Maintenance

This past weekend was the end of our Fall camps, a special religious holiday in Belgium and a day to get things ready at camp for the coming winter. Although Halloween is not really a holiday here, All Saints Day is. This is the day that many visit the graves of their loved ones. It is one of the biggest days for florists as everyone is getting flowers (mostly chrysanthemums) to put on the graves. It is a time to remember, to put family first, sewn into society and the social calendar of the year.

Down at camp it is a time for maintenance. We have to get the buildings ready to go into the winter, never knowing how bitter the winter might be. It is time to clean off the leaves from the roofs, clear off the driveway, and prep the buildings inside. This weekend we also had a hill of dirt to move from one place to another. The field had begun to settle after the flooding a few years back, so it was time to set things to rights again. This was especially important around some metal lids in the field which give us access to our septic system. We do not want any kids falling in or hitting their heads on these metal lids. 

More importantly, a day like this down at camp is a time to talk during the coffee breaks and lunch breaks. There were only 6 of us down there, but it was a good group that worked hard. Two of the 6 men were the young sons of one of our camp leaders. They did quite a bit of the work digging out the dirt, shoveling it into wheelbarrows and letting the wheelbarrows be wheeled to where they were to be dumped. In the end we all went home satisfied and dirty, knowing that camp was ready for the coming months. 

Back in Maastricht yesterday was the first Sunday of the month and was a good day to be back together with Christian family. Some have been off on holiday (it was a school holiday break in Belgium) and others were finally back after a short period of typical Fall colds. One of our Ukrainians heard this past weekend that his father was killed in a battle in the East. This young man has been with us for the last two years and so has not seen his father for the last three years. Death never seems to be expected, even in war. 

Dig a little deeper

This whole year we as a congregation in Maastricht have been looking at how we are being made into a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). As we have talked about trusting in God, discovering His will and putting that into practice in our lives with the help and strength of the Holy Spirit, we have also come up against plenty of questions. We all come from some kind of background. And here in Maastricht we are quite a mixture (cultures, countries and religious backgrounds). So it has been exciting to see the desire to get together more often and start digging together. 

Of course we want to read the Bible. We know that God is speaking to us through His word. But we want more. We want to understand. We want to understand as much as He wants to make clear to us. So we are taking time every other week to come with our questions, learning to use a concordance and look at passages with contextual questions, digging and letting God's word make its way into our hearts and minds. It's great to see us all getting dirt under our fingernails together, helping one another to know God better in this way, too.