Continued

As promised I'm going to post some impressions of the few days left I had with Sharon and Ann-Marie after our return from the camp meeting beginning of last week. As soon as we had arrived home on Monday and got settled back in, we went on our way to the European Parliament. They offer audio-guided tours there for tourists twice a day. So I dropped them off there and was able to run an errand in the meantime. Then I had to see my chiropractor. When we were sitting in the waiting room, there was another patient joining us, and Ann and Sharon struck up a conversation with him. It turned out that he was actually from Holland, but that he was the principal or teacher of a private school in Brussels. Sharon asked him: "So I assume you are married to a Belgian?" He said "No, I married Italian" or something like this. Anyway, at the moment I was called in for treatment, a man stepped into the room, and he introduced him to them as his husband! Needless to say that they were a bit irritated... (I've kind of gotten used to such situations here already :-).

Then we went downtown and looked for a Chinese restaurant, since they were craving for Chinese food. This is difficult in Brussels though. You find more easily a good Italian restaurant, and I couldn't be of much help, since I usually never eat out. Anyway, we found a Vietnamese place, and the food was actually quite delicious.

The next day was my last opportunity to do sightseeing with them. Since we had lost half a day on Monday, it turned out that we had to choose between a 2-hour audio-guided bus tour through the city of Brussels, or to drive about 1 1/2 hours to visit the city of Bruges north east of the country. Doing both didn't seem to be feasible, since we didn't head out early enough in the morning. We actually first passed by at my office to say hello to the people. As it was prime vacation time, there were not many colleagues around, but at least they got an impression of the cultural diversity of my work place. We met John from the UK, Antonia from Spain, and Thomas from Germany. Then we spontaneously decided to drop the city tour and drive to Bruges, which in my opinion is the most beautiful man-made place in Belgium (of course it doesn't top the God-made things in this country). It's a quaint little town, and we enjoyed strolling around, even though we had only a couple of hours. They were really impressed, and Sharon was finally able to get some souvenirs. For me, it was indeed a nice change to big city life (although Brussels still seems to be a village compared to places like London or Paris).

On Wednesday morning, I dropped them off at the airport. Sharon headed home to Delaware, and Ann-Marie continued her mission trip in Hungary. She is currently working there with Dr. Horsley and family, as well as Lehel, my former class mate of Uchee Pines. On 3 September, she will pass through Brussels again, but she will only stay one night here and then head back to the US.

On tour in the European quarter

In Bruges - they offer chariot rides there

The chariot is coming!

Bruges is beautifully situated with a river flowing through

There was a wedding taking place at the local town hall

So all in all, I had a great time with my American friends. It's also nice to have some quiet time again though.  For the last 10 days, I really needed to recover from our camp meeting. Ever since I'm back to work, I went home every lunch break to take a nap. Today was a day of rest indeed, and I really feel recuperated by now. So I'm ready for the upcoming events of the next few weeks: Our church retreat next weekend at a Monastery outside Brussels, and the following weekend a seminar with Ron Halvorsen in Aachen, Germany.

The Lord is good. I think I couldn't enjoy life more at the moment.

Finally an Update

Eventually I can pause and sit down and reflect after all the happenings of the past two weeks. I have been tremendously blessed, but also extraordinarily stressed. The German camp meeting was a real blessing to everyone involved. As mentioned before, it was the first time that we were at this particular venue, and of course there were a lot of unknowns. But we were so thankful that everything went so smoothly with the owners of the place. They are a lovely Christian family of some independent protestant denomination, who run this place by themselves (with some staff in addition of course). It was the very first time that they cooked vegan and they did an excellent job. The communication was very good, in spite of the different beliefs.

Everything went well with the arrival of Ann-Marie and Sharon during the week before the camp meeting. I also took them to my church on Sabbath, and Ann-Marie gave a health talk there. Our journey to Germany went very well. I had the best rental car ever - a Ford Focus. It was actually a great deal, since I paid for it as much as I would normally pay for a small car. This size was perfect for us, and the car was just great. I had never driven with 6 gears, which made it even more easy to speed up. I did know that Ann and Sharon had never been on the German Autobahn (were there is in principle no speed limit), but I wasn't really aware that they had probably never gone on a speed of 170 km (105 mi) per hour. I hope I didn't scare them too much!

Arrived at the venue, there were also some other team members who came already on Sunday (the meetings only started Monday evening), but unfortunately, the preliminary work did not turn out the way I would have wished. Thus, we only started Monday morning with the preparation of the name tags, and alas, I realized that about 50-60 names were missing on the word document our IT person had prepared for us. Until now, I have no idea how this could have happened. It really stressed me out, since I had to prepare all these missing tags manually. I did have people to help, but the main burden was on me at this moment. Plus there were many details concerning the registration of the participants that only I knew about, so when the crowd came, people would ask me one question after the other. The result was that I was totally wired that evening. My brain was like a PC that couldn't shut down, and eventually I didn't even get a wink that night. Unfortunately, the following nights didn't turn out much better (since once I'm out of balance, I really am, and it takes a little while to get back to normal), and thus, it was pretty hard for me to make it through the days. This strongly reminds me of last year, when I was in a similar situation. It was just after the death of Thomas, who had helped so much in the past, that we had to learn to make it without him. I had similar problems with sleep then, and thank God, somebody was able to take over with the interpretation of a seminar that I was in charge of. This year, I also had an "angel" filling in for me, so I was relieved not to put an additional burden on my team members. I realized that I just can't take up such a task if I'm in charge of registration, as this already fully consumes me. Anyway, we do have a solution for next year, as I will get more help, for which I'm very thankful.

So we had about 280 participants, which was a good number. We couldn't have handled many more in this situation. The speakers were all very blessed, especially the Meyer family had such a good influence on the people. When I considered sponsoring part of their travel costs, I didn't even imagine what an impact they could make on individuals. There was one Russian-German lady who went up to Joel Meyer at the end, sharing with him that the Lord had told her through him everything that she needed: Concerning her personal life, her marriage, and the upbringing of her children. They decided to home school and to move to the country. Wow! I couldn't hold back my tears.

All in all, I'm very thankful for this experience, although I would have really liked to enjoy more fellowship with the people I knew already as well as with the folks I hadn't met. Well, hopefully next year! But at least I had a blessed time with my American friends. The camp ended on Sunday morning, but we only drove back to Brussels on Monday. Until they left on Wednesday morning, we still had some time to do sightseeing in Belgium, which was quite an experience - but more about that later!

Uchee Pines Reunion picture - from left to right: Joella, Mark,
Joanna, Joel & Joyce Meyer, Ann-Marie Scott, me, Jana Meldt

"Always cheerful" sung in German

The children also had fun

Indeed a lot of fun

While the mothers were relaxing

A snapshot down in the village

The beautiful country surroundings

Above: Ann-Marie teaching - Below: Joel & Joyce Meyer speaking

The gym in which the main meetings took place

The venue

"Brusselicious"

It has been interesting walking through the park at the King's Palace lately. There has been an exhibition of 35 monumental 5-metres tall sculptures representing a number of unmistakeably Belgian products (the only healthy one being Brussels sprouts). Quite bizarre, I would say, but interesting to look at.

Different variations of...

French fries

A mussel

Chocolate

My favorite

And beer of course

Yesterday was also National Day in Belgium, with most of the spectacle revolving around the King's Palace. I have been to the military parade two years ago (see my blog), but I'm not really keen on going again, especially as it fell on a Sabbath this year. So I was trying to circumvent the whole spectacle after our afternoon programme at church, but I was not aware that all the activities (different booths by the fire brigade, military, etc.) would get so close. Our church is about half a mile from the Palace, however there were crowds of people everywhere - but finally I made it to the metro station. In the evening, I watched the live stream of GYC in Linz. It's great that they managed to organize this in Europe this year. David Ascherick was speaking, and I felt so sorry for the interpreters. I really don't know how it would be possible to slow down this man! 

In the meantime, our camp meeting is getting closer. I'm still a bit apprehensive of all the organisational aspects, since we have never been at this new place, but I pray that everything will work out.  this year, we will have Joel Meyer and his family with us. I got to know the Meyers while I was at Uchee Pines. Joel was the farm manager then and Joella, the eldest daughter, was my classmate. In the meantime, they are working among the Navajo nation in Monument Valley (Utah), where my Dad and I had the opportunity to visit them in the spring of 2009, just before my return to Europe. They are a lovely family, and I'm glad that they are going to be with us to share about agriculture, country living and their experiences from the mission field. In fact, they have already been in Europe for over a week. They already gave a seminar in France, and we organized two more speaking engagements for them in Germany before they come to our meetings. So far, they have been enjoying it. Another speaker will be my friend Ann-Marie Scott who currently works as a medical missionary in Arkansas. She was also at Uchee while I was there and we got to work together in Hungary already twice since I came back from the US. She will actually fly into Brussels already a week from Tuesday, stay here with me for a few days, and then we will drive together to the camp meeting. Her mother will also join a week from Thursday. I'm excited!

Heysel Park

This past Sabbath afternoon, there was a special church programme at a park in Brussels. We had fellowship together and there was also the opportunity to distribute some literature. Unfortunately, we only had Dutch material, however if you are somewhere in Brussels, you rather bump into people who speak French than Dutch. So for next time, we will have to be better equipped. Anyway, the weather was nice and it was good to have some change of surroundings. This park is situated at the so-called Atomium; one of the tourist attractions in Brussels. It was originally built for the World Fair in 1958. It has the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. Quite impressive.

The Atomium - it's possible to get on top of it

The children had fun playing together in the park

There has been a change of leadership again at our church. our Romanian Pastor, who had only joined us last year, received a call from Canada - so off they went. In fact, this is already the second Pastor we loose to Canada within a year. I have no doubt that they are needed there, and I wish them well, however we need  pastors here also. Now the associate pastor, who joined us in the beginning of this year, took over. He is a young fellow from the Netherlands, who originally came to pastor one of the Flemish churches here. So we will see how things are going to develop. The church in Belgium definitely needs a vision. I still wonder how the gospel can be spread in this country and throughout Europe. No doubt it will take dedicated members filled with the Holy Spirit. Lately, I started feeling this urge to pray this for me personally. We can claim the Lord's promise after all that He will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him (Luke 11:13). I just read an interesting quote in Acts of the Apostles, p. 110:

Christ is saying, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" and He adds, "Go ye also into the vineyard." Matthew 20:6, 7. Why is it that many more do not respond to the call? Is it because they think themselves excused in that they do not stand in the pulpit? Let them understand that there is a large work to be done outside the pulpit by thousands of consecrated lay members. 

Long has God waited for the spirit of service to take possession of the whole church so that everyone shall be working for Him according to his ability. When the members of the church of God do their appointed work in the needy fields at home and abroad, in fulfillment of the gospel commission, the whole world will soon be warned and the Lord Jesus will return to this earth with power and great glory. "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." Matthew 24:14.   

Brocante

Brocante is the French word for flea market, and this is what was happening today in front of my door. Every year at this time, they organize such an event in my street. I'm not really a fan of these kind of markets, but it's nice to see the street looking so differently - very colorful indeed. It seemed to me that there were people coming from all over the city; I think some folks really take every opportunity to shop around for bargains.

Spinach

This year, my father planted a lot of spinach in his garden, and I thought it would be a good idea to take care of at least some of the harvest. So we went there this morning and I was able to pick quite an amount. I wish we had better facilities to do the blanching, but with a little improvising it worked pretty well. What I find a bit frustrating about spinach is the fact that it shrinks so much - but at least it won't take so much space in the freezer!

One raised bed full of spinach

Part of the harvest before blanching

After blanching - just four bags plus the amount we had for lunch!

Ramblings from Germany

Last Wednesday, I drove to Germany where I'm spending a 10-day vacation. It was also my birthday on Wednesday, so I spent most of it being on the road. It was quite rainy, but at least there was no heavy traffic. Well, it's good to be here. Today, the family gathered together for my birthday and I prepared a vegan menu. We had a nice afternoon.

There have been some developments concerning my work lately. In fact, I offically changed my post as of 16 April. It was already in the beginning of the year that a task force for the sector food and agriculture has been split off from my unit. This was deemed necessary because of the increasing workload in this sector. And since there was no assistant for the time being, I started helping them from the beginning. However, my head of unit couldn't have justified keeping four posts in the secretariat since there is less work for the unit now. So I finally agreed to become the assistant of the task force. My new head of unit is from France and he is very nice to work with. Besides, there are six case handlers. It's still a transition for me, as a new colleague in the secretariat of my former unit just arrived, and I have to coach her now with the things that I had been in charge with. I have no idea how things are going to further develop with my work; I'm still open for a change in the medium term, but I leave it in the Lord's hands.

Now I have one more week of break. On Thursday, I'll be headed to the Black Forrest, where we are going to spend a weekend with our ministry team. The preparations for our summer camp meeting are going pretty well now, but I'm still a bit apprehensive, as it will be the first time for us at this new place. I hope and pray that we can work out all the little details and get an answer for all the open questions.

I've been participating in a bible reading plan initiated by the General Conference, called Revived By His Word. The principle is to go through all the 1.189 chapters of the bible from the Spring Council meeting (which took place on 17 April) until the General Conference session in the summer 0f 2015. It's one chapter a day, and there is a blog written on each one on the website by some pastor or bible teacher. It's been an enriching experience, especially knowing that many other people are joining this endeavor. Sign up if you haven't done so yet - you won't regret it!

With my cousin Antje

Mother's Day picture: My mother, grandmother, and aunt

Health Expo

I'm thankful for the outcome of our Health Expo yesterday. It turned out a blessing for everybody involved, in spite of all the difficulties and last minute changes. It wasn't a very large crowd - about 60 people went through the stations, but this included many of the volunteers themselves (most of which had never visited a Health Expo). So there were about 30+ people visiting, including a few non-Adventists. They were all very receptive. Indeed, it was worth the effort, and it was also a blessing to see that people from so many different nationalities and tongues can work together so well. So our next goal, in principle, is having an Expo at a public venue. I really don't know how we can put this together. Well, the Lord knows and I pray that He will make it clear if it's His will!

Exercise booth

Water booth

Nutrition - what are all these grains and seeds?

Discover your health age

Blood pressure check

The massage team

I think this is what people liked most!

Measuring the pulse...

...before doing the step test

Children's programme

Spring

It's so nice to see nature's awakening again. The weather has been beautifully sunny and warm here in Brussels. In fact, it's rather unseasonable and it's going to change by the end of this week; so we have to enjoy it while it lasts. Today, I left the office already before 5 PM and took a stroll through the nearby university premises, which is my recreational area close to my home.

In the meantime, our Health Expo is getting closer. We already had the first information/training sessions and it went pretty well. There is still a lot to be organized and I'm praying for strength and guidance...

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All Things Work Together For Good

It has become warmer these days. No more frost, but lots of clouds and little sunshine. I hope these grey days won't last so much longer.

There isn't very much to share other that we are still busy preparing our Health Expo for mid-April. Yesterday at church, I had 12 more people sign up for it, which of course was encouraging. But we still don't have enough volunteers, and they have been a bit slow at the church which is collaborating with us. There are so many things to consider, and the language barrier doesn't make it easier of course.

At the same time, I also have to continue with the first preparations of our camp meeting in August. There are still some questions I can't answer at this point. Our late Thomas, the team member who passed away last year, had done so much in the past, and his input is really missing now. So I have taken over tasks I don't really feel competent with. Also the Health Expo is a first for me. However, I can't imagine that the Lord doesn't want me to do all these things, so I'm praying for His guidance, strength and wisdom. I hope things will become clearer soon.

So I'm pondering Romans 8:28, and what the Lord may want to teach me in all these challenges. Well, we are promised that all things work together for good to them that love God - this I know!

"The Father's presence encircled Christ, and nothing befell Him but that which infinite love permitted for the blessing of the world. Here was His source of comfort, and it is for us. He who is imbued with the Spirit of Christ abides in Christ. Whatever comes to him comes from the Saviour, who surrounds him with His presence. Nothing can touch him except by the Lord's permission. All our sufferings and sorrows, all our temptations and trials, all our sadness and griefs, all our persecutions and privations, in short, all things work together for our good. All experiences and circumstances are God's workmen whereby good is brought to us."  Ministry of Healing, p. 488

Portugal

Last Sunday, I returned from Portugal where I stayed little over a week. I visited a medical-missionary project led by Kim Busl from the US and Dr. Viriato Ferreira, the responsible for health ministries at our Division. It was a very interesting experience. They have started this place about four years ago, and since last fall they have their first group of students. This OCI project is beautifully situated in the mountains a few hours north of Lisbon. There were already some stately, but rather run-down buildings when they purchased it, but lots of changes have been made and many things are still to be accomplished. They have had a few health guests already, although the lifestyle center is not finished yet. I got to teach the students a little bit about some simple home remedies. It was nice working with them, as they hadn't learned about those things yet, and so they were very receptive. I liked the mixture between practical and theoretical training. They also do health work in the community, which is very well received.

Other than teaching, I also helped with gardening. The weather was very pleasant - sunny almost all the time and around 15°C (60°F). What a contrast when I came back to cold Brussels! By now, it has even gotten colder, but at least the sun is shining.

There are some challenges ahead now, and I don't know yet how to go about some things. I'm stressed about our planned health expo in April. There are still so many organisational details to be considered and I pray for the Lord's guidance. There have been some uncertainties lately, and it was unsure whether it can take place at all this spring, but now the Lord seems to open the way. However, I still feel the main burden is on me. In addition, I also have to start thinking about the organisation of our next German camp meeting in August. With all this, the situation at work is not easy right now and I can't know how things are going to develop. So I will definitely not be bored in the coming months! I just don't feel comfortable with not having all the answers, but I know the Lord has a plan. We have been given counsel not to utter words of discouragement, so I just want to say how glad I am that we have God's Word and His promises. I like soaking them up in such times. Also the Spirit of Prophecy is an encouragement to me. Below is one of the quotes that I have been reading quite often these days. Indeed, God knows us better than we know ourselves, and He understands how to lead us.

"Our God is an ever-present help in every time of need. He is perfectly acquainted with the most secret thoughts of our heart, with all the intents and purposes of our souls. When we are in perplexity, even before we open to Him our distress, He is making arrangements for our deliverance. Our sorrow is not unnoticed. He always knows much better than we do, just what is necessary for the good of His children, and He leads us as we would choose to be led if we could discern our own hearts and see our necessities and perils, as God sees them. But finite beings seldom know themselves, They do not understand their own weakness. ... God knows them  better than they know themselves, and He understands how to lead them. (Our High Calling, p. 316)

Two of the main buildings - the one behind is run-down and
will be demolished and rebuilt

Cafeteria and housing

Repairing the stairs

Gardening

Beautiful sunsets 

Coimbra - university town about an hour away from the project