Belgium Trip – Part One

Where do I even begin? This is going to be the start of several posts that cover our 10 days in Belgium. I still can’t believe I was there! I am so blessed.

So let’s begin with this: Trevor has dreamt about preaching at the Belgium Youth meetings for the past 20 years. Honest. It’s been a really long dream. He met Bro David I. at the Norway Camp in 2024, where Bro David was also preaching. They hit it off really well and they kept in touch after that and the friendship continued to grow. So when Bro David asked Trevor to come to Belgium and preach at the meetings in January of 2025, he was beyond excited. He asked me to go with him and I prayed about it and even though I was really nervous about flying (I just don’t like flying), I agreed to go and plans began to come together.

Day One: Tuesday, December 31, 2024 – The kids had left for WYR on Monday, and Trevor and I began our trip to Belgium on Tuesday. We flew from Louisville to Charlotte.

At the Louisville Airport

The flight was a little bumpy but not too bad. We arrived about 20 mins early which was good because we had a very short connection in Charlotte. No time for a tree selfie here (I have no idea why this became a thing…it just did)

We made the connection with no problem and the next flight was to London. That flight was delayed, while we were sitting on the plane. There was a balance issue so they had to shuffle people around. That took about 40 minutes. This was not going to be good for our next connection but we were glad to finally be off the ground. About 7 hours later, we landed in London.

The London airport is huge! We had to take a bus to our next terminal and between that and the 40 minute (pre departure) delay, we missed our next connection by 3 minutes. Crazy! Even though we could have made the flight, they had already decided it was cutting it too close and wouldn’t let us get on. Thankfully though, there was another flight to Brussels, Belgium, 2 hours later. So they booked us on that flight and we got to chill a bit and have a nice breakfast before getting on the next flight. This was actually really nice. We were so tired. Neither one of us slept more than 2 hours on that long 7 hour flight. So having a little down time to eat and freshen up was good.

Tried out the Gordon Ramsey Restaurant in the London airport. It was really good.

At the London Airport. Can you tell how tired we are?

Day 2 – Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Happy New Year from the airplane!

We finally arrived in Brussels, Belgium. The flight from London to Brussels was the shortest and it’s a good thing. It was so windy that the flight was really bumpy. It was not a comfortable flight at all and I glad it was the last one.

Bro David met us at the airport.

Bro David took us on a short tour of the town of Brussels. He was going to take us to some of the local waffle shops but they were very crowded and we didn’t have a lot of time so instead we just got some coffee and walked around town for a little bit. There was some really old buildings that were just beautiful.

Bro David then took us to his house where we got to meet his wife, daughters and sons. We had supper with them and then he drove us to our hotel in Ghent. We fell asleep pretty quickly. We were so tired.

Our hotel room.

Day 3 – Thursday, January 2 – After a really good nights rest, we had some breakfast at the hotel. Then Bro David and his wife, Sis Esther, picked us up. We had an amazing lunch and then toured a bit of Ghent. This is another old, beautiful town.

An old Catholic church in the area.

Look at this crazy pulpit! We tried to figure out what all the statues were and what story it was telling but we have no idea. Not sure if it’s supposed to be something from the Bible (there’s a giant tree, angels, a serpent, a woman and an old man) or if it’s some Catholic saints.

They had a display of the whole town of Bethlehem. It was so cool.

Some of the other sites in the area. It’s so cold and windy here. I bought this scarf and it worked great. It was very warm and I have a nice little reminder of our trip.

Amazing lunch. So good.

We then headed to Neuwpoort, Belgium, which is where the camp was held. We checked into our hotel, freshened up, had some supper and got ready for service that evening. Bro John A. would also be preaching this camp. He had the service Thursday night. He preached on “The Cry of One Soul.” It was a good start to the meetings.

There were 20 different countries represented.

And these are the ages of the youth in attendance.

The theme of the camp

To be continued….