Bitter Sweet

Here I go...

My plan was to leave the US on Wednesday and arrive Thursdaymorning. But I descided to leave three days earlier because of the following;

Last week, I woke up praying, and thought... let's check my email. I usually don't care to much about my email when I'm on vacation... but this was important.

The picture you see here, is not a holiday picture, It is the picture of my pastor and my best friends father, Bert de Vries.

He died last week.

And I changed my plain ticket to make it to his funeral, that was yesterday. This sad truth slowly starts to sink in, because it wasn't really real to me until yesterday.
I can say honestly, that I'll miss him. He was a man of God, I know he prayed a lot for everyone in our church, fo which I'm very thankful. To me he was so much more than just the one who preached on Sunday's, but he seemed to have faith for all of us by which he was able to encourage us. He was the one who prayed with me when I wanted to live my life for Jesus. and really just like a father-figure to all of us.

Though this is very sad (and that's an understatement), I'm glad for him, that he is home now, exactly where he wants to be: with Jesus. And our church will carry on. Jesus IS the Life and the Resurrection, and He died on the cross so that we Are healed by His stripes. We will live and declare the mighty deeds of the Lord.

Again this awakens me about the reality of death. And that I'm glad to know the Lord, because I know for sure that I'll see Bert when I leave this earthly life, by staying close to Jesus. And everyone reading this who is not sure about an eternal life in heaven, should consider that living with/for Jesus is the only way to get there.

I could spent hours to tell you how amazing my holiday was. (which it has been)... but that is of later concern.

things you like the most, should be shared

Guess Who

...it's Winnie the Pooh

My dad was here for a moment... just to be able to meet before I leave next Tuesday.
He brought some great pastry from Rijswijk... and I made the coffee.
(Everyone has his own talents ;-))

We talked about lot's of things. Few of the things we talked about was the websites that I liked, the animation-film-festival that is coming up in november, and
then I mentioned that I so loved the russian version of winnie the pooh...
so we started looking for that one.
I couldn't find you all a movie-file... but believe me.. it's way more funny than the dutch one


well...
things you like the most, should be shared
This is one of them

that's probably the main reason I started a weblog.

Another thing I'd like to share is that
I'm exited about coming Tuesday,
To tell the whole story would take to much time right now but
I believe God has great things in store
So please pray for me I'm open to receive all He longs to give

LimBurg

This weekend, I went to Summer School, which was amazing.
I'll tell you later when I've had the time to let all the impressions sink in and able to communicate all that in an antry like this.
The Summer School was in Ysselstein, near Venroj... did you know that Wikipedia actually had a version in this Dutch dialect? It's fun...

IJselstein (Nederlands Ysselsteyn) is e dörp in de Nederlands-Limburgse gemeinte Venroj, tösse Venroj en Deurne in, op de Pieël, tege de grens mèt Noord-Braobant aon. Op 1 januari 2006 had 't 2154 inwoeners; de groond besleit 3315 hectaar. IJselstein, geneump nao minister H.A. van Ysselsteyn, is pas gestiech in 1921 es kolonie vaan woe-oet de Pielgroond oontgonne woort. Belangriekste bezeensweerdegheid is 't Duits militair kèrkhof, mèt 31.598 doeje oet d'n Twiede Wereldoorlog en zelfs 85 oet d'n Ierste Wereldoorlog. Väöl daovaan zien oet ander graove gehaold en hei herbegraove. Bij IJselstein ligk ouch de Pieëlraamstèlling, 'n stèlling vaan kazematte die es verdeidegingslinie deensdeeg.

anyway,
there was one thing I didn't like; the amazing amount of bugs; flies and especcially wasps.
So... even thought the sun was shining... I didn't stay outside longer than five minutes or so, because the bugs kept bugging me. Besides that it was great.

My mom enjoyed it too, and it was just such a blessing to be able to speak to Loes, Corianne, Henrike, Francine, Steven, Steve, Bobby, Dorien, Bert Doornbos (he's from "Schreeuw om leven"), Marjo and everyone else. I didn't have the chance to really talk to some other people who were there, but still really good to see everyone and meet new people and have brief conversations in between.

So today I had a hard time at work; I really wanted to be there in Limburg...
But God is great: This morning at breakfast, God showed me, that I only had just one sip from a whole bottle of water, and there's a lot more that God wants to give/reveal/do in my life.
So I've tasted and I've seen...
...Yet there's more to come.