On Assignment - at home in Indiana

How often do you need to see people in order to retain a close relationship? This is something that has intrigued me almost my entire life. I grew up traveling all over. I had lived in six cities in three countries before the 6th grade. So family was always important, and making friends meant figuring it out quickly, or keeping things on the surface (I would not immediately call this superficial).

This continued when I went off to university, where I traveled all over the US, traveled to Europe and in the end spent two years in the Netherlands. My brothers and sisters also traveled. Three of my brothers were in the military and the other roamed off to Alaska. But we have always been able to re-connect. And we are still there for each other.

Our last leg of our Home Assignment brought us to Indianapolis where my ‘little’ brother, Mike and his family live. We keep and eye on how Mike and Amy and the four boys are doing through the wonder of modern communication – and I have always been very thankful for that. Since Indiana is not in the normal ‘loop’ of our travels on home assignment, the last time we visited was in 2007. Now we not only got to visit, we were blessed to spend Christmas together!

We arrived a day late so that Shirley could recover after the wedding. That left us two and a half days to enjoy the time together. And we were mixing several families as well. Marc and Wouter, who had traveled with Sean to New York city and then joined us for the wedding, were experiencing their first Christmas away from their rather large family back in Belgium. So it was good to share, to experience some local family traditions, and to just have fun.

And all along our travels we had expected snow but had seen barely a flake. Each time we left somewhere, they received a foot of snow after we left, but we were not burdened at all on our travels with snow-covered highways or backed-up traffic. Now, with a few days, we expereienced a blizzard, right in Indianapolis, for Christmas! And when it was time to leave, the roads were clear where we were headed.

Our last day was spent in Chicago with another blast from the past – Jimmy Schellekens is a young man that I knew when he was about 2 years-old in Schiedam. We spent time getting ready to leave, saw some of Chicago, had some great food (again) and even played a bit of football (the real kind). And we could relax the English or work on Dutch by speaking Dutch with Jimmy. We are so thankful that Jimmy and Amy were willing to share their apartment with us for that short visit on our way out.

After two months in the US we were now finally headed back … home. But we have been home all along the way, everywhere we stopped. You are why we can be home when we are with you. We are so thankful for the reality that wherever we are, if we are with God and his family, we are at home. Thank you!

Here is wher you can see pictures of our visit to Indiana and Illinois.