Weekly Update: January 26th, 2012

Weekly Update: Thursday, 01/26/12

Hello again!

I probably should have started on this sooner, but I think I should be done before Thursday is over in the Netherlands.

We don’t have much to report this week, but here has been something I’ve been focusing on and I would like to ask you all if you would consider getting involved with it. My friend, Ajit, has been running a discipleship school for followers of Jesus in a very unreached part of India. They have managed to run the first three months of the school, but the next three months, focused on outreach, has come and they are short on finances because the students come from poor families.

Their current need is about $600 to $700 dollars. Ajit and his family also work as Church planters; they are in need of about $100 dollars to see their two kids stay in school.

I have prayed about it and have felt led to make their need known. If you would like to make a contribution you can leave a reply here, or you can email me at “abidingkingdom@gmail.com”.

Thanks for hearing us out!

If you have any questions please email or ask in a reply below and I will get back to you as soon as I can. We would be honored to help you help others!

Other Updates:

– So far, the “Dine with the Dutch” has about 13 participants. The international student associations really like the invitation too! We may use the theme of this program in other ministries we start up in America.

Scripture

This week I have started reading through Genesis. I guess the thing I am noticing the most is just how personal all the stories are. There are several chapters with nothing but genealogies, which I do appreciate a lot, but the rest are really personal stories that follows characters like Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, Lot (Abraham’s nephew), and on down the list. One thing that is noticeable, though, is that God shows us how He was in relationship with all of them too. Even in he Old Testament God is known to desire relationship and to be close to His people.

You should check it out! Genesis is about the easiest book in the Bible to read through (with several stories that will raise healthy questions) and it has a lot of good lessons.

Praise & Prayer Report

– Jake is still growing really well!

– My Mom is still planning on visiting us this February, but she hurt her knee several days ago and has been having a hard time with it. She says that she is feeling better day by day, but please pray that her knee continues to heal for her time here in the Netherlands.

Thanks for all your prayers!

In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom

Weekly Update

Weekly Update: Thursday, 01/19/12

So, just to say it before I continue, I’m going to try to start updating our blog every week. Thursday is the day that I’m shooting for, but we’ll see how that goes…

This last week we had the pleasure of hosting our good friend Beth here in the Netherlands. Please be praying for her and her fiancé, Sam. Their wedding was supposed to be for the 7^th of January, but Sam’s visa was denied (our friend Beth is British and our friend Sam is American). It was very, very good to have Beth here though, and we’re confident that God will work everything out for her and Sam very soon!

Beth was also our first friend from Y-Idaho to see our son. Also, given that Jake only has Uncles on both sides of the family, we decided that it would be good for him to have an Aunt too, so, Beth is Aunty Beth too!

Other Updates:

– I may be working with some college students soon; there is a program here called Dine with the Dutch, I’ll be helping connect international students with Dutch students from the same college campus. This way, international students from China, India, Pakistan, and other nations will have a chance of making friends with other Dutch students while they are here. The program is hosted by several Christian student associations.

– Our son will be having a family baptism on February 12^th; we will be at my wife’s home church in Enschede. Menko, my wife’s father will be baptizing our son and Lori, my Mom, will get to be there too!

– My wife and I are still putting together what our next year in ministry will look like. For now, I have a couple of tasks that will help our base run Mission Adventures this summer.

Scripture

This week I read through the last chapters of Ezekiel; I know only have Deuteronomy to read through and I will have read the entire Bible. From chapter 40 through 48 it talks about God taking Ezekiel to a city through a vision. It is prophetic, but it seems to be both for people of Israel as they return from Babylon (the place from which Ezekiel was) and to be a picture of what is later described in the last two chapters of Revelation, 21 & 22. They are not the same, but they are similar.

You should check them out!

Praise & Prayer Report

– Our son, Jake, is growing really well!

– My Mom will be able to visit us and our son for a couple of weeks this February!

– Please pray that our visa works out fine! We are praying about next year’s schedule and it is very important that we are granted the visa we need!

Thanks for all your prayers!

In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom

Picture Update of Olst and Fortmund

Picture update!

Almost every time we drive to Church from Olst we pass by the river IJssel. It almost always has a lot of birds around it at this time of the year, as it is a place for birds to migrate to and pass through, and so I decided to head out there with a camera and take some pictures.

This is the church building in Olst. I don’t know if it has a name, but it’s called the PKN church.

And this is the old water tower in Olst, which was converted to an apartment tower. I tried to read the plaque on its side, which was written in Dutch, and it basically said that it was built so that the people could drink water. Well, I can’t really argue with reasoning like that…

After a few kilometers I finally started to see some birds! There were fields full of geese, lots of sea birds like gulls, and here and there were small bunches of black ducks with little white foreheads.

                                   

                                               

In the middle of it all I noticed a nice look back at our little village of Olst. It was raining later, so I’m glad I took the picture when I did.

Now, this was a surprise… I saw this little trail on the map and I had absolutely no intention of going down it, but as I rode up I stopped to pull out my map and felt that God was telling me to go that was anyways. I am so glad that I did!

The first wonder of the trail was the trees and plants that grew along the road. There were willows growing there that were split clean down the sides and still grew strong, their wood had rotted right out of them but the kept growing nonetheless. There were also trees like our thorn apples in Michigan, but taller and with bright red fruit. There were vines and some sort of cotton wood tree too! I stood there in wonder for a bit as an old man passed, probably wondering why I was taking so many pictures, but we only said hello before going on down the trail.

        

Next was the swans; I’ve always wanted to get near to swans, but they are very rare to be found back home. I never realized just how white they were before, or how large! They were one of the most beautiful birds that I had ever seen or could imagine to be! I stood longer staring at the swans then the trees before and then I remembered that it was only at God’s leading that I went down this trail anyways! It was wonderful and I praise God for it, I do not know of another way to speak of it; even again my heart remembers it and is joyful beyond words and closer to tears!

         

Eventually, I did ride on and didn’t find too much more along the road; on the way back, however, I did get a chance to take pictures of something called a Kwak. It was a diving bird and was really hard to get good pictures of!

Along the way I continued and found more birds, sheep, horses, beautiful homes, and cattle. Not just any cattle, but real Highland Cattle that graze along the IJssel when the river is low. I took the picture from the top of a tower and I really didn’t care to get closer.

                   

As a bonus to me, I also found the ruins of an old brick factory and a diagram of how it was built. Now I know how to make bricks in the Indian way and the northern European way!

After this it was mostly a long ride home; I had felt accomplished before needing to ride home, so by the end of that I was quite tired. Still, I got a last couple pictures in and managed to spy out a good pancake house and Chinese-Indonesian restaurant before making it the rest of the way home.

For the record, the food at the Chinese place is pretty good.

Well, I think that’s all the pictures for now! I had meant to wish you a good new year’s eve at the end of this post, but it took to long to get the pictures right and all lined up almost straight. Have a good new years day!

Thank you all for partnering with us!

In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom

New Years Eve in The Netherlands

This morning my wife and I woke up to the sound of fireworks; not tiny fireworks, but decent fireworks, the illegal kind from back home. I was surprised at the number being shot off. Several had been shot off during the past week, but as I counted the seconds in between the bangs, I could only get to ten seconds.

There was a lull at about  5pm, I got to twenty-two seconds.

New Years Eve has just past now and I can say, as an American, we take a lot of pride in our 4^th of July, but I think the New Years Eve in The Netherlands wins at the fireworks competition. We couldn’t rightly see everything, but the fireworks took a big jump at midnight and could be seen from our left to our right as far as the eye could see. We could even see neighboring villages shooting off their fireworks down the river.

That stopped after about twenty minutes, I think they were still firing them, but we couldn’t see them for the miles of smoke in between us.

I didn’t take any pictures, or videos for that matter, but we were a bit far away for that.

The last nice thing to remember is that my brother and a bunch of my friends have beaten me to the new years. They are out learning of God a few time zones east of here.

Our prayers will be with them and with all of our other friends in the world!

Have a good new year!
The Abiding Kingdom