2nd day of Pentecost

In Belgium we celebrate several Catholic holidays with two days. Easter, Pentecost and Christmas all have two days. And then there is also Ascension Day which always fall on a Thursday and includes the Friday so that there is a long weekend. Of course most people understand what Easter and Christmas celebrate, even with the commercialization and strange things like chocolate bunnies and colored eggs. The confusion often comes with Pentecost. 

Pentecost is of course the celebration of first fruits, the first harvest of the first crop. It is the idea that the people of God were to trust God to give them what they needed. They could give Him their first fruits because everything came from Him anyway. These days it is still good to think in this way, realizing that all we have comes from God and we can trust Him for the future. 

If people know about Pentecost, then they know about it as the beginning of the Christian church. And that is certainly true. Christians, followers of Jesus, are the first fruits of the harvest. That first Pentecost when 3000 gave their lives to Christ in obedience was just a beginning. The church has spread all over the world. And it continues to change and grow in various ways. 

In the Netherlands some of the changes are very visible. The church building in The Hague used to house a church of 100-200 members. That was at a time when the congregation was Dutch members and American expats working in the city. Now the church building still exists, although with many troubles, but it houses a Ukrainian congregation and an international group. And the building has been joined in the neighborhood by a mosque next door. 

Speaking of international groups, the church meeting in Antwerp (in Belgium) and outside of Antwerp is also international. In Antwerp there is a Spanish-speaking group. Outside of Antwerp the congregation is mostly African. The largest congregation numerically in the Netherlands is the congregation in Amsterdam which is primarily Ghanaian and meets in Twi (one of the languages of Ghana) and English. 

In the Netherlands there are congregations in Amsterdam, Groningen, Haarlem, The Hague, Den Dolder, Eindhoven and Maastricht. In Belgium there are congregations in Ghent, Roeselare, Brughe, Antwerp, Turnhout, Hasselt and Rotselaar which generally speak Flemish. French-speaking congregations meet in Liege, Charleroi and Brussels. Each of these places has an interesting history behind their establishment and growth (or lack of) through the years. 

In Maastricht we are getting ready to say goodbye to one of our American families as they return to the US. But we have also welcomed some Ghanaians recently. We teach and worship in Dutch and English and are looking forward to meeting together for a day down at camp for fellowship and encouragement. We understand that our existence is all down to the grace of God and His spirit in our lives. We are still His harvest, His first fruits and we pray that He is able to use us to have an even greater harvest here or wherever we go. 

(Picture is of a youth weekend this year in the building in The Hague)

Easter Monday

It’s no joke. Today we have a holiday. You see in Belgium and the Netherlands there are three holidays that get two days each. There is a 1st and 2nd day of Christmas, an Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, and a 1st and 2nd day of Pentecost. So today most people have free, in Belgium some of the stores are closed and in both countries the banks and such are closed. 

The Belgians have school vacation, which means that they are off looking for the sun somewhere or perhaps off getting the last of the good skiing. The Dutch do not get a school break until May when they will get a Spring Break. I will be heading down to camp for Vacation Bible Kamp (VBK instead of VBS). This will be the first time to organize a VBK in the Spring and I have been asked to teach the older kids. The age group is from 8-14 years old. 

Before I go to camp I will also drive over to Antwerp to visit and old neighbor who is now in prison (and get this posted online before I go). When I get back (VBK ends on Friday) there is a sport day planned and I may head over there. I may be an old guy, but it is always good to get together with the young people from the various congregations. And I have been trying to encourage some basketball playing for some time now. We finally have a hoop down at camp. 

All of this activity comes to the churches because we know that we have a new life in Jesus Christ. The beauty of Easter is the resurrection. Jesus rose and that means that we can become a new creation. This is so important that we want to make sure that everybody knows about it. So shout it from the mountaintops. Whisper it in the library and in the halls. Pass it on to the people around you. Jesus lives! And so can we. 

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. 

The second day

Today is the second day of Easter. Didn’t you know that Easter had two days? So do Christmas and Pentecost - at least in Belgium and the Netherlands. For Christmas people might be familiar with ‘Boxing Day’. Here, that is the second day of Christmas. Each of the major Christian holidays is celebrated with two days. Some are official: people get off work the stores and banks are closed, and people do family things or go on holiday.
It is interesting to see how much people want the holidays without much knowing what they are for or what they mean. At the same time, it is good to be able to speak of Jesus and his resurrection since people will be aware that that is certainly done on this holiday.
Here in the Catholic south of the Netherlands, or in Catholic Belgium, most would expect to go to mass on Easter Sunday. But most of the churches these days are struggling to find enough priests for the various churches. Our village celebrates mass weekly on Thursday. The village over on Saturday. The village up the hill on Monday. This because there is only one parish priest who has to spread his time around.
This is an addition to the disconnect that occurred during the corona years. At that time churches in Belgium were shut down, officially. In theNetherlands, although the constitution made it possible to still meet together, many churches closed their doors and tried to open internet windows. But people who were already separating themselves from religion in their daily lives found it even easier to do so.
So it has been interesting to see, now that these restrictions are no longer in place, how people have welcomed certain elements back into their lives. In Maastricht, there has traditionally been a procession on Good Friday. It was once again well-attended. In many places you can hear people saying “Blessed Easter” instead of “Happy Easter”.
In our conversations we often talk to people about being a cultural Christian. Many would say that they are Christians because they see this as a cultural distinction. They are not Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist. They are Christian. It does not necessarily describe any belief or faith on their part. It is their tradition, their family history.
And family is good. Even better when we truly know why we belong together. There is family that we are born into and family that we choose. We are looking forward to seeing our family all around the US soon - both our family into which we were born, and the family into which God placed us at our new birth.
And here, when we go walking on the second day of Easter and meet others walking, we may say to some: “He is risen.” Some will know what we are talking about. Others might even respond: “He is risen indeed.” Some still know this phrase. Many do not consider if they truly believe it or not. But for a day, for a moment, there is a focus on what is true and amazing, even on the second day. On the third day, and each day afterwards, we will continue speaking of this amazing love, hoping that people will see that this is more than a tradition or religion.

Whensday - National Days

In the United States the whole country is celebrated on July 4th. This is Independence Day - they day that we celebrate our independence from the British, the beginning of our being a country. There are fireworks, family get-togethers, picnics and more. 

We remember sharing a few of these on several of our Home Assignments: outside of Minnepolis or Hudson with various members in different years from the Woodbury family (or what would become the Woodbury family), in Indianapolis with the family of our daughter-in-love, in California with the Jablonski’s. 

Other countries have their own national days and traditions. Belgium, being a very interesting set-up, has three different special days. The Flemish-speaking area celebrates their day on July 11. The French-speakers celebrate on September 27 and the National Day is held on July 21. This last is the only one where everyone has a free day. And of course we can’t forget the German-speaking day on November 15. 

Typically there are no fireworks or such, but families in the various communities do get together, since it is a holiday in that community. The National Day is a holiday for everyone - not just the specific language community. On that day, stores, banks and such are all closed. 

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.

All in the Family

To Christmas or not to Christmas? Is that the question? For most in the Western world, there are certain holidays (from the word Holy days), based on Christian religious remembrance days (either put in place by the Catholic or other church or based on the Bible). Many people get a free day from work and this gives people the possibility to get together as family.

Of course, holidays also give stores opportunities to sell things. Anything can be made commercial. I didn’t think Thanksgiving could be turned to the dark side, but then along came Black Friday (with everyone ‘enduring’ Thanksgiving to get to that most hallowed of days). But holidays are not new. And they are not truly religious (the word in Dutch is ‘God-serving’). So I don’t expect them to be.

I simply enjoy that these are times to get together with family – whether it be family from far away via skype or travel, or church family from close by, showing what true family is. And in these moments we can share what is most important every day – the grace that Jesus Christ has brought to our lives. And isn’t that why we are here?

Enjoy your family time.