Mike and Anita James

There are some things that we see here that we now take for granted.  When we first moved here, these things would’ve been very strange, but now, they’re normal.  Here are a couple of things I’ve seen this week: With the World Cup going on, it’s normal to see plenty of orange or Dutch flags. [...]

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, [...]

We had our first Zuper Zondag (Super Sunday) today.  We were so excited.  It’s been something that has been coming for a long time.  From now on, we’ll be having a special, evangelistic service on the second Sunday of each month. We’ve gotten a new puppet stage from BGMC money.  We also were given funds [...]

We’ve been so busy working on a curriculum.  We’ve done an entire series on Psalm 23.  There are so many steps to the process.  Mike writes the lessons.  Then, we video the puppets and characters for the lessons.  Next, I edit it and get the video ready.  We have friends who translate it into Dutch [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

On Friday and Saturday, Mike attended a leaders’ weekend here in The Netherlands.  He had a wonderful time and got to reconnect with many people who work with the VPE, the church organization we work with. On Sunday morning, we led a family Sunday at ICL, the International Church of Leiden.  It was so great [...]

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 [...]