Come fly with me

In just 10 days we will be off to travel the US for two months, visiting many of you along the way. We look forward to seeing many of you, spending time with you, being encouraged and encouraging you with how God is blessing us each day. Here is a quick run-down of what our travels will look like. Until the last leg of the trip we will be traveling without Sean, who is of course in the middle of a semester at university in Brussels.

Use the map in the picture as a link to the numbers if you are like me and like a visual reference.

1. We fly on November 1 from Dusseldorf to Los Angeles and spend the next week and a bit with church family in Long Beach, California.

2. From Long Beach we fly to Denver, Colorado on November 12.

3. We will be in Denver at the beginning anf end of the week (Monday, Tuesday and Friday), down in Colorado Springs on Wednesday and Thursday visiting family and church family in both cities. It has been a while since we have seen Colorado at this time of year!

4. We fly from Denver to Dallas on November 17 and will spend the next 10 days in Abilene and the Dallas area. We will be at the S. 11th & Willis congregation in Abilene.

5. We fly from Dallas to Minneapolis (over Denver!) on the 27th of November. We look forward to several wonderful days with church family at the Woodbury congregation. Wondering if we will also be blessed (?) with snow at that point in our trip. The last time we were in Minneapolis at this time of year holds some wonderful sledding memories.

6. On December 8 we will start the driving section of our trip. Please keep this section in your prayers as we would like to enjoy it and remain safe. We will first drive from Minneapolis to Omaha, Nebraska to visit family. We will be able to celebrate Shirley’s birthday with her family.

7. That same day we will carry on from Omaha across Iowa to Muscatine to visit with the loving congregation there. We expect some interesting weather along the way and look forward to seeing everyon again in Muscatine.

8. December 17 will see us driving from Muscatine to Curtice, Ohio. It is here that we will first meet our future daughter-in-law in person and finally be able to hug our son, Stephan. We look forward to meeting the White’s and helping to get things ready for the wedding on December 22. On December 20 we will pick up Sean and his friend, Wouter, and Wouter’s dad, Marc, from the airport in Detroit as they arrive in time for the wedding.

9. The Sunday afternoon after the wedding (while Stephan and Natalie are winging to Europe), we drive over to Indianapolis to spend Christmas with Scott’s family (the brother we don’t get to see as often).

10. From Indianapolis we drive with a full car to Chicago to spend an evening and morning with Jimmy and Amy Schellekens before flying back home.

11. We depart Chicago on December 28 and arrive in Dusseldorf on December 29.

Thank you to all who are making this trip possible, as always. We only are able to visit because of your faithfulness and generosity. We are looking forward to sharing time with you and your families. Let us know if you are in the neighborhood and we can get together! We would love to see you!

What kind of child are you?

As you have read, we challenged the young people at the youth weekend in Maastricht to read one of the gospels during October. I am reading through the gospel according to John.

‘Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or of a husband’s will, but born of God.’ (John 1:12-13)

I was supposed to be a girl. That was the plan. My sister is the oldest, then my older brother. So the plan was to have another girl and then a boy, making the perfect family of four kids, two boys and two girls. Of course, I was not a girl. And the next several tries for that girl also never panned out. I am one of 5 brothers, with my sister as the lone sister and oldest.

But that was the plan. My parents had a plan. They decided to have me. That in itself is a wonderful thought. There are plenty of people who only ‘plan’ on having sex, fulfilling themselves. A child is an unwanted, unforeseen (really?) consequence that needs to be dealt with. I was desired. And loved. And cared for. But I did not choose to be here. Someone else made that choice.

John tells us something amazing. Did you catch it? To be a child of God (the Creator of heaven and earth, the Eternal, the Almighty, the Loving One), I can be born. It is no one else’s decision and no one else can do it for me. There is no person who can make you a Christian, deciding for you that you will have wanted to make that choice.

But I can. I can decide to receive him, believe in his name. Then I have a right to become a child of God. I can choose this wonderful Father, because He has chosen me. And He has chosen you. Will I simply stand outside, accept being only a child of my parents, or will I accept the invitation to be a child of God? You see, I am both. God allowed me to be born into the family my parents ‘planned’. And then He invited me into His family. I am formed by both. And God makes both situations glorious, because He is this wonderful Father, able to turn even the worst situation into a victory.

What kind of child are you? Will you be His child?

Growing up in the Lord

We are never too old to grow in the grace and love of the Lord. Every day we need to be reminded and challenged to allow Jesus to truly be our Lord.

In September we organized a youth weekend in Maastricht - at our house actually - with the theme: Meetings with Jesus. We had a great group of young people from Eindhoven, Antwerp, the area around Tienen and from Maastricht and Valkenburg. How well do we know Jesus? How can we know who he is and what he wants? We took time in the two days we were together to read, think about and discuss six different stories of what Jesus did, what he was like.
We met the 12-year-old Jesus in the temple, saw Jesus washing the apostles' feet and when he fed more than 5000 with a little boy's lunch. We talked about the night in the garden of Gethsemane and around the fire. We saw how Jesus dealt with Thomas and his doubts. And we looked at Jesus walking over the water and stilling the storm.
Each meeting gave us plenty to chew on for our own lives. Are we willing to ask questions and listen to answers, seeking God's will? Can we serve each other? Why are we afrai of what people think? Can Jesus do anything with the little bit I can offer? How strong do I really need to be? All good questions and challenges. For October we challenged the  young people to read one of the gospels and meet Jesus. Why don't you join us?

At the end of October we are organizing Fall Camp. This is vbasically a youth weekend down at camp in the Ardennes. Since we have our new facility, some things will be easier. The beauty of the season and thrill of change will still be just as present. For this weekend we will challenge ourselves with questions on fighting. How do we fight the good fight? What weapons do we have to use? Who (or what?) are we fighting? Who are we NOT fighting? It should be a great weekend! We will be able to tell some of you about in person.

The nice thing about all these weekends ... we get to learn so much from these young people and their desire to know and follow Jesus!