Whatsit Wednesday: A coin?

Years ago, before the euro entered Europe as the currency of every European country from the EU, each country had its own currency. There were German marks, French francs and British pounds. In the Netherlands, there were guilders. But it was even more interesting when you got to the coins. 

As in the United States, there were names for certain coins. In the US a 10 cent coin is called a dime. A 5 cent coin is called a nickel. And a 1 cent coin is called a penny. The 25 cent coin is a quarter, because it is a quarter of a dollar. I don’t remember if there was a name for the 50 cent coin - perhaps called a half-dollar - but I didn’t see it very often. 

In the Netherlands a 5 cent coin was called a “stuiver”, a 10 cent coin was a “dubbeltje” (literally a little double, although it was 1/10th of a guilder), As with the US coins, the Dutch also had a “kwartje” (a quarter) which was 1/4th of a guilder. A guilder in Dutch is a “gulden”. 

But it wasn’t just the coins that were named. The paper money also had various names attached. A 25 guilder note was called “geeltje” because it was yellow (“geel” is the word for yellow). The 50 guilder note was called a “zonnebloem” (sunflower) due to the picture on the note. The Dutch money was quite colorful and varied. 

Since the introduction of the euro, these names have all but disappeared. The 1 cent and 5 cent coins are rounded off in most stores, so they aren’t really in circulation. The 10, 20 and 50 cent coins are called simply by their denominations. And although the money is still somewhat colorful - the 5 euro is grey, the 10 is red, the 20 is blue and the 50 is orange or yellow -  the names have disappeared. This could also be because they needed to be simplified and unified for the multiple countries. The coins however still show specific people or places to the various countries. 

Fellowship

One of the things that we enjoy so much with the congregation in Maastricht is how they understand how important it is to spend time together. We have various opportunities to get together, but they are all different. And different members can make it to different activities. Still, the most important thing is being together. 

At the beginning of the month we had our first Friday singing. Since our house is a mess, and since things are transitioning to taking place without us, this month the singing was held by Ruud and Karla at their house. This means that Ruud can be there, even if he was still recovering from a hip operation. The living room was full, the singing was great and the joy was complete. 

In that same weekend we needed to figure out how to get together to clean the building. This periodic cleaning is shared among the various families, but this time was a deep cleaning. So some made it on a Saturday morning, while others stayed afterwards on Sunday afternoon. For both groups the time spent together was valuable and the building got clean as well. 

This past Sunday was our 2nd Sunday Games. Whoever can and wishes stays afterwards, shares some soup which Tonia has made and their own sandwiches. After a lunch together we sit around the table to play a game that Andrew and Adriana (our young Ukrainian couple) have brought. They have all sorts of games and it is always exciting and fun. Mostly it is great to get to know one another and to be able to laugh together. 

In the coming weeks Shirley and I will be looking for opportunities to see as many members of the various churches in the Netherlands and Belgium as we can. We attended the Family Day at the beginning of September where we were able to say goodbye to some. We will lead our last Wednesday evening of singing with the congregation in Eindhoven this week and our last Saturday singing with the church in Haarlem at the end of the month. Near the end of November we will go to the Copa - a soccer tournament with the various churches - so that we can see some folks again. 

It is so good to see how God makes families and how big His family actually is. We are so thankful to have been able to work with so many people and look forward to how things evolve in the future. As we think about our transition to the US, we consider how we will also start developing relationships there and look forward to how God will use us. 

Take every effort to take part in fellowship opportunities wherever you are. God has an amazing great family and every chance we get to take part in being together is a chance to grow and to encourage others as well. We are so thankful for this life in Him. 

Whodunit Wednesday: Francis Halzen

Do you know what ghost particles are? In English we would call them neutrinos, but in the common tongue in Dutch they are called “ghost particles” (as well as officially being called “neutrinos”). The Nobel Prize for Physics was recently awarded to Francis Halzen for his work at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole (Antarctica). It is here that neutrinos can be tracked and captured. 

Francis Halzen was born in Tienen, Belgium in 1944. He studied Physics in Leuven and worked for CERN from 1969-1971. After this he moved to the US where he has worked as a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was here that he came up with the idea to build a giant detector for neutrino’s. This would have to be built in Antarctica because of the ice that was necessary to capture these particles that are everywhere and yet undetectable. 

Neutrinos pass through the Earth and our bodies every day. We just don’t notice it. Scientists for some time have figured that these particles exist, but it has been impossible to detect (and therefore to prove) them. In 1988 Halzen first presented his idea: when a neutrino collides with an atomic nucleus, it releases a flash of light. This light can be tracked if there are sensors in glacial ice. IceCube is a full cubic kilometer of ice - designed to capture these particles. The first one was detected in 2011. 

Halzxen is only the second ever Belgian scientist presented with the Nobel Prize for Physics The other was François Englert in 2013.