wear and tear

The IMI school (Intercessory Missionary Internship) has been going for a couple weeks now. Bas and I have had a bit of a struggle getting used to the new schedule= mornings in the prayer room from 9a-1p, afternoon meetings, and evening classes. That leaves just enough "free" time to whiz home on the bike, whip up some dinner, wash the dishes, then bike back for the class, then bike back home to sleep! We do get our exercise these days. :-)

But we really do enjoy the school and I especially am enjoying spending so much time in the prayer room. It can be difficult at times to stay for so many hours, but the benefits of intimacy are so good. I see how I am growing and I needed it!

Next month Bas will travel to Budapest, Hungary for a week to teach in a DTS, then at the end of November-beginning December he will be gone for 12 days (sniff, sniff) to Beijing to finish off the Korean DTS we worked with.
After that it is off to America to expose Bas to the over-stimulated American Christmas!! Ooohh, have I been craving one of those!

And then, for the coming year, we are prayerfully considering if doing a new DTS called "Fire and Fragrance" is for us. Fire and Fragrance stands for prayer and worship coupled together. It is what we are doing right now with the IMI, but then this would be together with a DTS. If we do this, it means first going to Hawaii for a couple months to catch the vision (they are already doing these DTS's there). That would mean in about June-July...I have to wait until I am finished with my integration courses. And then the DTS would be in September.
I will let you know what we decide.

Love you all!
Please pray for:
1. a laptop for us. Ours crashed and Bas needs one for his trip to budapest coming up!

2. finances. we are hurting again and still trying to raise more regular, monthly supporters to cover our budget.

Ok, that is all for now.
xoxo

at least I tried...

So, you heard I was going to update you on the Amstedam Outreach, right?
I do so with hesitation...
That is because I am a little embarrassed to reveal a certain story. One of the days, some of the students were going to stand in front of Central Station with T-shirts advertising "free hugs". They were doing this to share love and also get people's attention so they could talk with them.

The evening before the free hugs event, I was in De Poort. I was about to leave to go home when one of the Korean staff beckoned me to follow her. I followed her into a room where some staff were preparing the T-shirts by writing on them in permanent marker. They asked me to help by translating "free hugs" into Dutch for them.
Oh, I thought. How nice that they are asking me. This will be no problem. simple.
Uhh, should have been simple. But my poor American mind quickly translated the first words that came into my mind (remember I was about to leave and go home for the night) so, with a big, proud-of-myself smile, I wrote "Vrij knuffel".

I biked home, had a nice evening with my Finnish friend Elina, then snuggled down into bed...until, WHAT?! I practically jerked up in bed. What, oh what had I done?
I immediately felt myself blush (though I was all alone) as I realized I had translated one of the words incorrectly. Instead of "Vrij knuffel" it should have been "Gratis knuffel".

We Americans have one word for free which has several meanings. In Dutch there is a separate word for free indicating 'freedom' and free indicating 'no cost'.
Man, just when I thought I was doing well with Dutch!

I just felt bad for all those students out there with this nonsense message splashed across their T-shirts.

...but I still feel I am getting along well in Dutch!

quick stuff

This is what has been going on:

~Bas returned from Finland. He now LOOOVES Finland and is already hoping to be invited back to teach soon. He wants me to go next time and, of course, I would love that as well.

~while Bas was in Finland, my Finnish friend Elina came to stay with me for about a week! Nice trade off, eh? We had a great time catching up with each other and I loved to not be alone for the week.

~My last English class will be tomorrow. We are just having a party and I will bake some good ole American snickerdoodles.

~The DTS leaves for Kiev (and then their outreach locations) next Monday. This Wednesday will be their commissioning from the base.

~After the DTS leaves, Bas and I will be taking a much needed vacation for a few days before we dive into woking with the IMI school (Intercessory Missionary Internship).
I will be helping with hospitality and Bas will be doing various tasks to help out

Gay Pride and touching our city

Two Saturdays ago was the annual Amsterdam Gay Pride Parade. The unique thing about this parade is that the floats are atop boats that go through the city center. Our school did an outreach where we handed out roses with scriptures attached to people we felt drawn to give them to. I was really, really looking forward to doing this outreach, but had to stay at home for most of the morning working on editing the English grammar for a technical paper written by my brother-in-law's colleage. It was due on the following Monday and I had to get it back to him that day so he could make the final alterations.
Bas and I did go for the last hour of the parade, and it was every bit as extravagant as would be expected for such an occaision. The students gave testimonies of their time and were really encouraged by how well some of their conversations went.

Bas leaves on Sunday to teach at a DTS in Finland this coming week. Funny thing is that my friend from Finland will be coming to stay with me that week. I don't have to be alone this time!

Next week will be the Amsterdam outreach for our students. Every day, we will be going into the city center and evangelizing through prayer outreach (standing on Dam Square and having a prayer station for people to approach), going to a homeless shelter, arts ministry, music/worship, and even by having "Free Hugs" signs at Central Station (to promote converstation)!
I am excited to see what all will happen.

We will round off the week with a 24hour (students in shifts) time of prayer and worship at the Tabernacle of the Nations (the 24hour house of prayer that YWAM has started here).

I will keep you all posted on how it goes.
xoxo!

life right now

The June DTS has started.
I am part-time staff since I am still doing my Dutch language study (which goes very well by the way. My goal is to be able to speak comfortably by the time we go to America in December).
Our school is composed of 21 students. Over half are Koreans and the rest come from all over (Australia, USA, Djibouti, and Belgium).
Last week was a powerfully emotional encounter for many of them. The stastic for Koreans is that 80% of women will be sexually abused in their lifetime. That statistic proved true for our students (also including the girls from other countries!). It was very heart-wrenching to hear them tell their stories, but then we had a time of ministry and God was able to begin a deep work in them. I look forward to seeing even more transformation as the school progresses.

Bas will teach the school in about 2 weeks on "Identity in Christ". Right now he is not only co-leader for the school but also acting Base Director while our base director is out of the country. He is feeling the stress and busyness, but doing well to make sure he has enough rest.

As I mentioned above, we will be coming to America in December to celebrate the holidays. We would love to get together with any of you, so please let me know even now if you want to get together so we can start planning. We will only be in America for 3 weeks and the days are already filling up quickly!

Love you all! Here is a photo of all our students:

Oh yeah, for those who have not yet heard, my neighbors had an old bike with broken hand brakes which they gave to me for free! Bas got some new brake wires and installed them and it is doing very well. No more side-saddle!!

request

Hey everyone, I want to let you all know where Bas and I are at financially right now.

We are not doing too well.

I am trying not to freak out because this is the first time in my life when I have not had a paid job and now the first time when I have had no savings.

I know some of you give to us and a few regularly and we so SO appreciate that.

I want to make this really short and to the point. We know God has called us to this work and with YWAM Amsterdam specifically. We know that God will provide for us. period.

And I also know that God must use people to provide the finances. Also, it is you in partnership with us. It's a physical action on your part that supports us and also has an impact on the work we do here and in the spiritual realm.

What we need are more regular supporters.

Please consider this. Pray about it and get back to me if you feel like you want to give and/or have any questions.

email: moosh_k@yahoo.com

skills...what skills?

Because I am still without a bike, I have been having to ride on the back of Bas' bike. Now for those of you out there who have never had the opportunity to be precariously perched atop the back of someone's bike, I will recount to you the adventure...or rather misadventure.

The bikes in The Netherlands are equipped with a flat area on the back on which one can and does place any number of things including another human being (see picture: this is not us! Usually the man bikes and the girl is riding. yes, men here really do hold their lady's purse like that!)

I have had the privilege of not only learning this strange side-saddle skill, but have had to adopt it as one of my main means of transportation for the past month.

No, it is not comfortable. I believe that since I have an American anatomy then the bike rejects me and inflicts more pain upon me than others...or I haven't quite figured out how to sit properly. Every time I have to ride for more than 10 minutes (it takes 20 minutes to get to work) then I have to "walk off the pain". It's more in my legs than in the butt.

So now here is the good story:

Last week while riding to the Tabernacle (24 hour house of prayer part of YWAM), Bas decided that he would ride as usual utilizing what he calls his "skills". It feels more to me like wreckless biking and you will soon see why.

We were merrily biking along and he was trying to be fast and make every green light possible and then we came upon a street where a large truck was sitting in the middle. It was a narrow, one-way European street (meaning very narrow) and there was what looked like to me about a two feet across space between the truck and the short metal poles that separate the sidewalk from the street. Bas decided that he would bike not slower, but faster and go through the space between the truck and the poles.

I was on the back screaming, "No, no, no, no, NO! But Bas is someone that when you get hyper-emotional, he tunes the emotions out. He had faith in his "skills" and get right on flying.

When we got next to the truck, I let out a girly squeal and pulled my legs in as far as they could go. Well, the space was not so roomy as Bas thought and the bike tipped a bit and he, instead of stopping, began to push with his hand against the side of the truck to push us along. We spit out of the other side of the truck, and he just kept speeding on. I was being all mad and saying, "stop, I need to get off. I'm not sitting on the bike correctly. Stop!" But I guess he heard blah, blah, blah, hyper-emotions because he kept on going, and I had to readjust "mid-flight". We went over a curb and I literally bounced up and came off the bike, landed back on, and was yelping in pain, but Bas kept right on trucking along.

By the time we got to work, I was not scared or mad or in more pain than normal. I had gone through the spectrum of emotions and came back to normal and Bas had missed them all by tuning out the extremes.

Side note: Don't worry, Bas is NOT an insensitive pig. If the situation would have truly been dangerous or painful outside of what is to be expected riding on bouncing metal then he would have acted accordingly. He is a great man who I adore!

Love you all!

theives, seize, and cheese!

THEIVES:

Well, it finally happened. I knew it was doomed to happen to me sooner or later. My bike was stolen. And just right out in front of our house, too! Ok, ok, so I may have helped the jerk out by leaving my key in the lock for him! oops


But still, our neighborhood is so nice and quiet and friendly feeling that I can't believe anyone living around here stole it. Though it is quite possible that I am simply naive because the statistic here in Amsterdam is that there are roughly 600,000 bikes and that every year 1million are stolen. huh? Yup, every year almost all the bikes are stolen twice!!

To my credit, I did go almost 3 years before a bike of mine was ever stolen.

So now I am on the hunt for a new one. We are hoping something used from a friend turns up, but by Monday, if nothing turns up, then we will give in and get something new for me of off of Marktplaats (Dutch ebay).


SEIZE:

April 30th is the Queen's birthday (Koninginnedag)...or rather it is the Queen's mother's birthday (the current Queen's birthday is in January and that is just too cold a date for the Dutch to celebrate, so they all somehow decided to keep the 30th of April as the celebration day).

On that day the entire Netherlands is transformed into an orange (royal color) wonderland.
It is also the day that much of Amsterdam is turned into the Vrijmarkt (free market)=basically a glorified garage sale. Anyone and everyone can seize a peice of land that has been approved by the government for a selling area. And they can pretty much sell anything.

Since this was my first Koninginnedag to experience, I decided I wanted to go all out and be at the vrijmarkt when it opened at 6am and of course be wearing the mandatory orange shirt to display my Dutch pride.


I must say that I am quite proud of the fabulous finds I brought home. We needed some things to make our house a bit more homey feeling (I got some large cushions for our couch, some tall candlestick holder things that sit on the ground and are about 2feet tall, a large colored glass bowl for center peice, and a nice jacket which I couldn't refuse for a mere 5euros, oh yea and nice pair of tall brown leather boots).


The only challenge was brining everything home on the bike. Once I packed it up like a mule, I cautiously climbed on and attempted to balance while large cushions flanked me on either side, the candlesticks were perched on the back area, and I had a backpack on with the other stuff inside. Just at the moment I was taking off to proudly show my wares to Bas, the bike decided like a stubborn pack mule to rebel and the chain suddenly slipped off leaving my feet to spin rapidly about while going absolutely nowhere. After a short battle, I beat the bike into submission and I merrily pedaled home.


The rest of the day was spent with a group of friends who came into Amsterdam to celebrate with us. We braved the crowds and went out for a few hours to just wander around. In the evening we hosted a barbeque at our house. It was a great introduction for me as just what exactly Koninginnedag is all about.


A sad side note:
Every year the Queen visits a different city/town. This year as she was presented, some wacko in a car tried to run over her! Things like that basically never happen here. The Queen is very admired and loved, so the country's celebrations were a bit dampened by that. The Queen is fine fortunately.


CHEESE:

On our first anniversary, Bas and I got a photo taken of us in traditional Dutch costume

Hope you enjoy!

an anniversary to remember!

Drumroll please!

I thought despite my busyness these days, that I absolutely had to revive my blog. Although facebook is a tough contender for keeping easily updated, I am not able to write my rantings and goings-on like I can on a blog.

Some of you know that I am taking Dutch classes now. How can I deprive you all of that adventure? can't. won't.

So today, on the day of my first wedding anniversary (we celebrate tomorrow), I am sitting down to prattle out my thoughts...

Well, I suppose there's too much to update you all on before I can prattle on, so here is an update from the last post in a nutshell:

After Albania, Bas taught in a few more places (Kenya, Cyprus, Curacao, Amsterdam) while I worked away in the Personnel office.
Now that one year of marriage is finished, we are sliding back into a more varied schedule:
Bas will co-lead the upcoming June DTS while I will be part-time staff. It will be a Korean-English language school in Amsterdam! Sound confusing? Well, the other colleague who is co-leading with Bas is a Korean/American who has a heart to see Koreans come out of their country and comfort zone to challenge themselves to grow and stretch.
We went to South Korea in March to promote the school. That was the first time I was back since living there in 2003, and I absolutely loved it!

Ok, I will stop here so you all will actually read this!
Next time I'll give you one of my good ole sarcastic stories, I promise!
xoxo