Another Bed To Lay My Head

My New Bed

The Housing Situation

I know this is quite sudden for some of you... given that I haven't written in a few weeks, and then I write to say that I've moved Youth With A Mission YWAM Heidebeek houses. I was living at the main accommodation building Licht in Duuister LID, in a room belonging to one of the September's Classic Discipleship Training School DTS staff, who is returning from outreach in Greece tomorrow. I knew that I needed to move but I didn't know where I was being moved to. YWAM Heidebeek is really detailed and precise about where everyone is sleeping at such a large base like this one (Housing is a department all by itself; almost) so I can't just move into another room without being notified about where I'm going. So last week I wrote to the housing department asking where I was going. I'd had people coming up to me three weeks ago asking if I knew what was happening in this department; I'm not that stressed about this stuff so many weeks in advance. After I wrote the email, I was approached by one of the women in Housing who wanted to talk to me about my new arrangements. I had hoped that I'd stay at LID, but I am flexible and open to being moved to one of the two other housing facilities (Herdershof and Epe House). So I'm now living closer to Heidebeek, at Hedershof. Its exciting because I've only been here once, over three years ago, to prepare a room (its the room on the other side of the hall to where I am now). I'm in one of the guestrooms, and I've got this huge beautiful room all to myself, for now at least. There's a chance I have to share with another of the staff.

GO Teams News

Things are going well in the office as well. Carl's away this week, at a leadership conference in Milan, Italy. This has left Bas and me in the office. We've done the odd jobs that Carl left us to do... and in my spare time I packed for moving (I didn't know I had to many odds and ends). Bas and his fiancee*, Maartje, helped me move from LID to Herdershof.

Sick

The week after I came back from Zeeland I had wanted to post something, but I was sick all last week. Every year this cold/flu goes round the base, and one of the symptoms is extreme tiredness along side the normal cold/flu symptoms. I think I slept almost every afternoon last week. I ended up asking to go home half way through the morning due to being too tired and sick to keep working. It took about six days to feel well enough to do anything behind stay in bed.

*Fiancee, with the double e at the end of the word, refers to a woman who is engaged to be married, whilst fiance, ending with a single e, refers to a man who is engaged.

Thoughts About Facebook

Three years ago, I did my Discipleship Training School DTS at a Youth With A Mission YWAM base that's situated in the middle of the Dutch countryside. So sometimes it does feel like I'm out of touch with the world out here. So, during my DTS and in terms of what things that were on the news; like things that were happening in different parts of world, I was blissfully unaware. If something big happened, the whole base would be buzzing with the news, or more usually, I'd find out on Facebook, which isn't the best place to hear the news (however, I don't think that there's any media cooperation that present the news in an unbiased way like they claim, but Facebook is the worst, but I'd get there in a moment). So you could say I was living my life with my head in the sand… given that, at the time, I didn't have a tablet or a smartphone and so couldn't download podcasts or check the news online. In recent years I've challenged myself to stay informed of world news, but I'll never loose that sense of amusement at how one or two topics can be blown out the water on the news and on social media… be it global warming, the tension in Burundi or Donald Trump's call for an Iowa rematch (due to fraud; supposedly). These are random topics on the news now, by the way. I've been regularly listening to the BBC's News Hour just to keep up with what's going and I must say that Global Warming is a very popular topic.

On the other hand Facebook is the absolutely worst place to learn anything about what's going on in the world. Thanks to Obama supporters among my list of friends I did learn, via Facebook, that Obama had been elected in 2012 for a second term in office. Yes, it's a great place to keep up with what everyone of my 400+ friends, but honesty, a single typo (unintentionally or otherwise) or auto correct will have people believing that something that isn't happening. For example, on Friday I updated my status to: "My trip of a lifetime begins now… got hours of travel to get there and loads of sitting to get to N Zealand. Ticket was a gift from a good friend… #seeyousoon #surpriseadventure" so the whole world seemed to think I was off to New Zealand, unaware that there's a province in the Netherlands called Zealand (Dutch: Zeeland). I wanted to see how the world would react. The basis of my current theory, thanks to this post, is don't believe everything you read on Facebook, you just gotta take it with a pinch of salt, like you do with everything else in life. It also shows how well people actually know me. I'm one of those people who are have the unfortunate habit of telling absolutely everyone what's happening in my life, travel wise. So if I was really traveling to New Zealand I would have, in my excitement, posted something about going to New Zealand within hours of buying the tickets. My housemates and colleagues would have also known months ago, again down to my excitement about having bought the tickets and that I was another step closer to a long time dream coming true.

I had an awesome time in Zeeland with my friend and the adventure was well worth it, despite long journeys getting to and from the town my friend lives in. More news coming soon.

Monday's Post

Taken from compassion.com

After much procrastination about writing another post, here it is. I can't believe that January is already over. I mean, the last four weeks have flown by so fast. Guess that means that I'm really, really enjoying life as time grows wings when I enjoy myself. Things have been going really well since I last wrote. We, as a team, gave an informational presentation in a church in a town called Genderen about Rwanda. I really enjoyed it and had an opportunity to share about a country that shares a border with the country I was born in.

The church we went to is looking at sending a team from their youth group with us to Rwanda in July. So the parents wanted to know more about Rwanda. Given that Rwanda is one of the safest countries in Africa, with one of the fastest growing economies. To be honest I'm getting really exciting about going to Rwanda. I do count Rwanda on my list of countries I've been to because I've been on Rwandan soil but haven't gone further than the plane doors, due to Uganda being my final destination rather than Rwanda. I'm also a little apprehensive about going due to never having led an outreach before. So prayers for peace would be appreciated... I'll keep you posted with how things proceed with the preparation. In regards to the applications, at the moment we've had six applicants in, and we're processed them. I'll write later on about how many participants each outreach location will have.

Taken from compassion.com

Over the last couple of weeks I've registered at the town hall and applied for a new Dutch passport. I'm one of those lucky people who carry duel nationality, thanks to my parents. However, it means that its twice as expensive due to having two passports to renew every ten years rather than just one. In recent years the Dutch have changed the length of validity of their passports... my old one, which I got in 2011, was valid for only five years (like the British under 16's passport), but since then its changed, so my new passport is valid for ten years. This means I won't have to go through this process, in Holland, again for another ten years. I'm due to collect my passport on Wednesday and will then proceed to the whole opening of a bank account with a Dutch bank. I'm really excited about this because it didn't work the last time I tried to apply for a Dutch bank account three years ago, due to not being registered. You have to be registered with the town hall to do anything in Holland. Very annoying but can't be helped. For some of you, you might be aware that I tried to renew my passport last year during my School of Intercessory Prayer SOIP, but couldn't because I wasn't sure if I'd be in the area after the school finished and I wasn't able to go The Hague due to the school schedule. Thankfully I'll have my new passport in my hands by the end of the week.

Its almost lunch time so I got to head down to the dinning room shortly. More news will come soon.