Where oh where Wednesday: Japanese gardens in Hasselt

About 20-30 minutes away from where we live is the largest garden of its kind in Europe. We have never visited (yet) even though we often are in Hasselt, where this garden is found. We have a few of our members in Maastricht who live in or near Hasselt and we know other brothers and sisters from the church in Hasselt. But this garden is something completely different. 

Although Shirley and I have never visited Japan, we know a little bit about for various reasons. My brother is married to a gal from Okinawa and our nieces and nephew are half-Japanese. We have good friends who have been sharing the gospel in Japan for decades. And one of the first people from a foreign culture who came to Christ in Maastricht was a man from Japan. We still have contact with him although he now lives with his Dutch wife in Leiden. 

So 20-30 minutes away we could visit the Japanese Gardens in Hasselt, Belgium. Back in 1985 Hasselt and the Japanese city of Itami became friends, sister cities. Hasselt decided to give Itami a carillon tower and Itami gave Hasselt the Japanese garden. The garden was built not as a small city garden, but an expansive site of 2.5 hectares where a meadow had previously graced the countryside. 

The connection of Hasselt with Itami is not such a strange one. The city of Hasselt is known for its jenever, or gin. This is made from berries on a juniper bush. I remember growing up in Colorado that we had some juniper bushes in our front yard I didn’t know that you could get gin from them. Itami is famous for its sake. Sake, which is made from rice, is said to have originated in Itami. 

Although we have never yet visited this garden, we have visited the Japanese Gardens in San Diego while on our Home Assignments and visiting family who live there. You can find some pictures here that may be reminiscent of what we will find in Hasselt when, hopefully soon, we visit the gardens which are basically in our back yard. 

The tax man cometh

The tax man cometh. April 15 is an important day in the US. In the Netherlands it is also in the Spring. In Belgium tax day is in June. Taxes are a certainty in any country or culture and it is no different here. In the Netherlands you even know when your post is from the tax office - it is a blue envelope.  

For us the whole situation is rather complicated. We file income tax in the United States and in Belgium since we come from the US but live in Belgium. In both countries we are considered self-employed for the tax law. We are required to pay social security in both countries as well. Thankfully we have help for our US taxes from brothers and sisters who have always been willing to help missionaries. 

I remember when E.B. Dotson was working for brother McCready. Brother McCready did the taxes of missionaries for free, taking away any worries and in this way supporting and encouraging them. E.B. and Jean were our good friends in church (as they are still) and it has been a true blessing to have this weight taken from our shoulders all these years. Tax law is difficult enough as it goes, but it gets even more complicated when someone lives overseas. 

In Belgium we do not have anyone doing our taxes for us, but things are fairly straight forward. We do not have to itemize. We list the value of our house, its measurements and such. For some years we get a digital printout of what the tax office already figured for us. Then we do even less. But the cares of wondering if everything is done correctly remain a concern. 

We always want to make sure that we are doing things as they should be done. As Christians we have a responsibility to make sure that we are an example to those around us. Jesus also told Peter (and Paul told the Christians in Rome) that taxes are not something to escape. So whether they are fun or not, we want to do what is right. 

As we now also are reaching a certain age, we have thought about what we would need to do for retirement. In Belgium retirement age is 67 - and moving higher each year, it seems. We have social security in both countries, but we are not quite sure how the two countries will work with one another. When one looks for answers, the “normal” answers on a FAQ never quite fit our situation. So we will start looking deeper at what needs to be done. 

In the meantime, and as always, we will trust that God is taking care of things. And we will thank our loving Father for brothers and sisters who are willing and able to help us with this kind of information. 

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.