Mike and Anita James

This is our second World Cup to experience in The Netherlands.  I can honestly say that there is nothing like it.  I’m so glad that we’re here during this.  First of all, there is orange everywhere!  The royal family is the House of Orange, so if you’ve ever seen the Dutch flag, which is red, [...]

For Grace and me, this was our first white Christmas.  It started snowing on Thursday, 17 December and stayed over a week. It seemed like a lot of snow to us, but on Sunday, we had much more.  Grace was able to play in the snow before we went to church.  She even had a [...]

It’s definitely that time of year again.  Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) is here in The Netherlands.  He comes on a steamboat every year from Spain and stays a few weeks.  Gifts are given on Saint Nicholas’ birthday, December 5.  The next morning, he leaves to go back to Spain. While Sinterklaas is in The Netherlands, children [...]

Earlier this week, both Grace and I were sick.  Fortunately, our fevers only lasted a day or two.  It came at a terrible time though.  I guess there’s never a good time to get sick, but we got sick when we had company coming.  Our friends were sick the week before, so they had no [...]

No, we don’t have major changes in our lives.  It is feeling much more like autumn here though.  Schools here had an autumn break last week, and it was so nice to have a little bit of time to relax as a family.  We were able to go to a few museums.  Here is Grace [...]

We’ve been pretty busy with several things here.  Yesterday I worked in children’s church at the International Church of Leiden.  We were learning about the gospels and how we can learn about Jesus from them.  The children got into groups and spelled out the names of the gospels with their bodies.  Can you tell which [...]

In the past, American missionaries have taught English Composition at Azusa, the Bible school here.  They aren’t in the country at the time, so I was asked to teach it for the time being.  I taught junior high school English when we lived in America, so this isn’t totally out of the normal for me. [...]

After having to have our things go through customs, we were really happy to have our things arrive in The Netherlands.  It seems like it’s been so long since we shipped it from America that I had forgotten many of the things we packed.  That’s why it felt a little like Christmas today. We had [...]

Many things are different in America than in The Netherlands.  Since we’ve already lived here, we know some of the things to expect.  I like some of the things about American stores better – mainly the prices.  And, I like some of the things about Dutch stores better.  There aren’t as many choices, and I [...]

We’re adjusting back to life in The Netherlands, and we’ve noticed that it’s happening much quicker than the first time we moved here.  One of the things we’ve had to get used to is how much smaller everything is.  Here is a drink from Whataburger in America: Now, you need to compare it to the [...]