When we left for The Netherlands, we were struck with conviction that the Lord wanted us to increase our faith.  After a victory, there is always a temptation to think that the next experience will be a downer, “comparatively.”  The Lord challenged us to walk in the opposite spirit, and ask to see even more of Him than ever before on this trip.  The first morning after we arrived, OJ introduced the group, and Pete taught the simple, profound truths of original design, explaining that the Bible calls us in Eph. 2:10 God’s “masterpieces,” created in Him for great works.  We explained why it is important to recognize that we each have a unique design and eternal purpose, and become aware of how that individual design is strategically opposed.  OJ taught the concept of strongholds, the freedom that comes through repentance, and how God’s purposes for our lives can be restored to us through freedom.  To demonstrate how we ask the Lord about individual designs, we asked for a volunteer to come receive a few pieces of their original design in front of everyone.  The Lord, of course, came through and spoke to who our volunteer was, and then we asked for a lie that the enemy brings that specifically opposes her design.  She was a lovely, faith-filled woman, and I laughed when I found out that we had prayed publicly for the chair of the leadership team without even knowing it!  Good thing God is faithful! 

At the end of that meeting, there was a signup sheet for prayer just for that day and the next, as we still were determining the schedule.  But soon after, we found people puzzling over the filled sheet, writing in their own times, signing their names at the bottom to indicate that they wanted prayer and there were no slots left.  There was such a hunger!  It was an exciting problem…too much hunger, not enough time.  So we indeed had to up the faith level.  By the end of the week, the 30-minute prayer times were cut in half to 15 minutes to get to everybody, and we were all needing to hear a lot better a lot faster!  We ended up praying for more than 60 people in the week, all of those receiving their original design, and a core stronghold.  A few highlights were the youth evangelist who had his leadership restored, a beautiful young lady who was released from anger at an abusive relationship, a powerful woman released from the lies of jealousy that kept her on the fringes of the community, and an amazing mother of teens who broke after more than 40 years the defensiveness and condemnation that her father’s criticism had forged in her as a little girl.  I wish I could tell you all the amazing stories, but there’s so much.  It’s just such a joy to see the Father speak to His kids’ freedom in ways that let them know how well he knows them.  On our way off the base the very last day, OJ grabbed me and pulled me over to where a wonderful older man was working on a project.  He and his beautiful bride of 49 years (!!!!!!) had received prayer from OJ and Pete earlier that day.  OJ explained to me that the Lord had revealed fear as the stronghold, but that they had not received the root of it during the prayer time.  He asked for a quick highlight.  I closed my eyes and saw a picture of WWII, and German soldiers everywhere.  I described what I saw.  His eyes got wide, and without thinking he just began to blurt out, “It was terrible!  From when I was 5 to 10 we lived in constant fear.  I almost lost the ability to walk, I was so weak from their treatment of us…I cannot believe that you guessed that…”  It was an honest, unguarded moment, where it was obvious that the Lord was speaking to his heart at a level one just cannot prepare for, where all the dots connect forcefully in an instant.  God was meeting Him right there in the square.  We had to dash off immediately, but we left with the knowledge that God was taking His 70 year old son on His knee right behind us and healing of the heart of a little boy.

As I said, there were so many other stories.  We could see the change in people by the end of the week, and they were coming up and testifying to the Lord’s work in them.  At the end of the long week, we unwound a little by touring around the area with a fiery young man of God from the base.  I hope to upload some pictures from our day.  We saw the ancient city walls, still strongly fortified against attackers, the old city gates leading to an inlet out to the sea, and cobbled streets.  We saw a Jewish cemetery from the 17^th century, and a synagogue that was as old, and learned of the decimation of the Jewish population in the war.  According to our host, there are still very few Jews in the Netherlands, most of them having been killed by the Nazis.  It’s strange to stand in an incredibly beautiful place, and yet know that you are looking at the very gates that families were dragged through to die.  As we learned through a few intense prayer times, the scars of WWII are still very much marking the soul of the peoples here.  We saw windmills and drove over a huge dike, marveling at the hundreds of miles of land that have been recovered from under the sea.  (NB:  I tried to figure out with my host what would have prompted people hundreds of years ago to create farmland out of seawater, and we decided they must have had the choice:  we need land.  Either we fight the Germans for it, or the sea.  We choose the sea!)  We saw more people on bikes than in all the USA combined, and almost fell for good prices (in Euros) on bargain items, doing the conversions just in time to save ourselves.  We toted Judah in the backpack and Ariel in the faithful umbrella stroller till they feel asleep pink-cheeked in the car.  It was a great day, a great trip, and a huge victory.  God bless the Netherlands!  And so…on to Germany!

After a short stay in Scotland to recuperate and repack, we set off to…you thought I was going to say Holland, but no!  The natives set us right with kind consistency.  It’s not Holland, folks, it’s The Netherlands.  Turns out North Holland and South Holland are provinces in The Netherlands that include the major cities of trade, so calling The Netherlands “Holland” is a bit like calling the USA “New England.”  Anyway, we set off for The Netherlands and were again in for a huge surprise and blessing.  I am afraid I’ll sound repetitive if I tell you how warm the people were, how hungry, how wonderful the community is…all those things are true, and yet the base is so unique and unlike anything we had yet experienced. 

First of all, Dutch people are delightful!  They are warm and generous.  They have definitively Dutch ways, which they will unabashedly describe to you, but without any sense of imposing them on you.  You feel free to be different.  The base we went to is called Heidebeek, and it’s remote, if anything can be remote in a country that small.  It was a couple hours from Amsterdam, created as a place where the young people getting saved in masses in the 70’s could be discipled away from the temptations of the city.  As we drove through the country from the airport, I kept having flashbacks of driving through Michigan and parts of Indiana.  Large Dutch populations settled around Chicago (where I grew up) and around Lake Michigan, and now I know why.  Flat farmland giving way to friendly, leafy, green forests, and expanses between homes.  But not too big!  Nobody seems to need too much space, just enough. 

There wasn’t room for us to stay on the base itself, so we stayed a couple minutes down the road at some base housing, an old stables with thatched roof, restored into housing.  The next day, the base gave us our transportation for the week, three sturdy bicycles, two bearing little seats for the kids.  The first time we road “home” from a day of ministry on our bikes, I rode behind Pete and OJ.  Judah was in a seat nestled on Pete’s handlebars, and Ariel was behind OJ’s seat.  The weather was perfect, the kids were squealing, and the surrounding was gorgeous.  Our base liason brought us a road map…for bike paths.  There are more bike racks than parking spaces, and it is how everybody gets around, even (or maybe especially) the older folks. 

Our schedule was intense, especially since Erin had gone back to Tacoma.  We were down to one prayer team for the week, and trying to pray for everyone on the base at least once.  We had a few chances to teach the staff in the mornings and one evening, and the rest of the days were spent in prayer, rotating OJ, Pete and me through as the team.  The hardest part for me to relinquish to the Lord is always the kids, as I have so little control in these weeks over their experience.  I have had to trust Him that He’s going before us to prepare good things for them, over which I have no say.   And He’s blown my mind with His faithfulness to them.  This week in the Netherlands was so filled with sweet experiences and gifts from God to the kids, it overwhelmed me.  Heidebeek is nestled on some fields with a centre, a dining hall, and some bungalows for the base’s families.  Across from the family bungalows is a playground, big sandbox, and pigpen with two furry fat pigs in it.  In the bungalows are a whole community of toddlers and preschoolers who are free to play in the sunshine in front of their homes in total safety.  The base also has a preschool with ladies who love kids taking care of them for a few hours every morning.  They welcomed Ariel and Judah and allowed them to join the other kids for excursions to the playground, stories, games, etc.  By Wednesday Ariel was singing a little song in Dutch.  In the afternoons, Judah could nap in the crib in the empty preschool room.  I know I’m writing as a Mom right now, but as we have watched the Lord do miracles for person after person in the prayer room, these are the miracles He’s done for me, filling my heart. 

Ariel, Judah, and I walked down the lane for a walk one day (walks with a one year old and three year old are best when there’s no destination and you’re willing to lose a race with a snail), when a little buggy behind a dwarf horse came clopping up the road.  The kids were thrilled just to see it, when the driver pulled to a stop in front of us and asked, “Are you from the Tacoma team?”  I had no idea who she was, but affirmed that we were, and she immediately offered to pull the kids up for ride, right behind the little horse’s rump.  It was a huge treat for them, one that we could never have planned for.  Their days were filled with things like this, and all my ability to plan out good things for my kids were thoroughly trumped by God’s design for the week.  I’ll never forget riding a bicycle with Judah on the handlebars between my elbows, shouting, “Good morning, birdies!  Good morning, chickens!  Whoa…dat’s a big one, mama!  Big one!  Whoa, mama…we go fast!” 

I’ll put the stories of ministry in another blog, as this is getting so long.  One final story of Judah and his interactions with the animals…OJ took him over to look at the pigs in the pen one day, and after glaring at them for a moment, he began to address them with authority.  “You go over there, pig!  Get away, pig!  You go away, pig, right now!”  We had a good laugh over that.  That Judah…he’s one biblical baby.

Beautiful, hungry for God, humble, faithful…incredible!  Ministering in this place was like eating a huge dish of spiritual ice cream.  We could not keep up with the pace of the people who wanted prayer, and from the moment we arrived, they were just asking for more.  The whole base, which is a farm teeming with gorgeous children, a community day care and Christian school, and a center for numerous ministries and missions, is dripping with God’s blessing.  The sense of fellowship and family among the people was so sweet.  The passion of the people there struck us…evangelism was on everyone’s mind.  Right off the bat, we met a child evangelist, a young man who has invested money and time in creating tools for engaging kids in the gospel.  I had never met a young man consumed with telling kids about Jesus, and I probably overwhelmed him with my enthusiasm the first time we met.  The base has a concentration on supporting and sending longterm missionaries, as well as all the short term trips.  The DTS students we met were vibrant, telling us this was the best time of their lives so far.   

            The first morning we were introduced and shared about why we were there, the incredible purpose that God has uniquely designed for each of us, and why we have know how the enemy has hindered us from walking in it, and finished with an offering of prayer times.  They were immediately a mess, if anything can really be a mess in Norway.  Too many people, not enough slots, ENTHUSIASM!  As we began to pray for the people, we found they were so humble, we would often find ourselves in tears as the Lord spoke to their designs and ways they had been hindered.  Time after time, tall, strong farmer-type men began to cry just at hearing the Lord describe how he had made them, and then what had come against them.  One man in his early sixties broke down when the Lord showed a picture of the abusive discipline of his childhood, and in a half hour, he was free of a depression that had held him his whole life.  We ran into him later that day, and he beamed with joy.  He said it felt like he had had surgery.  The Lord described a tall, strong man as a strategist, communicator, and overcomer before I learned that he had been deaf since birth and overcome every prognosis to learn to speak not only Norwegian, but some English.  We were overwhelmed at God’s goodness as he cried and broke lies of abandonment and isolation.  Pete and Erin prayed for a man who was so relieved at the lifting of his burden, that at the end of the prayer time, I could hear him shouting “Hallelujah!” a floor away!  A beautiful woman discovered that the imprisoned feeling in her home could leave as she took authority over a lie her mother and grandmother had lived out that a woman lost everything when she became a mother.  We’ve found the Lord to be always faithful to speak to hungry hearts, so what really amazed us was the faith and hunger of these folks.  We could have prayed for weeks, and are looking forward to a chance to be back with these saints. 

At the last minute, we were thrilled to find out that a trip we thought had been cancelled was still on, so we jumped online and bought tickets to Norway.  Pretty fun, eh?  “Hey, kids, we’re going to Norway this weekend!”  Pete (who’d left for a little time in the states) and Erin (who’d been on a short trip to Germany) were both going to come join us at a base called Grimerud.  Our Swedish friend drove us to the airport, and we asked him loads of questions about this country that we knew hardly anything about.  We asked him because Norway is right next to Sweden.  He said:

• It was like Sweden, but more beautiful
• It was on the coast with lots of fjords
• they could understand each other’s languages

Needless to say, that is not a ton of information, and we were in for a huge surprise.  I’m actually writing this from the train that is taking us to the airport for our departure, so I’m looking back over an incredible week.  I will save the best part (what the Lord did during this week) for another blog and just tell you about this nation. 

I’ll just say this, I’m glad Norwegians aren’t Americans, although many Americans are Norwegian.  See, Americans are sort of known for thinking that they’re better than everyone else, but Norway could actually make a case for it.  Fortunately, that’s not their attitude.  Unless you can count the long dark tunnel our train took us through, I have not yet seen a landscape (city or country) that is less than lovely, and many that are stunningly gorgeous.  It’s early spring, but there are not so many flowers as slender trees with new leaves, rolling fields, blue lakes, and hills.  And, as the natives have told us, this is just the eastern side; the west is much more beautiful. 

Most of the countryside is made up of perfectly proportioned and manicured small farms. Our train ride lasted three hours, and I didn’t see a sloppy yard or broken down fence, or even a farm house with faded paint.  You really have to see it to believe it.  Not only is illiteracy basically unheard of, just about everyone speaks English well.  When I asked a friend if there was any poverty, he mentioned that there are some pensioners who struggle due to high rent, and some addicts who are homeless, because their state welfare doesn’t provide enough both for their addiction and rent.   I gaped out the window at what he had mentioned was one of the poorest districts in Norway, struggling to comprehend the concept of a nation with no poverty. 

The day before we left, we had to take Ariel to the emergency room to check for an ear infection after business hours.  The whole process took about fifteen minutes, and the bill was FREE.  There was no one else there, and the doctor herself grabbed us from the waiting room, conducted the examination (briefly), spoke to us in English, and sent us on.  The receptionist informed us that anyone under 12 was totally free.  I know, I know, you’re wondering if this is heaven.  But the downside was that while she did diagnose Ariel with an ear infection (she supposed, she couldn’t see all the way into the ear), she simply responded with the same prescription the moms on base had given me, a nasal spray, drops of oil in the ear, and pain killers.  She was adamant that they would not prescribe antibiotics until several days of natural treatment and severe pain.  So…most Americans would not feel too heavenly about that.  We’re used to getting antibiotics the moment the cold becomes an ear infection.  Probably their way is better, but it takes some fortitude.  When I asked her if there was a danger of Ariel’s ear drum bursting on the flight, she shrugged and said, “It’s always a chance.”  The Lord’s peace kept me.  Ariel had been really sick an hour before, crying with pain, and we had prayed over her.  Seeing a picture of the Lord touching her ear, I still felt we should visit the doctor to make sure we should fly.  By the time we were at the doctor, Ariel had no pain, and was chatting up a storm with her new Norwegian friend in the white coat. 

Our friends at the base were trying to convince us to come back, informing us that in addition to a free birth, the government would give us $6,000 for having a baby (as long as I was not working).  Diaper money?  Things are different in the richest country in the western world…or according to the Norwegians, the highest income per capita in the world.  I have to check that stat, but they’re definitely up there. 

So…if you’re not bored yet, here’s a little explanation as to why they are so rich.  Even historians and sociologists agree, it is because of the Bible.  In the 1850’s a young farmer was set on flame for God, and was convinced that everyone should preach the gospel and so set out on foot and skis to tell the whole country so.  At the time, only clergy of the state church were allowed to preach, and so this upstart ushered in revival.  The whole country was affected, and the church was filled with true believers.  Over the next hundred years, there were many movements of God, with periodic revivals.  At this point, 98% of the nationals are members of the state church, and our friends tell us that most of the clergy are actually believers (unlike many European countries).  The top leadership of the church, though, is of course political, so that is not true all the way up to the top.  One statistic I read said that only 2-3% of Norwegians actually regularly attend church, making it one of the least “religious” countries in Europe.  So while it is currently becoming quite secular, the heritage of godliness and devotion is so complete and widespread, affecting every tradition and basically producing the foundations of the current culture, Norway is incredibly blessed.  The next generation is like the rest of the world, though.  Empty and looking for something real.  Which brings us to the point of the trip!  And the next blog!

The Wee Ones

Scots are so kind to kids.  We noticed as soon as we got there that instead of receiving annoyed glares, the kids were smiled at and enjoyed.  A friend here told me that they have a custom of putting money into the prams of strangers as they stroll their babies around.  I think Judah is a little too manly with his broad vocabulary, massive volume, and tendency to announce that he is in charge (literally—“I in charge!”) to attract any funds this way, but I try to use the stroller just in case.  

We have had personal experience of the pro-child climate, though.  For instance, we stopped at a gas station, and I ran a sleepy Ariel in for a potty stop.  I could tell from the moment I asked the question that there was no public bathroom at this station, but the ladies just looked at each other and said, “Is it for the wee one?  Oh, well, let me get the key…” and then led me back through a bunch of doors and storage.  And of course, we exited with several sweet comments and verbal caresses for my little redhead, most of which I couldn’t quite catch. You can drive ten miles down the road and suddenly find the accents totally incomprehensible.  I don’t know why the differences arise so suddenly.

Another time, Judah was losing it after a “day off” in the city of Ayr.  We were trying to take a fun day with the team, but it turns out the Ayr is for shoppers and café goers, which Judah and Ariel are not, and so Judah was in a high chair causing a ruckus at a coffee shop.  A lovely lady just walked right over to him from her nearby seat, and began to talk to him her sweet Scottish talk, mixing some general pleasantries with nonsense with gentle scolding, and utterly holding his attention.  “Tha’s right,” she said.  “Sometimes et just takes a defferent voice, and ma funny accent, and so you must be good, wee lad…” She smiled at us once he was calm and went back to her seat.  I sometimes think that even if for no other reason, God’s got a special blessing for Scotland.