Whensday - Holidays

Just in case you haven't noticed, I have changed the name of this day from "Once Upon a Time Wednesday" to a simple "Whensday". It is not a misspelling. It is just me trying to be cute. 

As mentioned before, Belgium has lots of holidays. A holiday technically is a holy day (you can see it in the word). Of course in Dutch it is something different. The word in Dutch means a feast day. Since Belgium is basically a Catholic country, it has all of the Catholic official holidays. This means double days of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. 

In May I talked about this because the 2nd day of Pentecost was coming up. Looking back on the day, I am thrilled with how God has created family and brings us together. The group that met at the building in The Hague, Netherlands, was a mix of all different nationalities and languages. We thought as organizer that we were ready for all the permutations of translating, but we ended up doing things in English since  the Dutch speakers could understand that well. This meant only translating to Russian/Ukrainian from English. 

We took the day to discuss together how to find peace in troubled times. The small groups had some good conversations about what this meant to them personally and practically. In the afternoon we had a sort of interview and Q&A session where we were able to apply what we were hearing from the Word. 

In between this all we took time to sing together and the kids had some classes together as well. At lunch there was a good time of fellowship for all. Everyone had brought their own lunch and enough for others should that be needed. This was indeed a feast day, a holy day. We were thankful to be able to share the time with one another and to learn from one another. God is great. Our life in Jesus Christ is full of blessings, every day. 

Here are some more pictures of the day.