Greetings from Amsterdam!  Or, to be more specific, greetings from the Transvaalbuurt (Transvaal neighborhood) in Amsterdam Oost (Amsterdam East)!  We’ve been back in the Netherlands for about a month now, following our summer in America, and it’s been nice to become reabsorbed by our neighborhood—the same place we’ve now been living in for over five years…

To give you a better picture of our surroundings (our immediate “mission field,” if you will), the Transvaalbuurt is geographically defined by a canal to the south, a set of elevated train tracks to the north, and major streets on the east and west. The neighborhood was originally developed around the turn of the 20th Century—and it quickly became a major resettling point for the city's Jewish population, after the original Jewish neighborhood in the city center had become extremely run-down. Interestingly, not only were the original inhabitants of the Transvaalbuurt predominantly Jewish—they were also socialists, serving as members and major advocates of the trade unions and idealistic crusaders for a new kind of government in the Netherlands.

Well, as you can probably imagine, in a neighborhood bustling with Jews and Socialists, the Transvaalbuurt was dramatically and tragically transformed during the years when the country was occupied by Nazi Germany. In fact, because the neighborhood already had such a high concentration of Jewish people—and because the natural barriers formed by the elevated train line on the north and the long canal on the south allowed the area to be easily policed—the occupying army systematically funneled large numbers of Jews from around the city and the surrounding countryside into the Transvaalbuurt, effectively creating a Jewish ghetto.

Then, on the evening of June 20, 1943, the occupying army completely sealed off the Transvaalbuurt.  Between eight o'clock and nine o'clock, the neighborhood was systematically emptied, as the residents of the Transvaalbuurt were loaded up in large freight trucks and then driven to the nearby Muiderpoort train station, where they got on trains that took them to the Westerbork concentration camp, where the vast majority of the former residents of the Transvaalbuurt were annihilated.  During the final years of the War the neighborhood was a ghost town, only suitable for increasingly cold and hungry Amsterdammers to seek firewood and whatever kind of food items might be scrounged.  The effect of the War on the Transvaalbuurt was absolutely catastrophic.

And yet, in the years since the end of the Second World War, the Transvaalbuurt has come back.  The neighborhood's 38 hectares (0.15 square miles) are now home to approximately 10,000 people (this is amazing to me, as my old hometown in Ohio holds about the same population in roughly 35 times the area!).  The neighborhood has one of Amsterdam's highest concentrations of young children (which, I guess, is pretty evident if one ever visits one of the many area playgrounds).  And as in the Transvaalbuurt's earliest days, the large majority of the neighborhood's population (64%) is—like our family—not of Dutch descent.  Many of the "foreigners" living in the Transvaalbuurt today are from Turkey and Morocco (in fact, I've heard an unconfirmed report that our street is home to the world's highest concentration of Berber Muslims outside of Morocco!).  We do most of our shopping at a grocery store that is staffed almost entirely by people of Pakistani descent.  The local butcher shop advertises itself as being a French, though it is owned by two brothers who are as Dutch as can be.  For fruits and vegetables, we frequent the Turkish market close to our house.  There's a video store around the corner that specializes in Bollywood films.  And a bit further down the road, there are Caribbean snack shops next to salons specializing in hair straightening.  It's quite the amazing neighborhood to me.

But what's most amazing of all is that it has become home to me and my family.  Our kids go to a neighborhood school.  We've developed familiarity with the shop-owners, who give us advice about how to best use their products.  We trade greetings with the Brazilian Capoeira crew that hangs around outside with our neighbors.  We rejoice with the Dutch / Polish neighbor couple on the other side who is expecting their first baby this winter.  And as time has gone on, we’ve begun to see more and more of the ministry opportunities that exist right here in our own neighborhood.  Ministry really does start with an individual life given over to God, flowing out into a God-centered family, flowing out into a neighborhood—to a city, to a region, to a country, to a continent, to the world!  Somehow, God seems to be capturing my imagination in fresh ways, thinking about how to live this out in day-to-day life, here in the Transvaalbuurt in Amsterdam Oost.  I’ve recently been taking more and more prayer walks through the neighborhood, and I’m actively wondering how God might use us in the Transvaalbuurt of Amsterdam Oost.  If you would, please pray with us.  And thank you, as always, for your support of our family and our ministry, which allows us to be in contact with our neighbors…

Eric