When we moved to Belgium two months ago, it was full-fledged winter here. Below freezing temperatures, snow, sleet, wind, rain, cloudy ALL the time. Now two months later I feel like it is a different world. It’s still very cool in the early mornings, but the beauty of springtime in Belgium has totally surprised me. There are flowers everywhere. Even in our backyard where we’ve done absolutely no planting or yard work (other than mowing once), we have signs of spring everywhere.
I love all the flowers in our yard, but I want to show you my pleasant surprise for the day. (more…)
Posted in Family on 25. Apr, 2010
This has been an unusually hard day for me emotionally. I woke up this morning thinking about my family back in the States. My oldest son is getting married in November. My middle son and daughter-in-love have a one-year-old bundle of preciousness that I haven’t seen in five months. The last time I hugged any of them was five months ago. You would think that I would be used to it by now, because we moved away from Texas a little over a year ago, but I’m not. I wish I could say it doesn’t bother me anymore, but the truth is I feel like I’m missing out on their lives in a major way. I’m missing the daily milestones of a granddaughter’s toddler-hood. I’m missing the ups and downs of my boys’ lives…the successes and the failures. I want to be there for both. We have always been a super close family, and being away from them is the hardest thing I’ve had to do. God has a purpose for our separation, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I won’t see the boys and families until October when we go back for Austin and Hannah’s wedding and Shady Grove’s Missions Conference.
Sons are special to a mom’s heart. There are no words to describe how special, and I don’t really want to go into it now, because I’ll burst into tears again! I will say that my sons, in their adulthood, have brought a comfort and security to me that is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. They light up the room when they walk in. They are funny and keep us all laughing. Their hunger for God creates hunger in me. The family just isn’t the same without them and we miss them. Oops. The tears are flowing again. Oh well….
Here are two pictures that Rachel Baker sent me of my boys leading worship last night for an event in the city: (more…)
It’s amazing what an impact a box of Bulgarian chocolate cakes can make. Yesterday I went back to the red light district. We split up into teams of two, so that we don’t draw too much attention to ourselves. Honestly it’s very unusual to see women walking in the district, much less a group of six normal, every-day looking women walking together. That’s why we go in teams. There is much less notice given to us that way. Anyway, my team had a box of small chocolate cakes imported from Bulgaria that one of our team members had found in a Bulgarian shop in Brussels. They reminded me of Little Debbie cakes in the States, except they aren’t individually wrapped.
As we walked by the windows, we offered the cakes to the women. Most of them declined taking them because they didn’t want the calories, but a few of them said yes. I will never forget the look on one woman’s face when she saw the box. Her eyes lit up as if we were giving her a thousand Euros. She opened the door and started nodding her head emphatically. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on a cake. I asked her where she was from, and she said Romania. She recognized the box and couldn’t believe we had them! Romania and Bulgaria are right next to each other, and it was obvious that she had seen them before. She kept asking if we were selling them. We said, “No! We are handing them out for no charge. We are happy to give them to you.” She got the biggest smile on her face and said, “Thank you very much!” She was almost laughing as she bit into it! It truly made her day to have a taste of home. Hopefully I can find her and talk to her again next week. That’s how relationships start in the district.
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Over the last couple of weeks I have been laboring over what the new name of this blog should be. Some people might be able to come up with fifty great titles in twenty-nine seconds, but it’s really hard for me. Obviously it can’t be My Falafel Times anymore, because Gary, Preston, and I left Israel two months ago and moved to Brussels, Belgium. God has opened up a whole new door of ministry, and we are so excited about it. Israel is still a central theme of my life, so you’ll still hear about the subject, but sadly enough I definitely don’t see many falafels in Belgium.
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When I left the house this morning, I had no idea how life-changing this day would be for me. It sounds simple. I was going to help six ladies (ages 19 to 50) hand out plastic, chocolate-filled Easter eggs to the women in the windows in the red light district of a large city in Belgium. (I’m not posting the name of the city until I clear it with the leader. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the safety of the girls in the windows.) Not too difficult, huh?! Pretty tame mission, right?! Wow. Was I wrong. (more…)
