Stickywrites

Recently I had the opportunity to travel to Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Holland) after a very generous friend offered the trip to me for virtually free travel costs!! Amazing! Chris and Tang Dalo are former co-workers of Andrew’s from his 2 years in Bangkok and now live in Connecticut. We loved travelling together and just had a blast seeing the sights, eating Indonesian food, traversing the city by foot & tram occasionally, and seeing President Bush protests.
If any of you have ever seen this beautiful canal city, it is well worth the trip. The city is gorgeous, formed by rings and rings and more rings of circular streets & circular canals, one after the other after the other. Walking is the preferred mode of transportation, but we soon learned that crossing the street can be a hazardous situation as you check left and right several times for: Trams (innavigable from their tracks, so better watch out), Haphazardly driven bikes (don’t suddenly dart out in the road or you may lose a limb), Buses (narrow streets don’t allow for much room), and of course, Cars, Pedestrians, and Things-Left-Behind-By-People-Not-Cleaning-Up-After-their-Pets.

A bike parking garage!

Tang in a wooden Holland-ish clog

We had a fabulous time, though, and visited the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandt’s House, the Anne Frank Huis, (where she and her family hid for 2 years before being taken to concentration camps), the Heineken Brewery, and a Canal Tour. We also came across a few sights that probably could not be seen anywhere but Amsterdam, including a public urinal and a street performer making bird chirping sounds (for money.)

Chris using a blatantly public urinal (we didn’t think he was using it, it was supposed to be a photo op, but oh well)

Tang and I in the Museum Park square between Rijksmuseum & Van Gogh

One of the many canals circling the city center

Heineken Brewery (one of our favorite experiences!)

In July, we ventured to New York City for MTW Pre-field Training. We were paired with a Korean-American church, Living Faith Community Church in Flushing, Queens, near the Mets’ stadium and where the US Open takes place. The churhc is in a neighborhood with pretty walk-up houses, and hydrangeas abound!

Our ministry with the church was mainly advertising for their Vacation Bible School in August, but we spent most of our time fellowshipping with them and taking part in Sunday worship services by giving our testimonies and giving the Children’s Gospel presentations. The area of Flushing is a dense area of mostly Korean and Chinese. In fact, most of the businesses in the area (including our daily staples of Starbucks & Dunkin Donuts) had Chines & Korean characters on their signs. There’s way more foreign languages spoken and seen in Flushing than English!

We were excited to be living in an Eastern European community in Sunnyside, Queens, and going to our daily MTW classes/lectures in Long Island City, Queens, which were both closer to Manhattan midtown. We found ourselves excited to live in a new area of NYC, because we both knew Manhattan well and have spent much time there previously. Queens is probably the most diverse place on Earth! It is said that more than 160 languages are spoken and over 150 nationalities found there. Riding our 7 train every day we mostly saw Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Turkish, Indian, and many other cultures, so it was refreshing to be in such a diverse borough. I could not have fathomed the enormity of Queens before living there…in my mind NYC to me was Manhattan, so Queens was venturing into a world unknown! Queens is cheaper than Manhattan too – we found many ethnic restuarants that we frequented – mostly Thai, Lebanese, Turkish, and Japanese.

Our classes every afternoon centered on many facets of missionary strategy and living: Language learning acquisition, church-planting philosophies, evangelism, and cultural textualization of planting churches and starting ministries. Our last week in New York we found ourselves procrastinating just like the good ole days at Vanderbilt….we finished all our final assignments in the last 2 days of the month. We scrambled to see and visit with all our friends in the city, and loved the last bit of time we were able to spend with them. We celebrated our last night by kareoking with some of our Thai friends and Andrew’s former co-workers from Bangkok – can’t wait for all those kareoking opportunities in Thailand!!

The two other “Asia-bound” missionaries serving at LFCC, Matt Gillingham & Mary Bell, as well as friends John & Sue Burch, MTW staff.

Flowers in Flushing, near our church, Living Faith Community Church

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