Bolivia and Beyond

It's been a couple of weeks now that I made it to Bolivia, and my time here has been quite eventful so far.

I'm in Samaipata, a little place with about four thousand inhabitants, beautifully situated in the mountains (about 2 1/2 hours from Santa Cruz). The days are usually warm and sunny, and the nights are pleasantly cool. It's quite a contrast if you come from a Western European country to the poorest country in South America. Some people here live in shacks that we wouldn't even use for cattle. A monthly income of about 100 Euros is quite common here. In this particular place, there is quite a variety of inhabitants: indigenous people, as well as foreigners from all over.

Since my arrival, I've been with the Mester family from Germany. Kai is the editor of our hoffnung weltweit ministry, and they have lived here for the past three years. After a few days of recuperation, I went with them on a long trip to the Iguazu-Falls in Argentinia. And if I say it was a long trip, I really mean it. We went by bus for over 30 hours, which included two nights in a row. Part of the journey was through unsealed roads in the semi-desert of Paraguay, and the dust of the road just blew into the bus. It was not pleasant, to say the least. So after this torture, I decided that I wouldn't do this a second time, and was thankful that I found a reasonably priced air ticket for the way back.

Nevertheless, the trip was really worth it. These waterfalls are rightly declared as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. We both went to the Argentinian and the Brazilian side, and we were even able to take part at a moonshine walk at the falls. We were blessed with beautiful weather throughout the whole time.

Right now, I'm still staying with the Mester family, but in the next few days, I'm going to move to the project, which is situated outside Samaipata, about a 30 minute walk from here. We already got to visit the orphanage, and from what I can tell so far, the children are very affectionate. Also the agricultural project looks good. I'm going to share more about my work there in my next post.

And finally, here are some pictures of our amazing trip:

185 Years

I'm in Germany these days celebrating the birthdays of my two precious grandmothers. Monday last week was my final day at work, and before going on my big trip, I didn't want to miss these special occasions back home.

So my grandmothers are alltogether 185 years now - what a blessing! Last week, we had a nice celebration with my maternal grandmother, who turned 90; and since Wednesday, I'm staying with my 95-year old paternal grandmother. I'm grateful that I still have both of them, and it's a blessing that I was able to see them before my departure. Tomorrow, I'll be headed back to Brussels, and after two days of preparation time, I'm going to take off for Bolivia...

With grandmother number one...

and number two!

From the Hillside to the Coast

I'm dwelling at the Belgian coast as I'm writing this blog. I spontaneously travelled out here yesterday. Originally, I had planned to come here for the weekend, but since the weather forecast for these days looked much more promising than for the weekend, I decided to extend my vacation until Thursday.

So here are the last couple of weeks in a nutshell:

On Monday, I returned back from our camp meeting in Germany. It was a blessing in many ways. I'm very thankful that this was indeed the first one in three years where I was able to get some decent rest. It made such a difference to be able to follow at least part of the programme. Of course, it was still a busy time, but I'm learning little by little to delegate tasks. Our speaker-couple was Alan & Lorraine Humes, my "adopted parents" from Tennessee. I had them stay with me in Brussels for a few days before the camp meeting started. It was a blessing to have them over and share at the camp meeting. The other speakers were Tim Risenberger, Sylvain Romain, and Emiliano Richards. We had many decisions for baptism, and a lot of participants were thankful for spiritual renewal and uplifting seminars. This time, more members of my church participated, and I'm grateful that they gained a blessing as well. Of course there are still things that can be improved, but with the Lord's help they will!

Anyway, I'm thankful for this little break before going back to the office. Today, I took a long walk at the beach. It was invigorating. From Thursday afternoon, I will be back to work for another 3 1/2 weeks - and then I will be off for about a year...

Evening meeting 

Tim Risenberger speaking

With the Chilimboyi family and Sister Alice  from my church

And here are some impressions from the coast

June Events

This past month has been quite eventful indeed.

Yesterday, I returned from a weekend trip to the city of Aachen in Western Germany. My friends Tanja and Ilja were there to do video recordings for the local church. They had organized a series of meetings with Lewis Walton, an Adventist lawyer and author of several books (like "Omega 2", which is probably the best-known in our church). He spoke about endtime prophecy, and I found it very interesting and relevant.

The weekend before, my parents and grandmother came to visit me in Brussels. This was quite special to me, as my (almost 90 year old) grandmother had never been here (at least not in the past 20 years), and thus she finally got to see how I'm living here. They arrived already on Thursday, and we spent the whole Friday in Bruges. It's a quaint little place indeed; it's only a bit crowded at this time of the year. We did a lot of walking throughout this little city and both my grandma and my dad did very well.

Other than that, we are busy with the preparations for our German camp meeting, which will take place from August 11-17. I'm praying for guidance for all the organizational and logistical issues that still need to be worked out.

What follows are a few impressions of Bruges:

picturesque

At the monastery

boat ride in the canal

Chariot ride 

My parents and grandmother

Changes

I've spent this past week with my folks in Germany. After having visited the last time about six months ago, there have been changes, big and small.

The most unexpected one is the fact that my father has been diagnosed with a debilitating disease which has slowed him down considerably. Back in April, his health condition was quite acute, but he is doing much better now. My mother is taking care of him very well and I hope and pray that things will further improve.

As usual, there have also been changes in my home city. They have been working for several years already on the tunneling of the tram system on the main shopping street. It's a huge project, which became necessary as the number of trams going through the city centre increased considerably over the years. Thus, there have been big construction areas all over. I couldn't recognize the market square anymore, which is right in the heart of the city. This is how it used to look like:

As you can see, there is a pyramid in the middle, but now you can't recognize it anymore:

It's obviously an enormous project, but let's see how it's going to look like when it's done.

Anyway, I've enjoyed the greener setting around my parents' home and the fact that there are more birds singing here. I also went with my parents and grandmother to the Rose Society Garden in Baden-Baden (Black Forest). Although it isn't peak season yet, there were many beautiful roses already:

A rather unusual color for a rose

Two different colors in one bush

Nice gates

We also saw a heron

On Monday, I'll be headed back to Brussels. So let's see what the coming month will bring...

Lively Weekend

This past weekend was a lively one indeed. Sonja, a friend from the German ministry team, decided to visit me together with her two small children, Arnold (5) and Katharina (2). Sonja's husband passed away in the summer of 2011 following a short battle with cancer. It ws only a few days after the birth of Katharina. Of course this was a tragic loss, and raising children as a single mother must be quite a challenging task. How to answer every one of Arnold's questions? How to react if one of them throws a tantrum? It certainly takes a village to raise a child!

Anyway, we had a fun time overall, and even though we didn't have a stroller for the little one, we did get to see some sights in the city as well as some of the surroundings where I live. It was a bit challenging at church though, as the children couldn't really relate to all these people who didn't speak their language, but the time spent on different playgrounds and frolicking around at my home certainly made up for this experience.

Now I'm thankful for our Easter break. I'll be off still until Monday included. This coming weekend will be much more quiet!

With Sonja & children at the Grand Place

Katharina

Arnold

They obviously enjoyed the playground

First Signs of Spring

The weather has been beautiful lately. Today it felt almost like summer, and I really enjoyed going spending some time in the park. It feels so good after this long period with hardly any sunshine!

Yesterday, I preached for the first time at Brussels International Church. I was asked to do so for our special Women's Ministries Sabbath. I decided to give a personal testimony, entitled "Transformed in Christ". I once gave a similar talk at Uchee Pines. It was blessed, and I'm thankful for the outcome. In two weeks time, I will give another cooking class at church. I hope the turn-out will be good.

Lately, I have made plans for my next adventure. Yes, I have decided to take another leave of absence from my work! As of October, I'm going to leave Brussels for about a year, in order to fresh up my skills in medical missionary work and agriculture. So I'm planning to spend some time at Uchee Pines and Eden Valley in the first half of 2015. Before that, I'm going to help out for a few months at an orphanage project in Bolivia. In fact, I have two godchildren there :-). Thus, I'll be able to meet them and at the same time improve my Spanish. Quite exciting, isn't it? In fact, it's almost five years now that I'm back to Brussels, so I think it's time for a change. And when shall I do this if not now?

So nice to see the trees blooming

Even the forget-me-nots are already blooming

Happenings

I'm back from the US now for about two weeks, and in a sense life has been back to normal. However, there have been quite a few happenings within this short time frame.

Last weekend, we had Dr. Gerhard Padderatz speaking at our church. He is currently the President of ASI Germany and he is also one of the editors of a magazine published by the Conference to which my home church belongs. His idea was to come to Brussels to get material for an article about Seventh-Day-Adventists working for the EU institutions - and I was supposed to be the chief witness. So I showed him around a bit at the Commission and introduced him to some of my SDA colleagues. Since he is an excellent speaker on end-time events, I invited him to give a short seminar at our church at this occasion. It was very well received. In fact, he is one of those speakers I could listen to for hours and never get tired.

Last Tuesday, I attended another conference of the European Sunday Alliance. I had reported on the last event back in 2010 (see my blog). Again, the representatives of different stakeholders came together to launch another pledge for a work-free Sunday in Europe. And again, they brought good arguments forward in favour of Sunday as a universal day of rest. It was interesting how tenaciously all these people from a variety of backgrounds (religious and non-religious) took a stand on this initiative. From a political standpoint, it still doesn't look at all that a work-free Sunday will be implemented on EU level any time soon, but it's interesting how some individual member states have been pushing forward legislative action in this regard. And in the end you don't know how these people will eventually be able to take an influence on the political decision making. Again, I came to the conclusion that we have to get ready for more difficult times, and that we need to keep praying for religious freedom.

Yesterday, I joined the majority of our task force on a mission to the Belgian livestock market. Since we are dealing with the food sector, this trip proved to be an excellent opportunity to get to know this particular sector. It was indeed interesting to see how they do trade with these animals and how they breed them. However, in a way it was also saddening to see what kind of life they have. If I hadn't been vegetarian already, I think I would be from now on!

Some ponies

One next to the other....

This one got sold, but didn't really want to follow its new owner

Sticks they use to test the quality of the meat and to push them around

One of the best bulls in the insemination center

This is the lab were they do artificial insemination

On a cattle farm

Little calves separated from their mommies