All about giving

O bless the gifts our hands have brought, and bless the work our hearts have  planned ~
On any Sunday morning at the Antwerp International Protestant Church, you will find the congregation coming together to worship and share God's love.  For years, we have always sung the tune "Give thanks with a grateful heart".  In keeping with a very helpful image that a pastor from Kansas shared with Steve and I before our return to Belgium this past June ("You are going to establish new relationships with people and a place that you have history with"), we have done a few things at home and in our places of ministry to help us remember the "new" in relationships as we settle in to life again in Belgium.  For example, at home, we've moved the furniture around and put the wall hangings in new places.  At AIPC, we now sing a new song of thanks as a part of our worship.   It goes like this:

Today I'm especially rejoicing in the words of this new song.  We sensed it on the Sunday back in August, as we  brought the team of VBS volunteers forward in worship to be dedicated to service and prayed over as we began our week with the kids  "These are the plans, O Lord, we've made".  In the course of this past week, there have been a lot of planning meetings, and some meetings yet to come this weekend:  planning the outreach ministry at the local center for asylum seekers/refugees, planning the fall season of children's church, planning the youth and family ministries at AIPC.  Without a full time youth work (for now!), we are depending on the talents and gifts of the local church to meet the needs that are staring us in the face just now. What a sense of peace in my heart today - amidst all the plans already made, and those yet to be made - that these are the plans we get to offer to God.  Whether they are His plans or not, that remains to be seen!  

Stay tuned.......

The real gates of Babylon

The VBS (vacation Bible school) team of volunteers here at AIPC tends to work like a well oiled machine.  A few trips to the local Media Markt (electronics superstore) for their large cardboard boxes provided the basics for our decorators.  our goal"  to make our chapel space look like the gates of Babylon.  We cut, we painted, we glued, we stapled ~ and the cardboard lion that we stuffed ever so carefully in our suitcases back in Chicago in June looked so friendly on our decorative stage.  (To the Group Publishing Company, whose curriculum we used, I hope that was the intention!!!)

 Our kids learned all about Babylon, about the life of Daniel, how he developed courage in his lifetime as a Jewish foreigner in Babylon.  We sang about God watching over you, 24/7 watching over you; how in this world full of changes, God is faithful through it all; He's still in control, our lives are in His hands.  How cool to hear one neighbor girl, who wasn't so excited on day 1, to proclaim loudly into the microphone on day 4 "God is altijd bij ons" (God is always with us!!!)  Thanks to my great teen volunteers, we planted hanging gardens, made musical flute (the project that made us less than popular with parents as the kids shrieked out their flute music at home), and hid the secret word Jehovah (Hebrew for "God") in our jewelry box necklaces.

As we were putting Babylon to rest on that final Friday afternoon, one of the adult volunteers asked if there was going to be VBS next summer.  My prompt reply:  as long as God keeps sending us children at AIPC, we will remain committed to teaching them in the ways of our great God!

Very interesting post VBS note:  On a recent trip to Berlin, Steve and I visited the Pergamon museum, where part of the real gates of Babylon are protected in an exhibit there.  The postcard lover that I am, we then sent postcards of the real Babylon gates to several kids who had just attended VBS.  One child's innocent remark to her dad:  "Daddy, I didn't know that Babylon was in Germany".