I've had this concept in my head for quite awhile, but I finally got around to figuring out how to do it in Photoshop.  It's a combination of the iconic "I amsterdam" PR campaign, with an obvious change in locality (from Amsterdam to America), but also with a play on my name in particular.

What do you think?  Are all three levels of significance (Amsterdam, America, and me) equally clear?  Is it cool?  Or cheesy?

The Dutch are crazy about their waterkokers (literally:  "water boilers").  From a Dutch perspective, it is the only way to make hot water for tea.  For the first several years that we lived in the Netherlands, our family did not own a waterkoker.  Our family doesn't drink tea all that much to begin with -- but if we ever needed it, we figured we could just heat water up in the microwave.  It really wasn't that hard, and we felt like we got by just fine -- even being able to offer hot tea to our guests -- without the waterkoker.  But our Dutch friends were completely baffled by our ability to live in a home without a waterkoker.  We'd get the strangest looks when doing our microwave method of water-heating, and just about every Dutch babysitter we had stay with the kids would call us at some point in the evening to ask where we kept our waterkoker.  It really is considered to be a standard piece of equipment in any kitchen.

But what's strange is that waterkokers are not very common at all in the United States of America.  As far as I'm aware, there's not even a commonly accepted English term for such a device (which is why I keep going back to the Dutch word, "waterkoker" instead of any kind of English equivalent).  It's not standard at all.  Millions of Americans live the entirety of their lives without ever knowing about the marvels of a waterkoker.  What the Dutch consider indispensible is obviously not indispensible for everyone.

I have to admit that I felt very critical towards what I perceived to be the Dutch lack of creativity in heating their water... until I realized that the Americans are equally hung up on their own cultural biases when it comes to kitchen appliances.  The best point of comparison that comes to mind is the garbage disposal.  A large percentage of American homes are equipped with a garbage disposal -- installed underneath the kitchen sink, able to pulverize and puree any sort of food waste that gets (either intentionally or unintentionally) pushed down the drain, to be flushed out with the sewage.  Like the Dutch with their waterkokers, most Americans consider their garbage disposals to be essential and think it's weird or gross if they have to handle their waste products any other way.

However, garbage disposals are completely unheard of in the Netherlands.  Garbage disposals in the Netherlands are probably even less common waterkokers in the USA.  In fact, Dutch people would probably consider garbage disposals to be wasteful and environmentally unsound (I read a book recently, in Olivia's classroom, which talked about the harmful effects of putting anything other than water down the drain).  So clearly, garbage disposals are not anywhere near as necessary as the American public seems to think they are.  Millions of Dutch people live the entirety of their lives without ever knowing the marvels of a garbage disposal.  What the Americans consider indispensible is obviously not indispensible for everyone.

I'm not pointing all of this out to make any kind of value judgment (i.e. that labels of "right" and "wrong" need to be affixed to either culture).  I just think it's fascinating to notice the differences.  It goes far beyond waterkokers and garbage disposals, too.  I had a long conversation yesterday with a Dutch friend of mine who insisted that it's impossible to use what I would call a "cordless drill" for drilling holes in walls -- because his understanding is that the cordless devices are merely electronic screwdrivers and that all corded devices are drills.  They're two completely separate things, in his mind.  And while he's right that some jobs do require a heavy-duty corded drill (particularly if trying to drill through heavy concrete), I also pointed out that most jobs (drilling through wood, metal, drywall, and brick) are entirely possible to do with a cordless "screwdriver!" (since I've spent the last year doing many of these types of drilling jobs with just such a device).

One culture's "impossible" is another culture's "of course."  I don't know why it works that way.  But it does.  We stand to learn a lot if we can pick and choose from a smorgasbord of cultures, rather than entrenching ourselves in one particular point of view.  Easier said than done, I'm sure.  Still it's definitely worth the effort...

I've had a number of people ask me what I did for New Year's Eve this year, and the truth is that I have absolutely no idea what I was doing at the moment the calendar changed from 2009 to 2010.  This is not, however, because I was asleep or drunk or anything like that.  It's because I was in an airplane racing across seven time zones to meet the dawn of the new day, the new year, and the new decade.  And though we left just before seven o'clock in the evening (Central Standard Time) and arrived in Europe at 10:35 the following morning (Central European Time), it was never announced when the hour struck -- because time is a very fluid concept in trans-Atlantic aviation... So I don't really know where I was, what I was doing, or precisely when 2010 began.  I suspect it was somewhere between Newfoundland and Greenland, while I was watching some crappy movie on the in-flight entertainment... but I guess we'll never really know.

What I do know is that we had a great couple of weeks in Ohio at Christmastime.  It didn't feel like we had nearly enough time -- but then again, it never does.  And as much as I could bemoan the shortness of the vacation, I have to admit that we actually managed to fit quite a bit into the time period.

We rode an antique train to the North Pole (surprisingly accessible from Connersville, Indiana!).

We enjoyed snowball fights and sledding and lots and lots of Christmas lights.

We baked cookies and went carrolling from house to house in the country.

My brothers and I made lefse (traditional Norwegian potato-based flatbread).

We played basketball and American football, and we watched basketball and American football on television.  My Dad, my son, and I got to go to our first professional basketball game together -- watching LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers trounce the Houston Rockets.

We re-enacted the biblical account of Jesus's birth on Christmas Day.

And we just spent a lot of good quality time together with family who don't often have the privilege of gathering together any more.

It was really everything we could have hoped for.  Of course, it wasn't without its stresses either -- driving in heavy snowfall, coordinating schedules with a lot of families who each have their own priorities, sharing one bathroom with 16 people (when the water heater went out for a couple of days!), and traveling through busy airports... But so is life.  We made the most of the experience, and for that I am very grateful.

Time passes so quickly, doesn't it?  Some of the family we only get to see in parking lots and every five Christmases.  Some members of the family are quite advanced in age (Marci's grandpa, for example, turns 93 later this month).  It's difficult to project life's trajectory.   And even with all other things being equal, there's nothing to say that someone won't get cancer or some other sickness (over the holidays, I happened to hear about two particularly tragic discoveries of cancer, plus a suicide and a teenage car crash).  It can be terrifying to think of all the possibilities that a new year could hold.

But we can only take it one day at a time.  One city at a time.  One conversation at a time.  There are a lot of anxieties for the coming year, but there is a lot of hope and opportunity as well.  It'll be interesting to see what 2010 will hold.  Happy New Year to all of you...

We're enjoying the start to our Christmas vacation in Ohio.

Over lunch one of these days, our family was talking about the most obvious differences that we notice between the Netherlands and the United States of America.  It's a common conversation in our trans-Atlantic family.  But it was especially interesting to hear some of Elliot's key points of observation.  Interesting... and enlightening.  Here are some of the things he noted: 

1. American automobile license plates are a lot different from their European counterparts:  a different shape, more colors, more artistically-designed, positioned differently on the car (he seriously went on about the license plates longer than anything else).
2. American automobiles are a lot bigger.  There are a lot more vans and trucks.
3. The "stones" in the sidewalks are a lot bigger in American than they are in Amsterdam (i.e. comparing concrete paving in the USA with stone grids in the Netherlands).
4. The houses are a lot further apart in America.
5. American rooftops are more slanted (while Elliot seems to think that Dutch rooftops are flatter), and they have a lot more chimneys sticking up into the air.
6. There's a lot more commercial signage in the USA than in the Netherlands (which I had never really noticed before, honestly, but is rather startling once your eyes are opened to the difference).
7. People in America like Christmas a lot and put out lots of lights on their houses.  This was one of the first things that both Elliot and Olivia noticed upon landing in Cleveland.  I think an exact quote from one of the kids was, "Whoa!  It's like Christmas City out there!"
8. The chocolate milk in the USA is a lot sweeter and a lot thicker than the chocolate milk in the Netherlands.  Almost more like Dutch vla (pudding) than like milk.

It feels like weeks have passed since last Thursday, when I set out on my brief pilgrimmage to Bowling Green.  In just five days, I saw so many wonderful people, ate so many wondeful meals, and enjoyed so many wonderful experiences... It was a great trip.  Now that I'm back in Amsterdam, I feel physically exhausted, from all the late evening conversations and accumulated jet-lag -- but emotionally, I am totally rejuvenated.  Good quality time with good quality people seems to have that effect on me.

The reunion / 25th anniversary celebrations at h2o-BG were a very interesting (and enjoyable) experience for me.  Perhaps not quite what I had expected -- but then again, I didn't really know what to expect!  It wasn't like being back in 1999 at all.  Most people have grown / matured / mellowed / changed-for-the-better in quite significant ways.  A few have gotten weirder, their idiosyncracies more pronounced and exagerated with time.  But no one has stayed exactly the same.  Even those who seemingly "haven't changed a bit" still betray subtle signs of their changes -- be it a slight graying at the temples, a deepening of the wrinkles around the eyes, a few pounds heavier or lighter, or whatever.

As narcissistic as it may sound, I can't help but wonder how everyone perceived my own return to Bowling Green.

On some levels, I felt like some kind of out-of-place foreign exchange student.  Like the French teenager who stayed with my family for a month one summer while I was in high school.  His name was Guillaume.  He came with his uniquely European clothes and hair, bearing gifts of wine, fragrances, and European delicacies.  And he left with hundreds of photographs and several pairs of Levi's jeans (which he pronounced like "Levvies").  He talked a little bit funny and didn't always completely get how things were supposed to work in the USA, but he was a likeable guy.  Just a bit unusual.  I know, of course, that none of my American friends would say it so directly, but I can't help but wonder if some kind of comparison like that might be on their minds, too (seeing how I've now got the photographs and Levvies, just unpacked from my suitcase, now that I'm back in Europe).

On other levels, I have to confess that I felt a bit like Harry Bailey from the film, "It's a Wonderful Life":  a war hero, returned from distant shores -- arriving to the party as a last-minute exclamation-point surprise.  I realize that this comparison may seem (and that I may actually be) a bit conceited, given that Harry Bailey was so handsome, charming, heroic, and all that.  But listening to the things that others were mentioning about me, it's not hard to see where the parallels come from.  "Church planter"... "in Amsterdam"... "the pastor"... For a lot of people, these words may not seem like much -- but in the circles of h2o-BG, Great Commission churches, and well Evangelical Christianity in general, these traits are highly celebrated (for better or worse).  And while a lot of different people reconvened in Bowling Green from a lot of different places, scattered far and wide, Amsterdam always made the list of places mentioned as derivatives of h2o-BG (while, say, Orlando or Seattle did not).  It's understandable, of course -- given the fact that alumni in Amsterdam give the overall movement a sense of an "international" influence -- and I do feel blessed to receive a "hero's welcome" when I return to Ohio.  A part of me certainly enjoys the attention.  But the fact of the matter is that the party was not about me.  Harry comes back to Bedford Falls to toast George, not the other way around.  So while I was a little bit uncomfortable (though simultaneously gratified) by all the Harry Bailey attention, more than anything I was just glad to simply be there with the rest of the crowd, raising our glasses and singing Auld Lang Syne with the rest of them.

More than anything, though, my experience of the 25th anniversary celebrations was like sitting in the auditorium, listening to the debut performance of Mr. Holland's Opus.  Have you ever seen the shamelessly emotionalized conclusion to the movie?  Where various graduates of Mr. Holland's school orchestra come together to form the orchestra that performs the piece of music that Mr. Holland had been tinkering with for decades but never got around to seriously composing?  I'm not sure if the comparison to the h2o-BG reunion would make me the awkward braced-teeth red-haired clarinetist who became governor or the punk James Dean wannabe who became the affable dad or what... I just know that I've been privileged to play a small part in a much greater work.A 25-year retrospective offers a unique glimpse of ministry that is not easily noticed in day-to-day life.  Everyday interactions which seem like no big deal at the time become powerful testimonies of God's power with time.  A little conversation about God's grace, a simple act of kindness, a well-timed question... Although these things seemed so insignificant at the time, it turns out that these were life-changing moments, long-remembered foundations to new lives and relationships.  Three or four people told me, on separate occasions, that they kept coming back to our church (some of them eventually choosing to follow Jesus) because I remembered their name.  Something as little as remembering a name!!!  And I only heard a small fraction of these stories of significance (the ones that were shared publicly or in personal conversation) from h2o's 25 years of ministry.  There were so many beautiful stories in that room of 400-some people -- and even that group was just a small representative sampling of those who have been impacted by the ministry of h2o through the years!  All these people and all these stories came together to create a magnificent, symphonic opus of God's glory.  Enough to make a grown man weep -- just like the dramatic conclusion to Mr. Holland's Opus.

I still don't know what to think about everything, but it felt so good to spend so much time laughing and crying and remembering over the course of the extended weekend.  I still don't know exactly how to interpret my own place in the midst of such a scene, but in the end it was just good to remember that it wasn't about me.

P.S. - For those who might be interested in downloading high-resolution versions of any of the photos included in the collage above or otherwise uploaded to my Facebook page, you can go to my Flickr site for easy access to all of the best photographs from the extended weekend in America:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/amsterdamasp