It's a beautiful country, actually; I think the quaint houses and the canals (and mini-canals, whose name I can't pronounce) add a lot of character. :) The people are tall. And fast bikers. They don't all speak English, and they don't seem to have as much self-consciousness in public- the referee, scorekeeper, and several spectators of a volleyball game we caught yesterday were dancing to the techno music- and they seem to be very friendly toward people they know. All this makes me think that if we can strike up conversations with people, they might be open to talking and even talking about God. I certainly hope so.
On Thursday and Friday Michelle and I recovered from our awful jet-lag (we arrived her at 7am!) and saw some of Hoofddorp and Niew Vennep, which is the town we're actually in. Yesterday we got our study/lesson ready for the youth study on Tuesday; Joey's letting us lead that, since it's our best bet for talking to the most of Cross Culture's youth. We'll talk about unity & community as the Body of Christ, and how that leads to obedience & produces boldness in our faith as individuals and as a community.
Then we walked around ourselves, past the big shopping center and all the way down to what we guessed was Niew Vennep station- tons of cars and tons of bikes parked near train ticket machines. We noticed kids with soccer balls running around, and hope to start the youth meeting every week to play soccer and attract town kids to play with them. Soccer here is social, and I know from experience that you actually can have good conversations with people when you meet to play. They won't just kick each other. :-) We spent the walk back praying for the town, specifically for the churches and schools, vital places in every town.
Today was church, and now it's naptime; I think Michelle and I will go prayerwalking some more, and maybe see if we can strike up any conversations. They don't really meet for coffee or anything here, which is why soccer could be such a good thing, so we don't know where to find people who are just hanging out; but please pray that God would send us people all week to talk to, and to pray for, and that He would show us specific needs. Also pray that God, not us, would speak on Tuesday; our goal this trip is to get the youth to grasp the importance and possibility of missional living here in their own town. We need Him to do that because right now we don't have that many opportunities to be with many of them- but there are a small group of them we should be seeing alot, so pray especially for them. They're pretty solid now; they just need help getting things like campus Bible study, etc. off the ground.
This is already long, and it's only Sunday! I'll post as I can, and mostly I'll probably post day-by-day posts when I get home. Pray for good conversations and effective prayer. Thank you!
~Michal
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