Tuesday night was the big Belgium/USA game. Walking home that night, we noticed that a big screen was set up right in front of our apartment. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there by the time the game started at 10:00 pm, so we sat on the roof and listened for a half hour. We couldn't see the screen, so every time the Belgian fans got sad, we started cheering and vice versa. We rationalized that it could be proper to pray for the US to win since eliminating Belgium would make the missionary work easier. Apparently we had no faith, because we woke up the next morning with voicemail messages from members: "ELDERS! YOU LOOSE THE GAAAAME! AHHHHH!"
Swallowing our pride, we went on to do a good amount of service the rest of the week for the Belgians in the community. We helped some members paint a few rooms for a chunk of the day on Thursday, and we did a good job if I do say so myself. That's what six months of taking care of apartments in the mission office will get you. We even got to wear cool spacesuits.
Saturday, we drove over to Charleroi with the in-laws of some members to help move a piano. It took a little while to drive there, then it took all of 5 minutes to get the piano inside a trailer. We drove the half hour back to Namur and were literally 30 feet from the house when the piano tipped and fell on it's back. We stopped and loaded it into the house, at which point we lifted the cover and tapped the keys to see if it still worked. No notes. We all gathered around in a defeated little pow wow, at which point I reached in, un-jammed a piece of wood, and the piano started working just fine. Maybe piano repair isn't such a bad career either.
After the piano move, we went to the Bishop's house to eat with them and talk about missionary work in the ward. It was also the day of the Belgium/Argentina World Cup game, so the Bishop took out a makeup stick and painted our cheeks to show Belgium pride. It was the stipulation if we wanted a ride home.
Tuesday morning was a "welcome" conference in Brussels with the newly-arrived President and Sister Babin. They're really cool, and I'm sad I won't be around too long to see what they do with the mission. I'll only get to see them a total of three times.
We taught a cool guy from Africa named "R" this week. He's 21 years old, grew up as an orphan, and came to Belgium a few months ago to learn French. He wants to become a computer engineer so he can go back and donate money to the orphanage that raised him. In the meantime, he only is given 7 euros of extra money a week, and he scrimped and saved to have the 4 euros necessary to buy the bus ticket to get to our lesson. He read a few chapters in the Book of Mormon and thought it was worth the sacrifice to learn more about it.
We showed up to church yesterday with no investigators there for either team of missionaries. Kind of a bummer, but it's not exactly the first time it's happened. Then, for the third hour of church, one of our investigator couples came in with their three children. I had forgotten that I invited them to sacrament meeting over the phone six days before. Some people asked if they were already members, to which the father responded, "No, we're not, but we might be soon."
I mentioned last week that we fixed a baptismal date for later in July with "B". Well, it was a bit difficult this week to find a time when we were both available, so we're going to have to push it back a few weeks. If all goes well, we and the other companionship should be seeing baptisms the day before Elder Price and I leave to go home. Cross your fingers!
See you kids soon. Have a good one.
Elder Wilson
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Right outside our window
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It's like "Where's Waldo?"
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A pretty common train occurrence
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