I was recently blessed with the opportunity to travel overseas with a small group from my church in order to do ministry alongside a sister church of ours in Hilversum in The Netherlands. I jumped on the opportunity when it came up for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I want to continue to discover my passions in ministry through obedience to God's word. Also, I'm half Dutch and I had a strong desire to go and see where my ancestors came from. As our flight entered the airspace above The Netherlands I was overcome with emotions. It was such a huge blessing to have the opportunity to return somewhere where my ancestors had lived their lives and followed the same God I was going back to proclaim.
Most of our time was spent painting areas of the church. They had an interior decorator that attended their church who went through and discussed with them how to make the church look more inviting. Every day the team would paint and I would be given all the random handyman jobs around the church. There were some awesome people there that we were able to work alongside. There are two American missionaries that are part of the church who took care of us every day. The wife made sure our stomachs were always filled with the most amazing foods, and the husband was able to spend quality time with many people on our trip building into them. The facility dude, Rudy, was always around to encourage us and make sure we were doing everything the way it needed to get done. And, the intern, Floris, made every job I had to do so much easier by knowing the answers to every question I could think to ask about what I was supposed to do and where to find certain tools. The pastor, Sebastian, was really encouraging to our entire team with his passion and his vision for Thousand Hills International Church. So many other great people supported us while we were there.
We also spent some time working alongside the children's ministry. We helped with a Christmas story night where parents from the surrounding area brought their children to church to walk through multiple scenes of the Christmas story. We also got together with the children's ministry volunteers one night and we were able to brainstorm with them about ways to improve the children's ministry for the church, the parents, and the children.
I was cutting drywall on the second day and ended up slicing my thumb open pretty badly. It was quickly decided that I needed to go to the hospital, so I got to experience the Dutch ER first hand! It was very similar to the American ER, except that due to the absence of an Urgent Care, there are a lot more emergencies.
I felt like we were really able to help the church accomplish some things that would've taken a lot longer without us, but even more-so, I realized the importance for our church to build a deeper relationship with their church. I've always been very passionate about the way churches communicate and live together. I've never agreed with the fact that Christian churches, who all serve the same God and are asked to be obedient in the same ways, fail to come together in community. It was awesome to spend time with a family that loves the Lord as much as I do, that I didn't even know existed.
God really used this trip to deepen my passion for international ministries and relational evangelism. I'm sure that at some point in my life God is going to call me to be a part of something large in ministry. I could honestly sit here for hours in awe of how amazing it felt to be a part of the church service at Thousand Hills. I literally feel like I met family members in that church, and after only a couple hours I felt like I was a part of what was going on over there. Thank you so much for praying and for those who were able to financially support the trip! I hope that not only through this trip, but through my future, you'll be able to see the fruits of your gifts.
THANKSGIVING / CHRISTMAS
I just wanted to quickly tell the story of how God maneuvered my plans to get me home to Wisconsin for both holidays with hardly any money out of my pocket! I had originally decided it was going to be too expensive to come home for the holidays so I was trying to figure out what I could do to get home at some point when my boss came up to me and mentioned a work trip to Chicago. It took me a few minutes before it hit me, but I ended up making it work out that I could go home for the weekend after finishing the job on Friday. My business trip ended up switching to Monday, so I changed my plans around a little, then came home and the entire trip actually got cancelled Monday morning after I was able to spend the weekend with my family!
On the way back from the Netherlands, we missed our flight from DC to Charleston due to weather delays coming out of Amsterdam. As we were trying to reschedule flights and get back home I decided it would be worth pursuing the option of switching my flight to Chicago instead of Charleston. A couple strings had to get pulled but I ended up being able to fly home for a few days for Christmas and I was able to see my parents and some really close friends that I hadn't seen in a while. I also got to go snowboarding, but my body is still telling me that that was actually a bad thing.
But, God had plans that were greater than mine and far above mine which allowed me to go home and see my parents twice in this season when I had no idea that it was going to happen at all!
Thank you for all your prayers! There are a lot more pictures from Holland posted on my facebook page for you to look at. And please, ask me any questions you might have about my trip! If it's a good question, I might even just write another blog to answer it!
Love y'all!
