Sunday, January 6, 2008

Today we said our woeful goodbyes to Cheryl, Catie and Maria and then quickly recovered to our happy selves again knowing we were on our way to BELGIUM! Once again we almost missed the train. Why is it that we can never get anywhere on time??? We did make it and enjoyed the quick hour train ride to Lille. Upon our arrival Char remembered that we had not clarified which train station we were coming into. OOPS! Thanks to Grandparents Weaver, Natalie whipped out her phone numbers and we found a phone booth to call the Debu's. Would help if we could figure out how to use them??!! Suddenly some blonde guy came up to us and asked us if we were trying to call Belgium?? Bart!!!!!! Oh you have no idea how glad we were to see him! Meeting up with the rest of the family we drove to their house where we had a wonderful day. First of all a prayer meeting in Dutch and English, next Breaking of Bread, and then a quick word in 2nd Timothy. After meeting we had our first home cooked meal in 3 weeks!! OH SO WONDERFUL. I'm pretty sure they thought we had not eaten in 3 weeks, the way we were inhaling it. As Char was shoveling in beef stew, Belgium fries (not French fries), rice and warm apple sauce, she asks "ARE WE HAVING TEA AND CRUMPETS LATER?" let me tell you.....she has not lived that down since!!! We love Char!! Ok, so moving on, we DID indeed have tea and crumpets and they were delicious! You guys should really be jealous now because we also had BELGIUN CHOCOLATES!! Yes....we bought some for souvenirs. Unfortunately, it is almost gone. HA! We figured our suitcases were too full to fit it in. No worries, the cheap key chains from Morocco (made in china) that we bought for you will fit just fine. :)

Ok, this is Char here, defending herself!! I DID ask if we were having tea later (I admit that was BAD timing) but only because Bonnie had told me how wonderful it was and I didn't want to eat too much at lunch if we were. So there. Back to Amanda.

After tea, we had a reading/snoring meeting.... we couldn't help it! Full bellies and comfy couches are just too tough. Ok so we didn't really snore. Just a little head bobbing in total agreement of what they were saying in Dutch. After the reading meeting came Sunday School. We kind of like this new format! Mark and Bonnie's 2 year old twins sing amazingly and know the hymnbook better than us! NO JOKE! It was also very sweet to hear them say John 3:16 in Dutch by heart. WOW! We feel dumb. Guess what came next? MORE FOOD!!! I love to eat! Bonnie Debu made an incredible potato soup along with cheese, bread, fruit and many other things. Treadmills here we come!! Last big event of the night was going to see a World War 1 memorial called the Menen Gate. It is a huge white arch that holds 52,000 names of the British and British Commonwealth soldiers whose bodies were never recovered. Every night at 8:00 they play "The Last Post" in memorial of them. Even the Queen goes once a year. Quite incredible. We then wandered through the town with Pieter (Sofie's husband) as our guide. He knows an amazing amount about the local history. Apparently, Ieper was destroyed by the Germans in World War 1. The city was left in heaps of rubble and the Germans were forced to rebuild it. The citizens were able to choose between several options of rebuilding and they chose to have it rebuilt exactly how it was before the war, rather than as a modern city. Everything has been restored back to its former glory, including the gold on the outside of some of the buildings and statues. There are also medieval buildings and with the original ground levels too. I have to say the medieval people were quite smart in some ways. Because they had to pay taxes on how many square feet their house was on, they built the house on a very small base and then each floor above stuck out farther than the story under it. Unfortunately, this made it so that the tops of the houses were practically touching and since everything was wood, pretty much everything in town burned down if there was ever a fire. That part wasn't smart. Everything looks as if it is hundreds of years old but in reality it has been recently built. And that's your history lesson for Sunday, folks.