Last Picture

The last picture before we left La Fayette, where we've been the last ten days. I think I have not mentioned here that we have been on vacation in Philadelphia and Georgia the last 2 weeks. We go back to Holland on Friday.
Hooray for the Dutch vacation practices!

Thomas Talbott

While on vacation I have read a book by Thomas Talbott about universal reconciliation. The book is called “The Inescapable Love of God”. It is a fascinating book, because it approaches this subject from a philosophical and logical viewpoint, and less a theological one.
A few quotes from the book:

“A cardinal doctrine of Christian faith is that God, being a loving Creator, is at work in the world redeeming sinners…But Christians have often disagreed among themselves about the extent and the ultimate success of God’s redemptive activity, and those disagreements reflect surprisingly different conceptions of the divine nature. The conceptions are so different, indeed, that some might wonder whether all Christians in fact worship the same God.
Here is a relatively easy way to understand these issues and to organize our thinking about them. We begin with an inconsistent set of three propositions:

1. It is God’s redemptive purpose for the world (and therefore His will) to reconcile all sinners to himself.
2. It is within God’s power to achieve his redemptive purpose for the world.
3. Some sinners will never be reconciled to God, and God will therefore either consign then to a place of punishment, from which there will be no hope of escape, or put them out of existence altogether.” (pg 43)

Talbott comments that there are Bible verses that seem to support each of these propositions.
Talbott comments further that each of the three main streams of theological thinking in the church reject one of these three propositions – and thus a proposition that seems to have Bibical support!

Augustinians (and Calvinist and the Reformed) reject the first proposition, believing that God has elected a select group of people for salvation. Propositions 2 and 3 stand, because Gods will to save some cannot be thwarted and hell is real.
Arminians (evangelicals) reject proposition 2. God does want to save everyone, but because people have a free will, they are free to reject God’s salvation. God is thus not able (or He limits himself because of man’s free will) to save everyone.
Universalists reject proposition 3. God does desire to save everyone, and He will accomplish His redemptive purpose. An eternal Hell with no hope of restoration cannot exist.

I quote again:

“So here, then, are three quite different pictures of God: According to the Augustinian picture, God’s redemptive purposes are not thwarted, but He is limited in in love; according to the Arminian picture, God’s love is unlimited, but His redemptive purposes are thwarted by factors over which he has no control; and according to the universalist picture, God’s love is unlimited and his redemptive purposes are unthwarted as well. Accordingly, a question that may now arise is: “Which of our three pictures best preserves the praiseworthy character and glory of the divine nature?” And, two additional questions: “Which picture, if true, would provide the firmest foundation for hope? – and which seems the most likely to cultivate our fears?” (pg 48)

Pretty interesting stuff. I'd be interested in what you think.

Incompetence again....

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offers a blunt review of the (political) situation in Iraq after his visit there.
Reflecting on the difficulty of political reconciliation there, Gates said:

“We probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation, which, let’s face it, is not some kind of secondary issue.”

I don't have the training, expertise and experience of American diplomats, but my experience with living in other cultures makes me understand in a second how difficult it is to deal with mistrust among cultural and tribal groups. This is a job that will take decades.

It's too bad incompetence is not an impeachable offense.
In a parliamentary system of government, these guys would have been out on their ears long ago.

Logic

President Bush made this statement in his speech yesterday in South Carolina, while he was trying to drive home his talking points:

Some note that al Qaida in Iraq did not exist until the U.S. invasion -- and argue that it is a problem of our own making. The argument follows the flawed logic that terrorism is caused by American actions. Iraq is not the reason that the terrorists are at war with us.

Apparently, someone who notes the simple fact that al Qaida wasn't in Iraq before the botched US follow-up to the invasion, and wonders what that has to say about our being in Iraq and the war on terror, is guilty of flawed logic.

The person asking that question is not suggesting that the terrorism is caused by U.S. actions.
I know, because I have the same question.

The questions we want answered are:
1. Al Qaida was not in Iraq before we invaded, and could come into Iraq because we botched the follow-up. Can you say what went wrong and what we could have done differently? That is an important question, not to harp on mistakes of the past, but to learn for the future. (Imagine that we do invade Iran sometime...)
2. What do we need to do to keep al Qaida from coming into other countries in the Middle East? We know the Taliban is regaining strength in Afghanistan. How can we prevent al Qaida from coming in with them?
3. Why should we trust the intelligence information you now present to "prove" al Qaida is in Iraq and what their intentions are any more than the intelligence information upon which you went to war?
4. How's the hunt for Osama bin Laden going?

If any of my 5 readers can show me where my logic is flawed, I'll write an email of apoplogy to the President.

Demotivation

At DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!
Here are a couple of their posters. Great idea! I feel better already!

We almost had 'em!

One language

Our administration is trying to insist that English be the only spoken language in the U.S.
They are pursuing that goal with their usual competence:

Winner or loser?

The other day I read this piece in the Washington Post: Why Bush is a Winner.
I thought it seemed to make some good points.
Then today I read an answering piece: Why Bush is a Loser.
The real title should probably be: Won some, lost some.

The primary task of a President is to represent his country.
People should see in him - what he is like and how he acts - the basic core values of our country, and be able to depend on them.

And on that score, Bush is a loser, in my book.
His inability to articulate clearly and with nuances.
The fact that torture and wiretapping are associated with the United States.
World-changing decisions based on faulty intelligence and unfounded assumptions.
New Orleans: "you're doin' a heckuva job, Brownie!"
Al Qaeda is rebuilding and Osama is still at large.
Scooter Libby pardon.
Administrative chaos at the Justice Department and Walter Reed.

A recent example is the answer Bush gave to a question from a reporter about the morality of senior administration officials (whoever they were) leaking the name of a CIA agent (the press conference of July 12). Here is the Bush response, and it is so different from his statements in the 2000 campaign about restoring honesty and morality to the White House. His policy had been to fire anyone leaking information from his administration. That was a campaign promise. Bush had told voters at a campaign event in Pittsburgh that his administration would "ask not only what is legal but what is right, not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves." Remember?

As the one representing our values, this non-answer speaks volumes about how bad things have become:
I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person, and I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, I did it. Would we have had this, you know, endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter? But it's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House, and it's run its course and now we're going to move on.

Distraction

My sermon this morning was disaster.
A combination of: difficult subject (The parables of judgement by Jesus), wanting to say too much, a few listeners whom I knew didn't agree with me, and a congregation that was tired after a week of an evangelistic sport camp.
Anyway, I was able to sleep on the couch for a while this afternoon.
Later I finished two paintings I had started.
Since last January I have taken up painting.
It's a great distraction.
And today was no exception.
Her is one I finished:

The Zimmers

Heard of The Zimmers yet?
I'll bet you have.
A British rock band with the oldest members in the world.
Art, the lead singer, is 90, Buster, at 100, is the oldest member.
Protesting against the way elderly people are treated in our society.
I think this is a big problem in Western Europe.
Good on you, Zimmers! Sock it to 'em!

Their song?
My Generation, by The Who.

Take a look! Here are the lyrics...for those of you who are too old to remember this song.

People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby



Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

The perfect husband

Stop Gay Marriage Now!

The Religious Right has been has been fighting now for years to stop Gay Marriage, one of the reasons being that when gays marry, it weakens heterosexual marriage.
Now the the correctness of that position is becoming crystal clear.
Marriages of important (Christian) people are failing faster than we can keep track of them.
The latest is David Vitter.
Read the commentary of Jon Swift on it here.

Withdrawal

I've never been ashamed of reading the New York Times (online).
A pretty good editorial about Iraq.
Some quotes from it.
Read the whole thing here.

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit....
While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost....
Despite President Bush’s repeated claims, Al Qaeda had no significant foothold in Iraq before the invasion, which gave it new base camps, new recruits and new prestige. This war diverted Pentagon resources from Afghanistan, where the military had a real chance to hunt down Al Qaeda’s leaders. It alienated essential allies in the war against terrorism. It drained the strength and readiness of American troops.
And it created a new front where the United States will have to continue to battle terrorist forces and enlist local allies who reject the idea of an Iraq hijacked by international terrorists. The military will need resources and bases to stanch this self- inflicted wound for the foreseeable future.
There are already nearly two million Iraqi refugees, mostly in Syria and Jordan, and nearly two million more Iraqis who have been displaced within their country....Beyond the suffering, massive flows of refugees — some with ethnic and political resentments — could spread Iraq’s conflict far beyond Iraq’s borders....
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.
This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

Torture

An article in Harper's Magazine about torture and the Bush administration.
Some excerpts:

One of the truly disturbing aspects of the Bush Administration’s program of “enhanced interrogation techniques” is that there’s nothing new about them. Each of the techniques is well known; each has a very long legacy. The practice of waterboarding, for instance, was closely associated with the Spanish Inquisition, and appears diagramed and explained in woodcut prints from the early sixteenth century. Similarly, the practice we know as the “cold cell”–or hypothermia–was carefully developed by the Soviet NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, as a means of preparing prisoners for interrogation. The Soviets used the motto “no blood, no shame,” and the same motto recently emerged in units of the American armed forces in Iraq.

Many of these techniques were also practiced during World War II and the years leading up to it. They were certainly not practiced by the United States, however. The practitioners were German, particularly the Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst or SD, the intelligence arm of the SS. The procedures were known as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or in German, verschärfte Vernehmung…

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture–”enhanced interrogation techniques”–is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Pardon me Mr. Libby

Certainly not the last word on this here.
Probably not even the smartest word.
Seems like a real dumb move by Bush, especially in the light of current public opinion.
Here are some comments I read on Right Reason: the weblog for conservative philosophers (for you Right Wingers who think I don't read anything from the Right. For more proof that I keep informed on opinions from the Right, click here.):

Strange coincidence that Marc Rich's lawyer (Rich was pardoned by Clinton at the end of his term and that of course is getting lots of press again now. [NV]) was none other than Scooter Libby. One good turn deserves another. I especially enjoyed the arguments on NRO and elsewhere that there was no underlying crime, so of course there was no reason to prosecute. Seems like I have heard that argument before...must be a trick of the memory.

What a fall - from the promise to "restore honor and dignity to the White House" to be defended (by several of the usual Republican suspects on cable tv) by the pathetic, "Well, Clinton made some really bad pardons." But I guess that promise was already rendered a bad joke a long time ago.

Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, it appears to me to make no difference. The action seems to be that those with money and power take good care of one another.
So even when political parties change, the rules don't.

Married

Today our son Ben married his girl Ramona here in Heemstede.
The Dutch laws about weddings are different than those of the U.S.
A minister has no official right to wed a couple.
Only a specifically appointed official of the township may do that.
He or she always wears a black robe.

It is a very offical ceremony: the couple is asked specifically if they will uphold the responsibilities laid upon them by the laws governing marriage, and after they say "yes" the official proclamation is made.
Witnesses are asked to sign the marriage certificate.
This is in case the marriage certificiate is ever lost, and the township records are lost. Someone can always prove they are married by calling the witnesses.
The church service for Ben and Ramona will take place next December. That was the only time we could get our whole family together.
Strange as it seems to American ears, that's the way things are here.
Anyway, we're grateful and thankful for them. They are a great couple.

But this is a pretty nice couple too, right?

Here are the four of us:

For and against

Women through the ages

What can compare to a beautiful woman?

A classic contest

Issues

Wanna be more involved in issues that affect us all?
Wanna think about them more?
Wanna do something about them?
No better way than write a song.......

Flight of the conchords



Voeg toe aan mijn profiel |

Father's Day

None of you would teach your children these things in this way, right?
Fathers - you may want to think a little bit deeper and longer about your example to your kids.

Lightening strikes the wicked

You've probably seen this, but if not, it's a "blast"!

Incompetent

It remains absolutely unbelievable how incompetent this administration is.
Is there anything they have gotten right that is of any significance at all?
Check this out for more evidence:

Homeless

In Holland we don't have very many homeless people.
It strikes me every time I go to the States that there are more and more homeless people on the streets.
What's going on with you guys?

Apologies

LOLROTF.

Margaret Spellings

Pretty good interview with the Education Secretary.
Too bad she had to mention the President.

Short story

Apparently there is a genre of short stories which I had never heard of.
It is called Very Short Stories.
The stories are no longer than six words.

Ernest Hemingway made one, and according to tradition, called it his best work ever.
Here it is:

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.

I'm thinking of asking my congregation to respond to the sermon and the service on Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, with six words. We will immediately show them on the beamer.

Try one yourself.

Any topic is fine.

One I got from a friend in Holland: Ax. Tomorrow I might be widowed.

Put it on the weblog as a comment to this post!

Good luck!

Summary

The is the last post in a series of posts in which I reflect back on our 30 years of work in missions.
It has taken me a while to be able to write this post, and it hasn’t been easy.
So I’ll just start.

The story goes like this:
Most of you know that I was the team leader and pastor for our church plant in Amsterdam.
It was called “Cornerstone”, and it was actually going quite well.
Between 70 and 80 people attended our services, and there were about 120 people within our “extended family”.
In 1998 my wife and I went for a furlough/sabbatical for a year.
When we came back I realized quite quickly that I was not able to take up my work as I would have liked.
In January of 2000 I started to work less, and my family doctor diagnosed burnout/depression.
In May of 2000 I reported sick and stopped my work in the church.
Later that year I resigned from the mission agency with which we worked.

Cornerstone did not survive these events.
After courageous attempts to continue, the church closed her doors in May of 2003.
One of the members said: “Our church has also suffered a burnout.”

My difficulty with this post is that I still don’t know exactly how to evaluate those events.
I think we did great work, and it was blessed by God.
Anyone who was involved with Cornerstone will tell you “I won’t ever find another church like Cornerstone” (and he or she would mean that positively!).
And that is correct. There will never be another Cornerstone.

But, obviously, a few things went wrong.
What that was I don’t really know.
It hasn’t come clear to me yet.
Maybe never will.
But that doesn’t matter.
I’ve got lots of time (eternity?).

But I do know this:
There are now more than six church planting projects going on in Amsterdam, originating within the Reformed community of Amsterdam.
A relatively large group of people has been touched and forever changed by Cornerstone.
I’ve been blessed in more ways than I can count, together with my wife and children.
That’s true for my whole life.

Thanks for reading this series.

(Note: this is the eighteenth and last in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Vicious

Before we went to Amsterdam we were told that it would be very difficult and that we could expect to be “attacked by the devil”. Spiritual warfare.
I believed that, I guess.
I’m not really one to see the devil behind every problem.
And I’m outta there when people explain away their own stupidity with “what we are doing is zo valuable for the Kingdom that de devil is attacking us – BIG TIME!”

But when I look back on our work in Amsterdam, it seems to me that de devil was pretty vicious in the way he got at us. Or me, I should say.
I was involved in around eight different situations that a) were very complex and difficult pastorally, b) were relational in nature, c) could not be shared with other people because of the nature of the problem, which resulted in d) my having to bear the burden alone.
These situations occurred in nearly every circle in which I was involved: immediate family, extended family, leadership team, congregation, friendships.

When I was going through these situations I wasn’t consciously aware of that.
Only some year later, when I looked back, did I see the pattern.

That devil guy is really a rascal.

(Note: this is the seventeenth in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Waffle

George Bush said this this week:

One message I have heard from people from both parties is that the idea of benchmarks makes sense. And I agree. It makes sense to have benchmarks as a part of our discussion on how to go forward. And so I've empowered Josh Bolten to find common ground on benchmarks, and he will continue to have dialogue with both Republicans and Democrats.

If this isn't a "waffle", I don't know what is.
If I hear anything more from the Right about how the Libs always waffle, I think I will be sick.

Crazy

We arrived in Holland on January 4 1990.
That was the climax of a long process of evaluation, testing, research, support raising and arranging.

Most of you probably don’t know this, but before someone is sent to the mission field he or she must undergo a quite thorough process of psychological en personality testing.
They want to know if you are crazy enough to be a church planter in Amsterdam.
Only when they are assured of your complete madness do they send you out.

In order to fully put your madness to the test they make you raise support.
It took us a year to get enough people to be willing to give money to our project.
We had about 20 churches and 40 individuals that supported us.
I contacted the churches by going through the Yellow Pages, writing the churches, calling the Pastor and offering a no-strings-attached visit. Most of the time I got no response. Sometimes I did. I think I wrote 300 churches. That is actually not such a bad sales percentage.

Six weeks before we were to go the support was not in. We were getting ready to postpone our departure when I got a surprise phone call from someone I scarcely knew in Chicago. He was the son of Dutch immigrants who had become rich in the waste business in Chicago.
In a short conversation conducted in a businesslike tone (as only the Dutch can do!) he informed me that he and his wife were going to support us to the tune of $1000 per month.
We could go.

Amsterdam is known as the church planter’s graveyard. Most of the church planters and their projects perish in battle here.
Nigeria was known at the beginning of the 20^th century as the white man’s graveyard.

I must really be nuts.

(Note: this is the sixteenth in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Looking back

Someone asked me recently what I learned from my experiences in Nigeria.
She wanted to know how I reflect on those years as I look back.
I was able to say a couple of things.

I learned so much. Those were the first years of adulthood, in which we learn so much about who we are, what we can do, and what we can’t do. Because we lived and worked in another culture we were also confronted with the sharp contrasts one finds in the world: rich/poor, black/white, educated/uneducated, etc. We became quickly acquainted with all kinds of areas of life: education, medical care, rural development, transportation, government, church, theology, culture.

I also think that I missed a lot. I wasn’t adult enough to ask the right questions and find the answers (assuming there are some answers somewhere! ;-) I don’t feel guilty about that. Everyone who is young and starting out experiences that. And I had no one around me to help me in that area.

Those ten years shaped and formed the rest of my life and work. When we came to Holland I was very conscious and deliberate about taking what I had learned in Nigeria with me. Those were valuable lessons and I have benefited enormously from them.

With these comments I come to the close of this series of stories about our years in Nigeria.
Because we have spent the largest part of these last 30 years in Holland I will write a few blogs reflecting on our experiences here, to close out this series of stories.
Thank you for reading these stories. I hope you have enjoyed and benefited from them.

(Note: this is the fifteenth in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Malaria

Seven months after we arrived in Nigeria we went on our first “trek” with another missionary couple.
We left on Friday afternoon.
At Gayam we left the car and walked 1.5 hours to the river. We crossed in a small boat en spent the night at the village there.
One of our evangelists lived there.
The next morning we continued our trek, a journey of about 5 hours through the bush.
On this image from Google Earth you can see the road, the river and the area into which we walked.
We arrived in a small village where most people had never seen a white person.
We spent the night there, after enjoying their hospitality. I think it was there that we were treated to the pleasure of watching them prepare our meat for the meal – a large bush rat that was considered to be a delicacy in that area.
The next morning my colleague and I started a trip around a few villages to preach the gospel.
We would arrive unannounced.The entire village would come out to listen.
We would hold a short service including sermon, translated into the vernacular language of that place.
Then we would head to the next village.
By the end of the afternoon we had visited four villages and were back with our wives.
I’ll never forget how I felt just after dinner.
The fever started in my ankles and slowly took over my whole body.
Soon the diarrhoea followed. Malaria.
It seemed like I spent the whole night hovered over the small hole in the ground behind the compound.
The following morning we had to get back home.
I had no choice – I had to walk.
And that is what I did – with lots of rest stops along the way.
We got back to the river, crossed and walked to the car.
Two hours over the bumpy road home.
When we got home we saw that the airplane was waiting for us.
We expected that, because we were expecting guests: the Africa Director of our mission and two Board members.
But there was more than that.
We had left Sarah (age 1) behind with a colleague. She also had been terribly sick with malaria, and they wanted to fly her immediately to the hospital.
Within ten minutes Cyndi and Sarah were gone.
I was left behind with the dignitaries.
I told them to figure it out for themselves and went to bed.
It took me weeks to recover.
During the rest of our time in Nigeria I went on some trek, but I was never at ease.
Funny how an experience like that hangs around in your subconscious.

(Note: this is the fourteenth in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Sex

Sex is very important for (young) men.
That was also true for me in Nigeria.
What I didn’t realize (I was naïve, I think) was that that also was true for Nigerians.
The men, anyway.

Once we heard that the Pastor with whom I had worked in the beginning of my time in Nigeria had been attacked by a man who, so the story went, had caught the Pastor with his wife.
Not at night.
In the afternoon.
The man attacked the Pastor with a stick and damaged his shoulder permanently.
I have no idea whether the accusation was true or not.
Imagine this: in a mud hut, on a hot afternoon, with someone else’s wife, and you are a Pastor.
How do you manage that?

One another station we had a small office building that needed to be guarded.
So we hired a guard.
(This is really true – one time we had a guard who protected us with his bow and arrows – when he was awake!)
One time I had to go to the office early in the evening.
When I came around the corner I saw a construction made of cardboard and corrugated tin that blocked off a section of the veranda.
Behind those “walls” lay our guard with a woman.

Once a year the Nigerian church had it’s "Synod" or "General Assembly".
The meetings lasted a week.
From early in the morning until late at night, in the tropical heat.
And no comfortable chairs.
Thursday morning, the next to last day of the meeting, we noticed that something was wrong.
The chairman of the Synode came in, looking exhausted and beat up.
During the night he had been attacked by a man who accused him of sleeping with his wife.
I have no idea whether the accusation was true or not.
Imagine this: Small village. Lots of guests. Busy. Church meeting. Pastor. Chairman. Married. Another man's wife.
How do you manage that?

The last months of my work in Nigeria were colored by this event, because I was the Liaison Secretary between the Nigerian church and our mission organisation.
The situation was made more complicated by the fact that there were different tribes involved, and probably different kinds of power plays.

Who would want to get this Chairman out of the way?
And why?
Or did the man just feel like having some good sex?

(Note: this is the thirteenth in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Our children

Our children have had many adventures with us.
We are thankful for and proud of them.
We think they have enjoyed traveling this path with us.
It hasn't always been easy.
I'm sure there are still painful things let over from that time.
There much geographical distance between us.
But we are really very close.
Enjoy the pics!





(Note: this is the twelfth in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Proverbs 31

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.
She opens her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

(Note: this is the eleventh in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Fire

In December of 1978 we went to Nairobi, Kenya, for vacation. My parents and a brother and sister were there. We had a great time together. Cyndi was pregnant with Ben.
Sometime between Christmas and New Year we got a phone call at 1 o’clock in the morning from Grand Rapids, Michigan. A colleague informed me that our house in Serti had caught fire due to an electrical problem and had burned “to the ground”. Nothing was left. He was calling us in Nairobi so that we could buy new supplies there.
I remained fairly calm. I really couldn’t imagine that this had happened. It seemed unreal and far away.
The next day I called back to G.R. to confirm that I had heard the message correctly. I had.
We didn’t buy hardly anything in Nairobi. I don’t know why.
I’ll never forget what it was like to see our house when we landed in Serti again. It was really gone, except for the walls, some cracked but all still standing.
We had taken what we thought we needed for more than two years with us from the U.S.: clothing, shoes, supplies, cassette tapes, etc. It was all gone.
The church people in Serti had cleaned up the house for us. And from all over Nigeria people sent clothing, furniture, kitchen supplies – whatever we needed. Very touching and impressive.
We camped out in the small guesthouse. A colleague with a team of Nigerians began to rebuild our house.
That took a few months, and during that time our son Ben was born (another story).
We were young and flexible enough to be able to swing with this punch.
We didn’t lose our vision for the work.
We just kept going and did what needed to be done.
No one asked us – and we didn’t ask ourselves – anything about our own feelings. How does this make you feel? What can you learn from this? Are you processing this in a good way? Are you doing it together?
Those were the good old days.
Or not?
(Note: this is the tenth in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Stench

At 1 o’clock in the morning we were wakened.
A colleague and three Nigerians stood at the door.
My colleague had gone to visit an evangelist he was supervising.
When he got to the village, he found that the man had died the day before.
Because he came from another village and was of another tribe, the people wanted to bring him home to be buried.
But the taxi drivers wanted too much money. The little church could not pay. Impasse.
My colleague decided to bring the man home himself.
So – the wooden casket was tied to the top of his car, and everyone who could go along got in.
It was quite late at night, they knew they needed to sleep somewhere. Viss would not mind being woken up in the middle of the night. Of course not.
The next day we saw that the casket had begun to leak. And stink. The man had, after all, been dead now for more than a day in the tropical heat.
We moved the casket to a pickup truck and took off with two cars for the man’s village.
It was a four hour drive.
His family did not know what had happened. We had to tell them.
Because the man had become a Christian, the family did not want anything to do with him. Including burying him.
We tried to negotiate in every way we could, but without success.
Finally, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we headed over to the church. Perhaps they would help us.
When we got to the church, we saw a bride and groom standing outside the church. A wedding was about to begin.
We went to the elder’s room and explained the situation to the minister and elders.
They were willing to bury the man even though they did not know him, but, understandably, they would do it after the service.
We went back outside and waited.
It was now 5 o’clock, the man had been dead for 2 days, and the stench was unbearable. At least for me.
What an example of Christian love.
The minister and his elders dug a grave.
At 6 PM we buried our evangelist.
We were rid of that awful stench.
I will never forget what that smelled like.
Nor will I ever forget the love of those elders.

Sometimes I think about that story when I am attending an elder’s meeting.

(Note: this is the ninth in a series of blogs celebrating the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Chickens

I think we need more chickens in the church - and in the world.

Great White Hunter

In the river near us you could catch Nile (or Niger) Perch.
They could get quite big (see picture).

I caught a few of them, but of course never this big.
Lots of fun.
One time we went camping with colleagues along the river.
Four adults, eight children.
I caught one that probably weighed 25 pounds.
It was big enough to feed all of us.
Of course I had to clean it myself.
I did that with my fan club watching.
What more could a great white hunter wish for?

(Note: this is the eighth in a series of blogs around the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Sinner

Something sad woke me up, late that evening.
I turned over, and, still waking up, realized that my wife was crying.
I knew instantly that it was about me.
I don’t know any more how she did it, how long it took or how difficult it was for her make me understand, but she let me know in no uncertain terms that she felt very alone in our relationship and that something fundamental was wrong.

Before a missionary family went on furlough a process of evaluation and planning took place.
The personal evaluation was done anonymously by Western and Nigerian colleagues.
Most of the time I got passing grades.
This time, reports that I was impatient, distant and angry appeared like an oil spill on the waters of my work.

In Nigeria (and I assume this would have happened wherever we were working) I looked for the first time directly into the face of my own sinfulness. Not just that I did things that were wrong, but that “sinner” was a description of who I was.
I was capable of throwing away the things that were the most valuable to me – my wife, family, work, calling and relationships – because of my own pride and selfishness.

The Heidelberg Catechism gets it right in Question 2:

How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou, enjoying this comfort, mayest live and die happily?
The first, how great my sins and miseries are; the second, how I may be delivered from all my sins and miseries; (There is a third, but I don’t quite agree with that one.)

Today we call it grace.
You realize that you are a crook.
You realize that you are still unconditionally loved.
During those years I began to realize those truths.
I had to in order to survive.

That process is still continuing.
It is unbelievably freeing.

(Note: this is the seventh in a series of blogs around the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Women and children

My wife Cyndi taught the women at the Bible School in Serti. They were the wives of the students, and moved, with their children, to Serti for the duration of the study.
Most of them were illiterate. Cyndi taught reading, writing, Bible and hygiene.
Obviously there was a tremendous gap between Cyndi and these women in terms of culture and way of life.
But Cyndi gave herself to these women, and, as you can see, the women received her and our children with open arms.
The white baby above is Ben, our second child and first son, born in Nigeria (another story).
In the photo below you see Cyndi and Sarah among the women.

(Note: this is the sixth in a series of blogs around the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Screwed

Four months after we arrived in Serti I started teaching at the Bible school located next to the church. I was not just the teacher – I was the Director!
Imagine this: students go to school here for three years. Most of them can hardly read, and know nothing about the Bible. After three years they are sent into villages to plant churches.

(Most of us don’t realize, here in the rich, well-educated West, that by far the most church leaders in the world have not enjoyed good theological training. In my cynical moments I think: high quality theological education has not really helped our culture remain Christian, has it? But that’s another topic.)

My colleague was Yakubu Mai Tadi (Jacob the Joyful). He was 10 years older than me and had been a teacher there for some time. He was a very friendly man, and we got along well. I think that he faced enormous pressures from family and tribe because he was one of the few with a fixed income.
I tell you that to tell you this:
In the summer of 1979 the Nigerian government decided to change the bills in Nigeria in order to do something about corruption. Before the end of the year everyone was to turn in his or her old money and exchange it for new money.
There were no banks in the district around us. People had to drive 100 miles to the nearest bank to change their money. It was very costly for poor people.
We decided to help the people in our district. They could give their money to us, we would exchange it. I didn’t have enough money on hand to provide for the whole district, so I developed a system of receipts. I took the old money in, wrote a receipt with 2 copies, and people could come back later with the receipt and pick up their money. It worked perfectly. Hundreds of people came with old, shrivelled money that had been in mattresses, underwear, and probably many other unmentionable places. I tried not to think about that as I counted the money.
In October we went on furlough. I was not able to finish the job. My replacement was a young pilot with his family, who would live in our house to learn the language. I explained everything to him, and left things in good hands.
When I came back six months later, he told me that everything had worked fine. No problem, as Nigerians say. I was pleased.
After a month or so I noticed that people from villages in the bush were coming to me asking for their money. When I asked for their receipt, they couldn’t show one. It was then impossible for me to give them money. But I found that strange and difficult, because it was obvious that these people had spent money to come long distances, and were really disappointed when they went away empty handed.
But there was nothing I could do, and after a while people stopped coming.

Months later I was going somewhere in the car with the pastor with whom I worked. I don’t know exactly how we got on the topic, but he informed me that people in the surrounding villages – that we were trying to reach with the gospel – were angry at me because I had cheated them. They really thought I was a crook.
Finally I heard how things had gone. Yakubu, my colleague, had gone to the bush villages and offered to help the people there by collecting their receipts, picking up the money and returning it to the people. The advantages were that people could save travel expenses, and, because Yakubu knew the Bature (white man), it would be a simple process.
By now you have guessed it: Yakubu turned in the receipts all at once to my (inexperienced) colleague, and never returned to the villages with the money. When he was called on the carpet, he insinuated that I was the problem.
I honestly do not remember what happened between me and Yakubu after that event. My mind draws a blank. As far as I remember, he stayed on as teacher in that school, and as elder in the church.
Since that time, whenever I have been the recipient of criticism that is not accurate, I think to myself: been there, done that.

This is a picture of the first class at the Bible School that I taught. Nigerians don’t laugh on pictures. I wasn’t laughing much during those years either, so that was not hard for me. Yakubu is sitting left of me next to the young lady.

(Note: this is the fifth in a series of blogs around the 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Virginia Tech

The words of poet Nikki Giovanni yesterday at Virginia Tech:

We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail, we will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech."

Why we went

I suppose you can ask the question: why did you go?
If I give an honest answer, it is: I don’t know.
Adventure. Challenge.
The lure of Africa, acquired during my stay in Eritrea in 1973.
To prove something to myself and my community: I can do this!
To help people.

It really wasn’t very spiritual.
I believed in God, and I was convinced that it was worthwhile to tell people about Him.
But that faith was more a thing of the head than of the heart.
It hadn’t translated yet into an open and warm heart.
Perhaps you could say the “reason” for going was the theory in my head, the “drive” to actually go came from who I was as a person.
Maybe that’s too bad.
But I don’t think so.
I needed to make this journey in order to learn.
Otherwise I wouldn’t be where I am today.
And I believe I did it with integrity, given who I was and where I came from.

In order to get somewhere, you need to take the first steps.
And then it doesn’t really matter so much why.

(Note: this is the fourth in a series of blogs around our 30-year anniversary of our departure for Nigeria. The blogs can be found under the label "Anniversary". Click here for the first one.)

Snakes

Of course I was and am afraid of snakes.

I do not have the gift of being able to spot animals and birds in nature.

When you don’t see a snake he is at his most dangerous. Snakes want, with few exceptions, nothing more than to get away from you as quickly as possible. They only attack when they are cornered.

Once I was standing by the house of our colleague in Serti. I was working with another colleague on building a water system. Suddenly he began striking the ground next to my feet with a piece of pipe. A puff adder lay right next to my right foot. I never saw him.

That same colleague went on furlough for six months. We lived in their house. During that whole time, I never saw a single snake. The afternoon he returned he killed a snake in our front yard.

We got to know the spitting cobra. It is really true that they can spit their venom. Their search for food brought them often to our chicken house, and one had to watch carefully before going in to get the eggs.

We always had a cat, to warn us when snakes, scorpions or other unwanted animals came into our house. Our kids played on the floor, so that was very helpful. One day we heard our cat making a terrible noise behind the house, and, sure enough, he had been spit at by a cobra. We washed his eyes out under the faucet, and he spent a week sitting on a sugar sack, recovering. He did recover.

Did you know that frogs make more noises than only croaking? When they are terrified for their life – for example, when they are getting eaten by a snake – they make a cry that cuts to the marrow of your bones. Terrible.

To my knowledge, I’ve never eaten snake.
They say it tastes like chicken, as they say about every strange kind of meat.
I’m sure that’s true.

Our first weekend

I’ll never forget that first weekend in Serti.

Serti lies in eastern Nigeria, on the only road to Cameroon in that area. It’s a narrow, dirt road, treacherously slippery because of sand in the dry season, impossibly muddy in the wet season. It was a hundred miles over that road to our nearest missionary neighbors, and that trip took us 5 hours average.

Serti was very reachable by air – during the daytime and assuming good weather. The airstrip was right next to our house. On Saturday, April 24, we landed at that strip in the twin engine plane that belonged to our mission organisation. It was always a big deal when the airplane came, and that day was no exception. I’d guess there were a hundred people there, including the Nigerian pastor with whom I would be working. (Later someone told me that his words, upon seeing me, were: They have sent us a boy!)

It was hot, dry and dusty. There was no water. The house was furnished with the furniture of the family that had been there before us. After a while everyone left, and we were alone. The midwife who was at that station had an emergency (later we learned through experience that, when it came to meeting and caring for people, she often had an “emergency”.) We were left to fend for ourselves.

Just before supper our other colleague, Ruth Veltkamp, drove up. She was in charge of our orientation and language learning.

I remember so clearly that she parked the car and sat there for just a moment, head bowed. I had no idea what she was doing, but I assumed it was praying – thanking God for a safe trip, as a missionary should. Or something like that. I had no idea. My thought was: would I think to pray and thank God after a trip? Asking the question was answering it, it seemed to me. Later I learned that she was filling in the mileage sheet.

The next morning (Sunday) we went to church with Ruth in a small village. The church was made of tree trunks with a grass roof, and we sat on benches made of clay, through a long service we could not understand. I remember constantly hearing the word “chicken”. In Hausa that means “inside” (spelled “cikin”). The temperature hovered around 100.

After the service we had lunch it someone’s house, a hut with a grass roof. The food was not good to our taste. We struggled with Sarah, the food, the people, the culture, the heat.

Monday morning we started our language lessons. Ruth let no grass grow under her feet. She had hired a young man to help us. We faced the huge task of learning a brand new language in an area where almost no one spoke English.

The image is still etched in my mind of me, in the afternoon, sitting on the couch next to Cyndi, crying my eyes out. I’ll never forget what that felt like.

Our first weekend in Nigeria.

Anniversary

Thirty years ago today my wife Cyndi and I, with our daughter Sarah, left Phildelphia for Nigeria, West Africa. It was the beginning of our journey in the world of cross- and multicultural living.
That's a long time ago, and a lot has happend in those years.
I always enjoy remembering these kinds of dates. They provide me a moment to be thankful, reflective and enjoy the memories. I look back, and I look forward. Where have we been, and where are we going?
Many people have made this journey possible, and we are thankful to all of them.

The Bible verse for today was from David, 2 Samuel 22: For by Thee I have run through a troop; by my God have I leaped over a wall.
With God: without Him nothing is possible.
I have leaped: I still need to leap, to do something, take action.

During the coming weeks I would like to think and reflect with you about these last 30 years. I will do that by telling some stories and reflecting (briefly) on what I have learned. I hope that you can, in this way, share in our thankfulness.

The first short story: On April 14, 1977 we left Philadelphia for Holland (see photo). We spent a week in Sassenheim, where a cousin of my father still lives with her husband and family. He exports bulbs (flower bulbs, that is ;-).
He had at that time two cars: a Rolls Royce and a big Chevrolet. He loaned us the Chevrolet for that week (I'm still upset that it wasn't the Rolls Royce) and in that huge car we floated over the cute Dutch roads.
We had no idea that we one day would be living close by Sassenheim.

Lee Iacocca

Found this on the blog of Greg Caruso.

Lee Iacocca has a new book out: Where have all the Leaders Gone?

And he is mad, acoording to Caruso. This excerpt:

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

To read more of the excerpt, click here.

But watch out, if you are a Bush fan. GW gets nailed.

B.C.

Johnny Hart, the creator of the comic strip B.C., died last weekend.
I have enjoyed comics since I was a teenager, and especially B.C.
I'll never forget two poems from strips I read 35 years ago:

When Hydrogen U played Oxygen Tech
The game had just begun.
When Hydrogen racked op two quick points
And Oxygen still had none.
Then Oxygen scored a single goal
And thus it did remain
Hydrogen 2, Oxygen 1,
Called because of rain.

Little earthworm in the ground
Tell me something quite profound:
How, with attributes so few,
They named a planet after you.

Someone sent me this strip last week for Good Friday.
Hart died on Saturday.
Another legend gone.

Very large stone

Three women were on their way to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body.
Three women who had been touched deeply by Jesus' words and actions.
They loved him deeply enough to perform this last service to him.
But they were worried.
"Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" they asked themselves.
Mark says that it was a "very large" stone.

What kinds of large stones are there in your life?
Which impossibilities stare you in the face?
Failures?
Obstacles?

"When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away."
You have a choice.
You can believe that the very large stone will never be moved.
Or you can believe that there is Someone who can roll it away.

The choice you make has enormous consequences.
It determines how you live your life.

Bad news for Bush

Juxtaposition

I have been thinking this week about the contrast that we experience in this week of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

It is strange and unusual that we, in this one short week, and actually in two short days (Friday to Sunday), are confronted with so much death and so much life.

Have you ever thought about that?

Which other religion or celebration or ritual invented by humans has this kind of contrast?

Death is dramatically posed next to life in a juxtaposition that only the Bible and the gospel could think of.

And the gospel displays all of its glory: the deeper the darkness, the more radiant the light.

Good money after bad

According to this website, the war in Iraq has cost almost 414 billion dollars up until now.

Are we, after spending this money, any safer from Isalmic fundamentalist terrorism?
If you want to say the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam, OK.

But are we (I mean Americans, citizens of these United States - and it is, after all, about us) any safer?

We have spent money on security within the United States, and we haven't had any attacks, so you can presume that money is being spent reasonably well (although I heard the other day that a stewardess took a handgun on board an airplane without any problems).

But has the money we have spent in Iraq made us any safer?
Is the worldwide threat of terrorism, and the threat to our society, any less?
Are the terrorists now less capable of succesfully attacking us?
Do fewer terrorists want to attack us?

All the Bush government can say is, that if Congress sets a date for withdrawal, the terrorists will have won.
I don't hear them showing us how we are winning now, or will win if we keep spending this money.

The message is what will happen if we don't.
I want to know what will happen if we do.