Julie's Conversion

The past couple of weeks I have felt very inspired by events happening in my life, but I am having a hard time finding the right thing to write about. Therefore I haven't done a post for awhile: Sorry about that. In the mean time, I am posting another story from my journal. It was origianlly written in my journal in 2006 but was an event from years ago. I hope you all enjoy it!

August 20, 2006

In about January of 1981, I was in the final months of my full-time mission in the Belgium, Antwerp Mission. I was serving in the city of Brussels. This was my second time in the Brussels branch. I spent the first four months of my mission in Brussels, and I spent the last eight there as well. As a result, I had a great relationship with the members of the branch. I had the blessing the last eight months of being a Zone Leader in the mission. This allowed me to have great companions. My companion at the time was Elder Loren Betteridge. Interestingly enough, I had three companions in a row come to me, and then be called as Assistant to the President. They were Randy Thurgood, Steven Kapp Perry, and Loren Betteridge.

I remember distinctly being on a “team teaching” split with Brother DeVille of the Brussels branch when he made the comment that he was tired of the missionaries pushing investigators to be baptized in only a few weeks of investigation of the church. He felt it was more appropriate to investigate the church for years before joining, like he had. He felt this was the way to prevent inactivity.

As a companionship we were determined to prove him wrong. We prayed earnestly to find a person or family who would investigate the church for only three weeks, be baptized, and become an active leader in the branch. We wanted to show the members that it could be done.

After sincere prayer, we felt a strong urge to go back to an area known as Meisse-Oppem. In this area there was a large subdivision of new homes; primarily of young families. We were very hesitant to go to this area because we had just recently exhausted it through tracting efforts. Experience showed that returning again brought a lot of slammed doors and irate people. However, the promptings of the spirit were obvious. We went back.

One morning while tracting in this area, we knocked on a door of a young mother (about 30). She invited us in. She thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Interestingly enough, she was a black woman. It was rather rare at the time to find a Dutch speaking black person in Belgium. Anyway, she began to take the missionary discussions.

Almost immediately the lessons we were teaching her began to make a lot of sense to her in her life. She began accepting the principles of the gospel right away. She accepted the Word of Wisdom and stopped smoking. She read the Scripture assignments we gave her. She was a “golden Investigator”. Her name was Julie Van Wauwe. She had two daughters Leslie (9) and Pascal (4). She was divorced.

Julie, and her daughter Leslie were baptized February 5, 1981. It was almost exactly 3 weeks after we found them. Julie bore her testimony the following Sunday in Fast and Testimony Meeting.

These baptisms were a great blessing in our lives. Elder Betteridge and I were able to achieve the mission “Standard of Excellence” that week which was an award for tracking progress. It was a great accomplishment. We were thrilled about the experience however, it didn’t seem at the time that a single mother was going to be the “leader” we were looking for. She was young, poor, and not working. To young missionaries, she seemed like someone who would take a lot of effort from the other members to keep active. Little did we know what the Lord had in store for her.

Sister VanWauwe and her children and I remained close until it was time for me to return home. I remember leaving one of my missionary name tags with her when I left. We agreed to stay in touch.

We wrote a few times over the next year or so. I even remember calling her once to talk by telephone. In the Spring of 1982 she wrote me a letter telling me she had “met someone”; a man in the branch who was baptized a few months after she was. She told me his name was Erik and that he was the first counselor in the branch presidency. She said they were probably going to be married. That was the last time I heard from her.

In spite of thinking of them many times over the following years, I didn’t go to a lot of effort to find them. I didn’t have an address and didn’t know Erik’s last name. I figured they would be too hard to find. At mission reunions I would ask others about her. Most didn’t remember her. As I spoke with other missionaries who had been back, they didn’t recall seeing her. This is where I let it sit for 25 years.

Ann and I had always intended to go to Europe together, we just couldn’t find the time. In the Spring of 2006 the opportunity arose but we need to leave within a couple of weeks to make it work. We bought tickets and began to make an itinerary. I was determined to find people who had been important to me in Belgium. This included finding Julie.

While speaking by phone with one of my former missionary companions, James Quist, I learned of a member in Antwerp by the name of George Tuffin. He was apparently writing a history of the church in Belgium and seemed to know everyone. James Quist gave me the phone number and I made the call. I had several other specific members I was looking for and was able to find contact information for them. Then I described Julie and what I knew of her. He replied “I know exactly who you are looking for, they attend the Antwerpen Ward”. He then said “You are going to be happy about this one!” He gave me her phone number.

I made the phone call with great excitement but with butterflies as well. Julie answered the phone. After verifying that it was her, I said “this is Elder Webb”. There was a moment of hesitation followed by disbelief. She began to cry a little and stated “Where have you been Elder Webb? My life has been so blessed since you knocked on my door 25 years ago.”

We talked about 10 minutes. She asked about my family and I asked about hers. I told her that Ann and I were coming in about 2 weeks. She told me she had indeed married Erik Develter. She explained what a good man and husband he had been over the years. I asked about Leslie and Pascal and asked if there were others. She answered “ I am not going to tell you, you will need to come see.” I agreed. Over the next few days, via email, we determined a time that we would come to her home.

Ann and I made Belgium the last several days of our 16 day trip. When we went to Erik and Julie’s house on the day we were to arrive, she was waiting outside. She literally ran to the car and nearly pulled Ann out. I got out of the car and we all embraced. She looked terrific, much the same but even happier.

We were invited into her house. She was so excited for us to meet her “other children”. We were surprised to learn that she had four additional children with Erik. A total of 6 children! This is unheard of in Europe. The four younger children were all boys. The middle two were twins and approaching their 19th birthday. Erik was home as well and was very pleasant. He is a very fine man with an amazing testimony.

After exchanging many thoughts, and bring each other up on the status of our families, I learned about each of her children. Leslie is married with a family of her own. Unfortunately she is no longer active in the church. Pascal, now about 29 was also inactive. Bart, the oldest boy was a very nice looking man. He too in recent years has fallen into inactivity. The twins, Daniel and Emmanuel, are very active and were in the process of filling out mission applications. The youngest is Benjamin, a really great 15 year old boy.

It was Saturday, the day before Mothers day. We had lunch at her house which of course included Friets. After lunch we began to talk about the many events that had occurred in her life over the past 25 years. These included the events that ultimately brought her to Belgium.

She explained to us that she had been born in The Congo in the mid to late 1950’s. Her mother was a native of the Congo but her father was a French Baron. They were not married to one another. He had a coffee plantation in the Congo where Julie’s mother was a servant. In the early 1960’s, when Julie was 9, a political revolution broke out in the Congo. All Caucasians were either killed or forced to leave. Julie’s father was forced to leave the country. Prior to doing so however, her father had Julie kidnapped for her own safety. She was considered white by natives.

Without knowing why, Julie was snatched from her mothers arms and taken to an orphanage in Belgium. She was very alone in a very foreign place. She was in this orphanage 2 years before she was adopted by a Belgian family.

For reasons that are very apparent, Julie had many challenges in the following few years. She was emotionally scarred in many ways. She married when she was 18 and soon had her two girls. Her husband was very abusive; physically and verbally. It finally got to the point that she left him, put her children into foster care, and checked herself in to a mental hospital for treatment. She was there for a year.

As the story continued, Ann and I learned that when Elder Betteridge and I knocked on her door, she had only recently been released from the hospital and taken custody of her children. This explained why she was home in the middle of the day when we knocked on her door.

This story simply amazed us. As I thought back on the time that I was in her home as a young missionary, the problems she had recently encountered were never apparent to me. She stated, “I never had you over to my house for a meal, I simply couldn’t afford it”.

We spent the next two days together. On Saturday she took us sight seeing in Antwerp and showed us many sights. More than anything there seemed to be a deep feeling of love and appreciation for the gospel that had brought us together. We had so much to talk about. Ann and Julie hit it off right away and spent a lot of time talking. I spent much of the time getting to know Erik better. I learned that he too had been searching for the truth when the missionaries found him. He owned a bar at the time but quickly sold it and changed careers. He currently is an independent contractor for the Church. His job is to photograph old records for the genealogical department of the church. His geographical areas include Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Amazingly he said that he photographs up to 4000 images per day and still has 10 years of work ahead of him.

The following day was Sunday; Mothers Day. We went to church with them, or in other words met them there. I never served in the Antwerp branch so I didn’t know a lot of people, however I knew a few. Since the closing of the Brussels branch, members divided up among several neighboring Wards. The Antwerp Ward has its own wonderful building in a nice neighborhood.

Sacrament meeting was very nice. Being Mother’s Day, the topic of the talks were Mother’s of course. It was nice to have Benjamin, Julie and Erik’s youngest son, be the youth speaker. Emmanuel, one of the twins, translated for Ann and others that needed English translation. The meeting ended of course with a potted flower being distributed to each woman in the Ward.

The most exciting part of the entire trip was seeing the way Julie and Erik and their family interacted among the other members of the Ward. They were definitely a catalyst in the Ward and drew others to them by their excitement and their testimonies. Their boys were the center of attention and were very influential in the lives of the other youth.

It was immediately apparent that the prayers of two missionaries, 25 years ago, were answered. Elder Betteridge and I didn’t realize how our prayers were answered far beyond our dreams. This experience has come to testify to me the truthfulness of the scripture “My ways are not your ways”. I have also seen how the gospel blesses the lives of so many.

After church we went back to their home for dinner and more catching up. I had photocopied everything I could find from my journal and from letters I had received from them. I passed these on to them. These items filled in many gaps in their personal history. I also gave them photos from their baptism which to my amazement was the first time they had seen them. Again, she was too poor to afford a camera. This was another thing that I as a young missionary simply hadn’t paid any attention to.

Julie began to fill us in on the details of her life. We learned that through an incredible series of events, she was able to locate her biological mother in Africa. Somehow she met a man from the Congo who agreed to go to her village and find her. Apparently there is still no mail service or telephone service in this part of the Congo. Julie had a picture of herself when she was 9 and had some faint memories of her mother. She remembered that her mother had a deformed eye.

A couple of months later the man informed her that he had found her. She described how she and Erik went there to meet her mother. She was treated like royalty and was able to meet a brother. She has been back a second time. She told us she once drove to her Father’s estate in France but he was out of the country. She didn’t feel good about going back. She has however developed a strong tie with Africa and feels a need to contribute.

Saying goodbye to Julie and her family was difficult. We had built a lasting bond. However, I still felt the need for her to love the gospel, and not the missionary that brought it to her. As we departed, she gave us a wrapped gift and asked us not to open it until we were back at our hotel. We agreed. When we got to the hotel I opened the gift. It was an elephant tusk with a carving of a woman’s face in it. She got it in Africa. I was speechless. I felt guilty for taking something that must have been so personal to her. When she gave it to us she said “this is something that will make you never forget me. She is right. I will never forget her.

Here we are at the end of August. A week from tomorrow, Emmanuel, one of her twins will be flying to Salt Lake to stay with us. We will take him to the MTC before he serves in Italy. Daniel, the other twin will go to the MTC in London a week later while preparing to go to France. What a blessing this is in our lives.

I have recently called Loren Betteridge in Tacoma Washington. He is a doctor there. I filled him in on the details and he too feels the blessings of this story. He has since contacted Julie and her family. It is such a great blessing for all of us.

Update
Since this was written in 2006, Daniel and Emmanuel have both served successful missions. Emmanuel recently was married to a young woman he met as a missionary in Italy. Sadly Julie and Erik have divorced but both continue to be active in their wards in Belgium.