The Past Few Days and a lot of Pictures!

On Saturday morning, Joy, one of Heather's roommates from college, came to visit us "on her way" to Thailand for a four-month mission trip (Check out her blog here ). The kids were extremely excited to see their "Auntie Joy" (or, for Keiric, "Anana Hoy") for the first time in six months, and Kaylie, whom we all know does not like to wake up, even got up with no complaint at 5am to bike with Heather to the train station (since the buses don't run that early) and then on the train to pick her up at the airport. After they connected at the airport and came back to Alkmaar, Heather rode the bike back to the house, leaving Kaylie to help Joy get on the bus and tell the driver where they needed to go, in Dutch (Kaylie is now a professional traveler, and I'm pretty sure, if we were both forced to travel the city on our own, she would do better than I would! Fortunately, she seems to have developed her mom's great sense of direction.) Back at the house we relaxed and talked for a bit before the kids and Auntie Joy took a nap... the jetlag can be a lot of fun coming here :) Then that evening we had the church youth over for a movie get-together. We watched Kung-Fu Panda with Dutch subtitles, because some of the youth don't speak English that well, and then we played with the Wii. It was a lot of fun.
Sunday morning we all got ready to go to church, and then I went out to pump up the tire on the bike we had borrowed for Joy to use while here. Unfortunately, while trying to pump it up, I instead somehow broke it (yes, apparently that's possible), and so I stayed behind to try to fix it while they went ahead to church. I wasn't able to fix it, and by the time I gave up, it was too late for me to try to catch a bus, so I instead worked on my Bible study lesson for the following Tuesday. Here's a picture of Kaylie and her best friend Anna at church, they are a little silly, but they have fun together.

After church, Chris and Terri, a missionary couple who has been here for about six years, came over for lunch, and we all had a good time finally hearing about how they had ended up on the mission field as "second career" missionaries and all of the struggles, blessings, and funny stories that came with them deciding to come. They are returning to the States in the next few weeks -Chris for 6 months and Terri for 2 months. They have been an invaluable resource for us, in getting here and helping us along, and we are sad to see them leave for the time.

After they left, we all went out to shoe-glide on the frozen canals. We've been told that the canals hadn't frozen over like this in about twelve years, so we felt very blessed to have the opportunity to "walk on water" in front of a windmill. The kids had an incredible time running and sliding, and sometimes falling on their rear-ends, and I have to admit, I had a great time too, though I gratefully avoided the falling on my rear-end part. It was a good thing that we had gone on Sunday afternoon, because by the next day, the ice was not nearly as thick, and there is no way we could have played on it. Here are (a lot of) pictures:On Monday morning, Heather had her Dutch class and then Keiric, Joy, and I met her at a bagel shop in town for lunch. Heather had invited her classmates, and one of them, Gergely, a younger guy from Hungary, came by and talked with us for a little while. After lunch we went shopping in the city (yeah), then I went home to meet my guitar teacher, and Heather, Joy, and Keiric went to pick Kaylie up from her school. Heather was able to talk to one of the parents from Turkey for a few minutes while Joy sat quietly trying to figure out what they were saying in Dutch - she has figured out the word for cold! That night I had to go to my Dutch class while Joy and Heather stayed (warm) inside and worked on a project for the Chapmans.

On Tuesday morning, some of the ladies from Heather's Bible study came over for coffee and girl talk (yeah, again), and they seemed to have a great time. It's funny, but the sound of a bunch of women getting together sounds pretty much the same, no matter what the country or language. I spent the time finishing up the Bible study lesson for that evening and then brushing up on my conversational Dutch for my afternoon at The Mall (the afterschool program I have been volunteering with).

Going to The Mall again was a very fun experience. The kids recognized me this time, and they were very friendly. I played games with them and made small conversation. A couple of the boys, Thys and Sam, told me they were new, and as I played darts with them, I found out a little about them. They were very nice kids. I asked them how old they were, and they were both 11, but Sam said he was going to be 12 on Sunday. I used the Dutch birthday congratulations, "gefeliciteerd" and he complimented me for knowing it. Then Thys asked me how old I was, and when I told him I was 31, he said, in Dutch, "That's not very old." It was very nice of him, but I remember being 12.... 31 is ancient! They have asked me to help out again this Friday night with the 13 to 15 year olds, so I am excited (and a little nervous) about it. Please pray for The Mall: there is an incredible opportunity to reach these kids with the Word of God, but they are in need of more volunteers, especially females.

Tuesday evening was Cell Group, and it was Chris's last night with us before he leaves. He asked me, though, to lead, so I started on our new series of lessons on the Characteristics of God. We talked about where we can see what God is like, and then we started talking about what we can see of God's characteristics through looking at the Creation. It's amazing how much information about God you can get by reading 2 chapters! Try it - see how many adjectives you could use to describe God from the first 2 chapters of Genesis.

After cell, Heather, Joy, and I played a new game we had gotten from the Grambart family for Christmas, and then I went to bed while Heather and Joy went up stairs to talk. I woke up at 5 in the morning to the sound of them laughing... they had apparently stayed up all night. I think it was 6 before they finally decided maybe they should sleep.

On Wednesday we kept Kaylie out of school, and we all took the train to Amsterdam to see the Ark van Noach (Noah's Ark), a replica designed by a Dutch artist which has been displayed on different canals in Holland. Though the ark is only about 1/2 as wide and 2/3 as long, it was still very large and it was incredible to experience a little of what it was like for Noah and his family to build a monstrous boat and live on it with all those animals for so long. Especially neat was that, in a city/country where the Bible is usually completely ignored, they had displayed a lot of information showing the historical and scientific evidences for the Biblical account of Creation and a world-wide flood.
They had life size animals inside.
They also had lots of artwork painted on the inside walls to tell the story. This picture was a little disturbing in its depiction but gave us all a very vivid picture of what it might have been like. They also had other stories from the Bible depicted in sets, including this tomb.

Inside the tomb we found these 2 scenes:
Heather also got a bit of a scare when she opened this door looking for the bathroom . . .
and she found this . . .
The ark was the only part of Amsterdam we had time for, as we also needed to use the trip to pick up the residence permits for myself, Kaylie, and Keiric from a city nearby. Because we were passing the airport on the way, and Joy's flight was supposed to be in 3 hours, she decided that it would be best for her to get dropped off there and get herself checked in early so that if getting the residence permits took too long, she wouldn't have to feel panicked about not getting there in time, so we dropped her off and continued to the next stop.

When we got to the IND at 4:01, we found out that the office closed at 4, which was horrible because we didn't want to have to pull Kaylie out of school and pay for another train ride to pick them up another day. The lady at the front desk called back to try to get ahold of somebody, though she told us it was not very likely. She talked to somebody, hung up the phone, and said, "Sorry, but they are closed." But just then, a lady came in from another room with a cart. She told us that, though the offices were locked up, she had the cards with her and she would help us at the reception desk. That was awesome, and a little unusual. The Dutch like to do things by the book, and they don't tend to make exceptions. She got us our cards, we thanked her and the receptionist profusely, and we headed back to the airport to say goodbye to Auntie Joy.

When we got to the airport, Joy wasn't at the meeting spot, so we went to where she was supposed to check in... still no Joy. We looked some other places and then headed back to the meeting spot. There she was, with a slightly panicked look on her face. Her flight had been moved up a couple of hours because there was a fog rolling in to London where she was supposed to be changing planes, and they had to get her on an earlier flight to try to beat it, otherwise she could be stuck for a long time. So we grabbed a quick dinner at the airport together and then walked her to the Security gate were we said good-bye. We were sad to see her go, but we are super excited about her ministry in Thailand!