Wild Wonderful Wednesday: Wild ones

This is a 5th Wednesday, so we get to go to places wild and wonderful. This time I would like to take you to some of the wilder things we can remember doing (that we are willing to share). But actual locations (cities) often have little to do with the wild wanderings we have made. These wild places and situations could be found in many places.

Although I remember living in and visiting places as diverse as Germany and Greece, some of the wildest moments I remember were when we had moved to Colorado. In those days parents didn’t worry too much about where their kids were (or at least we were allowed to be out of the house, on our bikes as long as we were back for dinner time). My brothers and I were always discovering new places. 

Maybe it was more my oldest brother who made the plans and me and my younger brother followed. Whatever it was, we had good fun and we are glad that our parents didn’t know until later. One of these times was when we took our bikes to the floodway on a rainy day. A floodway in Colorado is designed for rainy days. It is meant to take the quickly rising water safely away from residential areas. Usually the floodway is simply a concrete river, empty of water. Perfect for riding your bike or skateboard or whatever. 

Of course once the rain starts coming, the floodway can turn quickly into a raging river. Not too long after this adventure I heard of a classmate of mine (in Junior High) who was drowned in a floodway. But that was after our wild adventure. And we were young and unaware. 

We rode our bikes to the floodway where we had often gone. This time there was a bit of water running along the bottom. The challenge was to sit in the water and then stand up. But when my younger brother sat down, he began to be swept away. We jumped in to help him stand, but one of the bikes now went in the water and started moving along the water. We were able to get everyone and everything out of the water (which was maybe 6 inches deep at the time), but it woke us up to the dangers. 

In that same floodway were large pipes which took the water from the streets into the floodway. On dry days these pipes, large enough to walk in while standing, were a great challenge. Were we brave enough to walk up the pipe without a flashlight, touching the walls as we walked, perhaps touching some insect or worse? The pipe ended after a turn. If you looked back, the tiny dot of light that until then had encouraged you was suddenly gone. And now, to return, you had to walk back in complete darkness. Exciting. Adventurous. 

These days our adventures mostly take us along the canal behind our house. You might think that is quite bucolic and simple. But in October the winds start and the walk along the canal becomes a risky adventure. We have frequently had parts of trees (and whole trees) fall across the pathway. We noticed this past week that there are even 6-8 trees which are marked to be removed - hopefully before they fall on some poor dog walker or jogger. 

What brings adventure into your daily life? And what kinds of wild adventures have you experienced? 

Normal

It is amazing how many things one can do online these days. Most institutions try to get you to do everything online. This means, of course that the information you give has to fit what they are requesting. I remember years ago when we first made our website for our singing group, Listen Up!, that we wanted people from around the world to be able to order a cd (remember those shiny discs that held music). This meant that the form they filled in from a drop-down menu had to include all of the countries in the world. 

The reason we specifically wanted this was because we had often had trouble ordering or filling in information on US websites. Every drop-down menu had all 50 states and other various areas, but nothing more. There was always a place where we had to fill in our state (in addition to our address, which included our city). The ZIP code had to fit the US way of doing things. The Belgian post code only has four numbers. The Dutch post code has four numbers and two letters. 

We realized even back then that we were not “normal”. Even today, when many online stores have figured out that customers can come from across the world, we see that government sites have not figured out that there are plenty of people who do not fit the “normal”. And it is not simply US government sites. Every government is full of red tape and specific ways of doing things. The Dutch tax office has a saying on their radio advertisements: “We can’t make it any funner, but we can make it easier.” But they don’t. 

We have always been extremely thankful that we have people in the US who take care of all of our tax situations for us. This began decades ago when brother McCurdy in Abilene, Texas saw it as a way to support missions. He did missionaries taxes for free. And what a blessing this is. Perhaps he understood that missionaries are already dealing with enough red- tape wherever they are that to mitigate the red tape in the US could only be a blessing. 

So we have always been extremely thankful for E.B. Dotson and now Larry McElroy for the assistance they provide for so many in this way. Because there is nothing “normal” about our situation when it comes to taxes. We were made aware of this fact - again - recently when the Belgian tax office contacted us. 

Everyone who works with us for Ardennen Bijbelkamp, for example, is a volunteer. There are 3 youth weeks and a family week in the summer, a youth week in the Fall and Spring along with a youth weekend in the Fall and Winter. Every single team member of these activities is a volunteer. IN the summer, the volunteers even have to pay to help. This is not normal in our society and certainly not something the tax man can imagine. 

When people want to help and give advice, the advice is often based on what they know in their own normal world. But we have come to understand that we are far from normal. That means that we often have to explain things many times, find ways to prove things that are hard to prove, look for different ways of filling things in and basically trust that it will work out. And these days that means working past chatbots and all of the “normal” answers. We are thankful that we have a God who knows what is going on and is more than mighty to work things out. 

Be thankful for when things work out “normally” and don’t freak out too much when things don’t seem to fit. Keep calm and look further. Ask questions. Give grace in conversations, knowing that the person you are talking to might not be able to understand how different your situation is. And know that God is mighty. Don’t give up; give in to His might and guidance. God is not normal and neither is our life with Him.

Where oh Where Wednesday: Herbricht

More than 105 years a cafe has been the place to be in the tiny hamlet of Herbricht just down the road from our house. When we first came to live here we experienced one of the largest floods of the Maas river in 1993. At that time 37 people still lived in the tiny village. The flood returned in 1995. Herbricht is used to the river stretching its banks a bit, showing off for the tourists, it seemed. 

When the river flooded in 2021, the river bed had been widened. This flooding, associated with what they were calling a “water bomb” in the Ardennes was larger than any had ever been. The widening of the river bed meant that the water still reached new heights in the village, but didn’t wipe it out. Herbricht was “saved” from the worst of the floods that had ever come. But this was the last straw for the people living there. 

Now there is only one couple still living there and they will soon move. They started the cafe all those years ago and their family has run it throughout the years. We used to visit with the boys, taking a long walk along the river and stopping at the cafe to play at the playground set there for all the bicycle tourists who stopped. They had a very tall slide which the boys loved. Later we would walk along the road to Herbricht with the dog. He loved seeing all the swans out in the water. 

People will still bike along this road, following the river up into the next city of Maasmechelen. We live on what is called the “Maas side”, a string of villages and small cities gracing the side of the river like a set of pearls strung together. The dialect along this stretch is all similar. You can hear if someone is from this area. And people like biking here. But they will not stop at Herbricht any more. Herbricht will simply be a note in the history books, a place noted in old pictures.