Exactly nine years ago, our family moved to the Netherlands. As you can see from the photographic collage here above, we've changed and grown a lot from year to year. What an adventure it's been!

One of my colleagues is getting married and moving on from her day-to-day responsibilities with our ministry here in Amsterdam, so we decided to mark the occasion with a special Staff Day. The celebration started at the end of the school day, when the team greeted our kids with balloons and cheers.

After balloons were distributed and affixed to each bicycle in our group, we loaded up and biked to a local bowling alley to spend the afternoon goofing off together.

My team lost (who knew that Marci, Linda, and Naomi were such bowling sharks?!?), but we still had a really good time together.

After bowling, then, we all rode back to our family's home and enjoyed a lovely dinner together -- followed by lounging about and having some deeper conversation. It really ended up being a lovely day.

To me, the whole experience underscored the point that we're not just colleagues; we're family. We know and appreciate each other deeply, after having experienced much joy and sorrow together over the past decade of working together. I could never completely explain the connection in words -- but somehow the pictures from our time together help to capture the beauty of this "Family of Colleagues" (a greater collection of images can be accessed in the Family Pictures section of the website). God has given us a tremendous gift with this group of friends / sisters / colleagues.

I was a witness. The temperature hovered just above the freezing point. The wind whipped across  the harbor. Still, a young Iraqi refugee wanted to be baptized, to proclaim his newfound faith in Jesus. So we went to the Steenhoofd, in the docks west of Amsterdam's Centraal Station, and we cheered him on as he got dunked in the frigid waters of the IJ River.

I was there for moral support as much as anything -- back-up to one of our church's pastors-in-training who did the actual "getting-wet" part. But I was glad to be there. I love baptisms in Amsterdam. We've done them in the Nieuwe Meer (big lake just south of the city). We've done them in the reflecting pool on the Museumplein. We've done them in swimming  pools. We've done them in the North Sea. We've done them in bathtubs, even. Every location has its own charm because it's a part of a unique story that's being written in the life of a unique individual --  just like the stories of the Ethiopian official who got baptized in a roadside pond (Acts 8:26-40),  or the textile merchant who was baptized in a river just outside of Philippi (Acts 16:13-15).

After today's baptism, we gathered around the new believer and spent time praying for him. We thanked God and prayed for His blessing. But we were blessed already... by a new moment of God's grace imprinted on our memory

I've been using my iPad for almost a month now. It's become a standard item in my backpack, just like my pocket-sized Bible and my journal (with a pen hooked onto the spine). Even though the iPad is technically capable of functioning as a "pocket-sized Bible," as a "journal," and as a "pen" -- I haven't given up these most basic, tried-and-trusted tools of my trade. Still, the iPad is becoming more and more integrated with my daily pastoring responsibilities. And I'm becoming more and more appreciative of its capabilities.

This past Sunday, I decided to use the iPad for my message notes, during our church's worship gathering -- and it worked out better than I might have expected. Instead of printing out my notes in 1.5-spaced, 14-point font on a stack of one-sided paper -- I "printed" my notes as a PDF file (using the typical formatting) and accessed them from the iBook application within the iPad. Legibility was totally not an issue (if anything, it was even easier to see my notes than usual). I didn't have any problems "turning pages." The settings were easy enough to adjust so that I didn't have to constantly be tinkering with the thing to keep it awake. And in general, it didn't seem to be a distraction for my listeners (i.e. no strange white glow visible to others, no extra foibles on my part as I tried to adapt to the new technology). I think it could be a very workable scenario. The only real issue that I still have with using the iPad for preaching is not being able to see two pages at one time, which is something that I had gotten used to with my old one-sided paper system. We'll see how this issue works itself out over time... But in any event, it was a worthwhile experiment.

I also really appreciate the iPad's usefulness in counseling situations. It's a really nice way to take notes -- because it has the feel of a simple pad of paper (with no vertical obstacles to communication, like there would be with a laptop screen), yet the output is still digital and thus much more easily archived and integrated into other systems that I have in place. The iPad also works well to take the place of print-outs, saving both time and money. For instance, I can use the iPad to access my own copy of a couple's individualized pre-marital counseling materials, while the couple can look on their own printed copy. Since the iPad is capable of storing thousands of documents without taking up any extra physical space, I rarely have that phenomenon of "Oh, I wish I had a copy of that document with me right now, to show you..." I use a free application called DropBox, so I can keep all my files up-to-date and on-hand. Very convenient.

E-mailing, e-reading, word-processing, and Skyping also work really well with the iPad -- and since I have a desktop computer that I use with my home office, I genuinely think I can get by without ever needing a laptop computer again. Up to this point, my only point of complaint with the iPad is its lack of ability to upload files. It would be so nice if the DropBox application could work both ways: downloading and uploading. But really, the only effective way that I've discovered to get around this design deficiency is to e-mail documents to myself. It's not the most difficult problem in the world to overcome... but it can be annoying.

In general, I'm very pleased with these current experiments in "pastoring with an iPad." In spite of the fact that I'm writing about it here and now, I have no plans to become an evangelist for the Apple Corporation. As a matter of fact, I've grown to really like having the black leather carrying case as a kind of camouflage for the technology itself -- so that I'm not flashing the Apple logo whenever I pick up the machine, and advertising the fact that I'm using a fancy piece of technology. Most of the time it just looks like I'm carrying an extra leather-bound portfolio that could just as easily be filled with paper and pens as with a tablet computer. Still, I appreciate the fact that this iPad is a valuable resource for my day-to-day ministry. And I'm thankful to God that He provided the resources for me to get it.

As you may have noticed from my weekend writing, I recently spent some time in a Benedictine (Roman Catholic) monastery. To the Conservative Baptists among whom I grew up, such a forray into Catholic territory might have been considered a step outside the faith: paying homage to Rome's Evil Institution, allowing a part of the money spent for my accommodations to go towards "statuary, and buying the souls of pagan babies, and buying diamonds for the Pope's shoelaces" (to quote from the ubiquitous Midwestern humorist, Garrison Keillor).

I, however, thought my time at the monastery was a wonderful experience which really brought me closer to God.

Granted: the Catholic monastic experience had both its joys and its difficulties. For instance, I genuinely enjoyed the push back to an appreciation of the simple elements of faith, seeking God, depending upon God, cutting myself off from distractions and focusing purely on God. And because of the monastery's focus on these elements, I ultimately decided to stick with the full cycle of the monastic rhythms (7 prayer services per day). At the same time, however, I noticed (and noticed some irritation at) the cultural differences I experienced.

The morning prayer services got to feel very long and laborious. Their liturgy used a very limited Scriptural pallette (almost entirely chapters from the middle part of the Psalms). And perhaps most notably, I felt bothered by the emphasis on formality and hierarchy, particularly in the daily celebration of Mass. I've never understood the apparently-varying levels of access to God's grace: first to the bishop, then to the father of the monastery, then to the other brothers from the monastery, then to other clerics from the church, then to other Catholic believers, and only then to everyone else (including me). I don't understand why I should be excluded from sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ (though I could have easily faked my way through the line, if I had wanted to). These things don't make sense to me.

Even so, I can appreciate the solemnity and ceremony of the Catholic culture of worship. I admire the way that their traditions tie in so directly with the ways Christians have been worshipping for thousands of years. I enjoy the multi-sensory worship experience, utilizing sight (beautiful robes, a simple-yet-magnificent sanctuary, a white haze of incense smoke), sound (singing, speaking, the clinking chains of the censer), smell (incense), taste (the Eucharist), and touch (standing, kneeling, sitting, holy water, and crossing oneself). Furthermore, I really appreciate the sense of holiness that pervades Catholic worship. At the monastery, all of the monks bowed deeply before the cross on the altar, both upon entering the room and upon leaving the room. The priests all bowed before the Eucharist at (what they believe to be) the moment of transubstantiation. They administer the mass from behind the altar, so that Christ gets top billing. And in this I can see that, for all their issues with formality and hierarchy, they've at least got that much right: Jesus is King. He deserves to be treated with some degree of reverance and respect -- probably more than our church in Amsterdam typically gives Him. So as much as I can be irritated by the cultural differences, I can also appreciate them and let myself be instructed by them.

In the end, I really came to appreciate the monks' rigorous traditionalism: wearing the robes, singing in Latin, maintaining the Benedictine rhythms... I felt glad, actually, that some Christians feel so strongly led to maintain these traditions. I do wonder, though, about the future of these traditions. I reckon that the youngest of the monks at the Benedictusberg was in his 40s, and a couple might even have been in their 80s. With only 12 of them on-site, how will the traditions continue into the future?