A special Wednesday

So, things got a bit busy with family - as well they should around these days and I did not get the planned post out on "Whensday". So today you will get two posts: last week's "Whensday" and this week's "Where oh Where Wednesday". 

Whensday: Weddings, Anniversaries and concerts

December is always a very busy month. Besides the holidays (Sinterklaas, Christmas, New Years) we also celebrate Shirley’s birthday and our anniversary. In years past this was not always very easy. For years, up until about 10 years ago, this month was full of Christmas concerts, so anniversaries took a back seat. 

Listen Up! was the a capella group that I sang with for years. The members were all members of the church from various locations in The Netherlands and Belgium. We brought the gospel in our songs and always made sure that our audience could understand what we were saying in our songs. This meant that we projected the words of the songs in the language of the audience, whether we were in Croatia, Germany, France or the Netherlands and Belgium. 

Our Christmas concert was called “Always CHRISTmas” and used songs that told the whole story of Jesus. We even ended the concert with Easter songs, telling of the resurrection. We had several times that guests approached us afterwards and remarked that they had never really known that the baby Jesus and the Jesus who died on the cross were the same person. We were always thrilled to be able to t present at least 4 of these concerts in December. 

Listen Up! stopped in 2012 as all of our families were getting bigger and it was becoming more difficult to get together as often as we needed. You can still hear some of our songs here. 

This December we have already been able to celebrate Shirley and we will tried to be together for at least part of the day on our anniversary. We will probably plan to celebrate in January when there are fewer activities. This will also be the 11th year that we can celebrate our son Stephan and daughter-in-love Natalie with their anniversary (which is the day after ours). And this will be the first year they celebrate as parents, having welcomed Sophia in the summer. 

All of this means that December is a great month to talk of how wonderful it is to be blessed by a wonderful and loving God and Father. We can talk about Jesus. We can talk of love. And we can share family time as God has taught us. The day before Christmas was our 'Love meal' with the church, made more festive (see photo). For Christmas we visited our sister from the church and were able to talk online to our kids. We missed seeing one daughter-in-love, but got to see our new grand baby. We pray that you too enjoy the wonderful moments that come with this busy month. Enjoy each moment fully. 

Where oh Where Wednesday: Suriname

Back in 1982, in the year I came to spend two years in the Netherlands working as an evangelist apprentice, things were not very peaceful in Suriname. Many of you might wonder: What is Suriname? Or Where is Suriname? Many people have the same question. But almost every Dutchman, even today, will know about the country and what happened in December of 1982. 

Surinam is a small country in the northern part of South America, just east of Venezuela, sandwiched between Guyana and French Guiana. Suriname was first colonized by the English in the 17th century. When they couldn’t use the local population as slaves because of sickness and revolt, they transported African slaves to the plantations. 

As a result of the English-Dutch wars at the time the Dutch took Suriname from the English. In subsequent wars between the two European powers other areas in the world were traded back and forth. In the end, the Dutch released what had been New Netherlands (which is now New York) and the English relinquished Suriname. The neighboring country of Guyana was also Dutch but ended up under British rule by the beginning of the 19th century. 

Slavery was abolished in Suriname in 1863 which left a lack of workers for the plantations. At this time immigrants were brought into the country from India, China and what would become Indonesia. So the population of Suriname is very diverse: African slaves, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian workers, original inhabitants and western colonizers have mixed through the years. When I was singing with Listen Up!, we always enjoyed visiting Vero’s parents in the middle of the Netherlands. Her mother is from Suriname but is of Chinese descent.

The country became independent in 1975. A coup was led five years later by Desi Bouterse. In December of 1982 several political opponents of Bouterse were murdered. Since Bouterse led the government, nothing was done - until this year. Bouterse was recently convicted of the murders and received a sentence of 20 years. It is not yet known if he will ever spend any time in prison, since the current prime minister can pardon him. 

The church in the Netherlands has a good connection with the church in Suriname - in the one city of Paramaribo. Most of the country is still quite wild. There is a congregation which is English-speaking and consists of English and Indian members. The other congregation is Dutch-speaking. The church in the Netherlands has helped them in purchasing and building a meeting place.