Where oh Where Wednesday: Manhattan

As we were traveling from Muscatine, Iowa up to Minneapolis, Minnesota where we would take our last continental flight, we saw all sorts of familiar names. Iowa was full of place names which had clearly originated in Europe: Klein Quarry, Waterloo, Waverly (with Wartburg College), and Geneva. But we also passed places who had clearly taken their names from the native people living there: Owatonna, Nashua, or Hiawatha. 

We fly out today to New York City and will be staying on the island of Manhattan. This is one of the 5 boroughs of New York and has a population of 1.7 million. The name is said to have come from the Manna-Hatta tribe who had lived on the island. It is also said that this could come from the dialect of the Lenape Indians, meaning “island with the hills”. Others say that it comes from the Delaware or Mohican tribes. In any case the name comes from the native tribes. 

It was however Henry Hudson who in 1609 came to map out this area for the VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) - the Dutch company which was traveling all over the world. Hudson has a river named after him. In 1624 the first permanent dwellings came on the land and the area, after a purchase of 60 guilders, was called New Amsterdam. You may have heard of the various places that have a Dutch background: Wall Street, Broadway, Brooklyn, Harlem. 

Of course this all changed when later in the century the city and area came into the hands of the English. They promptly renamed it New York. The English were only finally pushed out of New York by George Washington during the Revolutionary War (the war of independence) in 1783. Since then the names have taken on all forms and backgrounds. We will look forward to discovering some of them while we are visiting there. 

In the loop: Home Assignment 2026 Stage 5 - Iowa

The loop is coming full circle as we leave Colorado and head back East. In the past we would have stopped for a few days in Omaha, Nebraska to visit Shirley’s family. Recent years have meant that what is left of her family has settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the river from Omaha. So we headed there, looking forward to seeing nephew and niece and their kids. 

We had had to organize an AirBnB in town because the College World Series was in Omaha and most of the normal hotels were full. But what a blessing this place was! We stayed in an historic house basically right down the road from where the niece lives. We were able to enjoy an evening walk, a morning walk as well as the time together with family - all in the ambiance of this historic house. 

Although our stay was short, we were thankful for the time to see and visit with family. We were able to sit with Shirley’s brother and also meet with everyone for a meal on our last evening there. After this very quick stop, we moved on across the state of Iowa to Muscatine in the southeastern corner of the state. Here we met with the last of our supporting congregations and stayed with good friends, Rudy and Pam Schellekens. They were both our mentors in the past as well as helpers most recently teaching and cooking at Ardennen Bible Camp. 

One of our days we spent out at Midwest Bible Camp getting ideas of how others do camp. We were able to talk to the kids, the camp directors and the cooks. This got us into the mood for our own week of camp which is coming up at the end of July. Then we will be leading the Benjamin week of Ardennen Bible Camp. Being at a Bible Camp reminded us of how far away we are and how soon we will return to these tasks we love so much. 

On Sunday Scott was able to teach the Bible class and lead singing at the Muscatine church. It is always amazing to worship God together with those who love Him so much - wherever we are in the world. We enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new ones - although finding names was quite a challenge. In the evening we met again with some members at an evening get-together where we could answer questions about our work. Then Scott met with the elders to talk about the future and their part in our work. 

We had one more day in Iowa to wind down and get everything ready for the last stage of our trip which will be in New York. The rain of the previous day (which couldn’t disturb the “family” lunch we were invited to with our hosts and others of their family) made way for sun as we got the last little things necessary for our trip and packed our bags. 

We have enjoyed walks along the Mississippi, drives around the town, watching World Cup games together and lots of food and conversations with people who love us and the Lord. Last stop on our trip is coming up - New York City! But that is another story. 

Here are the pictures from the stops in Iowa. 

Whensday: 1924 Nobel Prize

In our travels we have had contact with various people who have struggled with or are struggling with their health. This is not strange considering that we, too, are getting on in years - even if we do not know it ourselves. Some of these people had heart trouble and went to the hospital to be checked. 

In 1924 Willem Einthoven received the Nobel Prize for his discovery and invention of electrocardiography. We are all familiar by now with the monitor above a hospital bed showing all sorts of lines and numbers, recoding the health of the patient in the bed. Although doctors in the 19th century knew about the heart’s electrical activity, it was Einthoven who in 1903 developed a meter to measure the signals precisely. This revolutionized cardiography. 

These days we still can be confronted with the electrodes placed on the skin and tied to a monitor. The electrodes have to be stuck to the skin and removed later. The patient cannot move. They are restricted to the hospital bed. But we are perhaps even more familiar these days with things like a smart watch which also registers heart signals and gives us information. 

Willem Einthoven would certainly be surprised by modern technology. He was born in 1860 on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies, which is now Indonesia. He became a professor in Leiden in 1886 and was admitted to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1902, a year before developing his galvanometer.