Rain, the Holy Spirit, and H&M!

Three things to sum up the past couple days other than me having pink eye and a cold...

One, rain. It has been raining here each day, cloudy and cold. I don't want to complain, but IT IS JULY! That's ok. I guess that is what I get for going further north.

Two, the Holy Spirit. Yesterday we went to Utricht and two guys, Joost and Theo, gave my team a talk on the Holy Spirit - the person of the Holy Spirit and what his purpose is. The primary focus of the talk was to hear about prophecy and what the Dutch Navs emphasize in regards to this gift. They said that to them, prophecy is hearing God and sharing what you hear with others. We did some exercises on using our imaginations and allowing God to speak to us through the imaginations He has given us. It was all very interesting and was neat to think about how God is ALWAYS speaking and wanting to talk to us - we just rarely take the time to stop and listen. I was definitely challenged to ask God more questions and to EXPECT to hear Him. The ministry here is very open to experiencing God in many ways the Bible talks about. Its neat to see.

Three, H&M!! We have H&M's (a clothing store) in the States but normally only in bigger cities like NY and Philly (ok and Lancaster, PA apparently...ha) but they have TWO just in their downtown area of Amsterdam! So we visited both today and I got this really fun sweater thing....very European = )



Tomorrow we'll rest in the morning (thank goodness, my body is rebelling against me with colds and pink eye...not sure what's going on) and then we'll have another training in the afternoon, and then we'll pack for summercamp.

We leave Friday morning at 9am and will be nonstop till we return the next Saturday - pray I have enough energy and health to be able to focus on all the talks and interact with 160 Dutch students! There will be talks in the morning and night, and our team of 5 will help cook for the students during the daytime while they go and do service projects around the area. The summercamp is in Belgium. During the talks they have ordered headsets for the 5 of us Americans so we can hear it translated in our ears without disrupting the meeting by having 2 translations at the same time - this way the students can only hear it in Dutch and we can hear it in English. Some of the topics they'll talk about with the students deal with their identity in Christ, the history and mission of the Dutch Navs, a gender (sex) talk, talks on gifts of the Spirit, and many others.

You won't hear from me for a while - so till then, have a great July!!!