrilled (and bragged to other missionaries on the phone) to take home the couple rolls that were left over. It was a fun lunch. Mom and Loel really do have a great mission family here in Belgium.

That afternoon we went out to Breendock, the only concentration camp in Belgium. I was the only one that hadn’t gone to a concentration camp before and was a little nervous that it might be really hard to see. Overall it actually wasn’t as hard as I imagined – there were less pictures than I would have thought. We spent about an hour and a half there and had an audio guide which told us what all the rooms where. The whole place had a really somber feeling to it. The rooms had low ceilings and hardly any windows. There were rooms with over 40 beds crammed together and bathrooms that looked nothing like a bathroom.

This, along with the Dutch Resistance Museum and Anne Frank House, really made us think about what Jews really went through during World War 2. It still puzzles us how Hitler did what he did – I still don’t really get it, it just seems to extreme. Overall we were really glad we went to Breendock.
We finished off the day by going to a favorite dinner location of the missionaries around the area. It had really cheap Gyro type sandwich wraps that were delicious. Of course we also got Frits.