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.

Talking about Jesus with non-Christian friends is a lot like talking about sex with children. The parallel is imperfect, I know. Still, I'm surprised at how much insight can be drawn from such a comparison. Think about it with me.

First of all, conversations about Jesus or about sex are best done in the context of relationship. Not that open-air preaching or 7th grade health classes are inappropriate; they're just not the most effective. Such significant conversations typically work a lot better when nurtured by hours and hours of developing and observing a trustworthy relationship. Just like kids are naturally inclined to trust their parents for life's most important lessons (provided, of course, that the parents generally prove themselves to be trustworthy), non-Christians will be a lot more willing to listen to a friend sharing about Jesus if they're confident that the friendship is a real friendship: not just some bait-and-switch evangelistic technique. On the other hand, if some stranger just walks up and starts unloading on a non-Christian about Jesus, or unloading on an elementary school kid about sex, it just feels perverse and inappropriate. On rare occasions, such random interactions can work out all right -- especially when involving direct questions and audience-appropriate answers reflecting a sense of delicacy and propriety. But more often than not, the uninitiated can walk away from these out-of-the-blue interactions feeling violated and disturbed.

Secondarily, my experience suggests that Jesus-education and sex-education work best when given in small doses -- not in one awkward, overwhelming information dump. With our children, for instance, my wife and I started their "sex-education" very young -- with simple bath-time reminders about the privacy of one's private parts (aimed at protecting them from any kind of inappropriate touching). As they grew and became aware of their bodies, we spoke frankly with them about the proper names and functions for each part of the human anatomy. And when we sensed the time was right -- based on a subjective analysis of their mental development and social stimuli -- we deliberately filled them in on the more complete picture of how sex works and what sex means. With our children, this has pretty much meant "full disclosure" by early elementary school age: not too early in life, before they were really ready to handle such information, but not too late in life either, after they'd already figured things out for themselves through alternative sources of information (or misinformation). Timely, relaxed, contextualized, candid, and considerate communication has informed our children's sex-education each step of the way, and as a result we've never really had the awkward "moment of epiphany." Their awareness of sex has simply developed as the rest of their consciousness has developed. It's been great, honestly. But how often do Christians get to experience this same dynamic in their attempts at "Jesus-education" among their non-Christian friends?

Too often, we put too much emphasis on "The Talk." And too often, this happens too late in the relationship (if ever). Perhaps it's because this is how we, ourselves, first learned about Jesus or about sex -- but our minds naturally seem to drift towards this image of a single, solemn, monumental presentation of all the relevant information in one sitting. We get nervous about giving "The Talk," but eventually we psyche ourselves up for it and plow through it with little awareness of how the information is actually being received. Then, we give a little slap on the back, say "I'm glad that we had this talk," and then go on about our business without ever checking back in for further processing. It doesn't work well for middle-school children learning about sex, and it doesn't work well for non-Christians learning about Jesus.

Finally, the attitude of the initiated toward the subject sets the tone for everything. Those of us who are coming from a place of experience can make it seem really awkward and uncomfortable -- even as we're trying to say how natural and how great it really is to know Jesus, or to experience sex. It's in our non-verbals, as well as the language that we use to describe things. If the initiated individual is comfortable talking about the subject, then the uninitiated will also feel comfortable most of the time. But awkwardness breeds awkwardness, and sometimes these conversations can go so badly that we're emotionally-scarred for many years thereafter.

I don't always handle these conversations perfectly -- either with Jesus-education or with sex-education -- but I'm learning as I go. And if you ask me, learning is a very good thing.

Last week, my two oldest children got into an argument about the use of stickers. Stirred up by the argument, my son later wrote a threatening letter to his sister. And as unfortunate as the letter itself might have been, the real kicker was this: he signed the letter with his own blood.

Marci and I were concerned, to say the least. Where could he have picked up such a dark and disturbing idea as signing one's name in blood?!? Was it some occultic ritual he'd absorbed from this Dutch fantasy series he's been reading in recent months? Had he stumbled across a clip from some horror film on YouTube? Was it something he heard from negative influences at school? What perverse cultural influence had so poluted our sweet, innocent child to come up with the idea to sign a threatening letter in blood?!?

We didn't know, so we simply asked. Kind of non-chalant-like: "So, umm... Where did you get the idea to sign a letter with blood?"

"From Tom Sawyer."

Mark Twain's great classic of American literature. The incomparable epic of boyhood adventure. The story of making mischief and playing practical jokes, playing pirates and discovering buried treasure, trucking in spooky caves and haunted houses. I'd really say that "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is a must-read for any red-blooded American boy (except, perhaps, for the fact that it apparently stimulates such boys to put their red blood to paper, in imitation of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn). Instead of shock and concern over the influence of some perverse propaganda -- I actually felt kind of proud and gratified that my son was boning up on great literature.

Still, I had to ask him what he did to get the blood for his signature.

Turns out it was an Oral-B toothpick, which "always" made his gums bleed when he cleaned his teeth anyway. So not only was my boy processing and assimilating great literature; he was doing it while exercising proper dental hygeine!

Funny, isn't it, how quickly one's perception of a situation can change, through just asking a few questions? Unfortunately, there wasn't a "bright side" to the original argument about stickers or the threatening tone to the pencil part of the letter... But we talked through things and provided some needed correction regarding those items. And in the end, we all came out more educated from the process.

Our family had the privilege of bringing in the New Year in a very old place: Rome. These are some of my favorite pictures from the time in Italy.

After three lovely days in Pescara for GCE's Awaken conference, we took some time for our family to enjoy the old Caput Mundi. Our kids enjoyed themselves, but I found it challenging to impress upon them how remarkable it was that we were walking around in the cradle of Western civilization where some of the earliest foundations of the Christian faith were laid and where Caesars and popes have ruled throughout the centuries. I don't know how much we succeeded in getting them to appreciate the glory and grandeur of Rome, but I sure enjoyed it. The sense of history is palpable in Rome, yet it also remains a thriving urban center today in 2012. It was a very unique setting for the New Year's holiday (with an extra bonus of sun and mild temperatures during our visit, as well!).

During our time in Rome, I was impressed with the words of Psalm 31:14-15, where it says, "But I trust in you, LORD; I say, 'You are my God.' My times are in your hands."

This is my hope and prayer for 2012: that I will grow in trusting God and walking by faith, content in the knowledge that my times (as turbulent and chaotic as they may often seem) are in God's hands. I don't think I'm going to make any other resolutions this year except for an actualization of Psalm 31:14-15.