"Home Sweet House Sitting"

 After 6 wonderful weeks, interacting with really interesting people at every meal, we are happy to sit down with just the four of us again!! 

We even have a good plan worked out for housing now so we are good to go and we can begin to count down our remaining nomadic days, 31 to go!

Reflections on Hamsters and the Worry Wheel

Knabbeltje  (the official Dutch name for Little Nibbles) will soon be heading home.  Her little hamster wheel creaks at night as she pours her nocturnal energy into it, going nowhere. It reminds me of worry. 

I hesitate to admit that I spent time on the hamster wheel of worry last week.   Our “Garden of Eden” house sitting gig had some serious drawbacks.   It's 1/2 hour away by car, but alas, we don’t have a car. So Matt’s commute to school would have been about 3 hours a day by public transport.  Or he could have pretended to be training for the Tour de France and tried to cut it down to two hours by bike.  We considered all the possibilities and thought perhaps he would stay in the dorms certain nights of the week… but then, that is just less time together… sigh.  

Then I found out, as is so often the case when you are new in a culture and don’t know the language, I had totally misinterpreted the waterbed exchange.  In fact, that room would be off limits, the splash park was closed.  No biggie, I get it, but how do I explain that to Nora?  What next…my brain spun round and round,   “am I really safe in the Father’s arms?”

“For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him… For after these things, the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” Matt. 6:8b & 32-33

OK, OK… I get it… I’ve been singing that song since I can remember.  It is a Kauffman family favorite passed down from Matt’s Maternal  Grandparents.  So how do I do that?

Well, God was working it out.  I am blown away.  We started looking again for housing.  We considered quite a few options.  But again, some Christian people, who believe it or not- needed a cat sitter for a month, decided that they could rent out their attic apartment.  When I heard the size of the place (tiny), I had to have a serious wrestling match with my needs and my wants.   I got my wants pinned to the floor and declared victory, but then we went to see it!   

God is providing for our needs, and much more.   It is a lovely, little space, in the heart of an ethnically diverse area very near campus, and the cat is so cute and friendly!! My girls and their cats were inseparable, now we have a great substitute!  We’ll move their August 31^st.    So this plan of staying light on our feet here will buy us some freedom to travel, which was one of our hopes in coming here.  So we might take off on an adventure to Germany between Matt’s summer and fall classes.  More on that later!

So for now, we are out of the dorms and gratefully house sitting in a lovely home for the next few weeks,  Knabbeltje is heading home soon, and we get to know our next pet, Tsjompie (sounds like Chompie!),  in a few weeks. God is good!

Home in the Father's arms...

This morning I woke up feeling unsettled. It was only 4:30, and pitch black in our room, so I grabbed my laptop and went and sat on the floor of the bathroom between our adjacent dorm rooms. Tapping away, I was feeling alone, and kind of upset. I wondered as I looked at Facebook whether I was even being honest with you all. Honestly, for all the blessings, this past month has been really hard. 

Suddenly, I sensed a motion in the room. I was no longer alone. Was it a mouse?.... Eek! Yikes, no, it was the hamster we are taking care of, Little Nibbles, scampering across the bathroom floor. Then quick as lightening, she was under the door and into the girls’ room. Thankfully I secured her safely and returned her to the cage, seeing the breach in the tunnel that allowed for her clever escape. With a big sigh of relief, and a glance at my sleeping princesses, (Anya strongly objects to this portrayal  ) I thanked God for saving Little Nibbles and saving us the horror of having to explain the loss of a beloved pet. 

I decided maybe I needed to go for a walk with some worship music instead, so off I went, down the street. Past the home of the boy whose plant I am caring for, past house we will begin sitting next week, past the home of the cats we were sitting this past week, past the canals that are home to the birds that we've been feeding with old bread from the Tyndale cafeteria, and finally back "home" to the dorm. I felt welcome here.

"And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name's sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life." Matthew 19:29

It made me think of the verse above... It is hard not having a "home," and yet, we somehow just haven't felt right about signing a lease on one here. Not only is it really expensive but the houses are gutted; no floor, no fixtures, no frills at all. For some reason, inexplicable to all expats, that is just how it is done here. The thought of accumulating a household of possessions here is down right unnerving. So, we've waited. This has been especially hard on Anya, which of course makes it hard on me as I am generally the one with whom her angst is expressed.


So, I just wanted to share that after asking for prayers last weekend, Matt and I felt a peace about not signing a lease, and waiting. We had an offer for some house sitting in August and a different offer in September and October. On Tuesday night we went to the Fall House (as we are starting to call it), and it was like a dream come true, or better said, a prayer perfectly answered.


Anya had been begging us to get a house right next to a canal with a balcony (not exactly the bargain shopper just yet). Well, we got to the house and sure enough, not only was it right next to a canal, but the first room at the top of the stairs had a beautiful balcony. Anya claimed it right away. The next room, now Nora's future space, had a waterbed, which thrilled them both. I was thrilled when the lovely, older Dutch woman whose home it is and who had been entirely proper up until that moment began to throw the girls on to the bed, just for the sheer joy of watching them enjoy the "splash." On the way "home" to Tyndale, Nora confided that she had been praying for a waterbed. Pretty cool, God!!


Not only that but the day before going to see the house, Matt had really begun to miss his farm. Well, the older Dutch gentleman of the house is a master gardener who has the most amazing Garden of Eden type front and back yards with a huge garden and greenhouse about five minutes away by bike that we will be tending while they are gone. Amazing!!


I have to admit, it is still not easy to not know what is next, November onward, but by typing and sharing this testimony to God's provision, my faith is strengthened that we are not alone. Little Nibbles is safe in her cage and so are we in the arms of our loving Father.  

The sweet rewards of gardening, beauty and a treat!!

When we arrived at campus here at Tyndale, one of the things that unnerved me was the borders of weeds along the sides of the buildings.  Clearly at some point, they had been tended beds, but no longer were they a source of beauty.  After asking around, I learned that in the spring, a few bulbs did authenticate the fact that we are in Holland, although their blooms were short lived and the legacy left behind in summer was non existent.   The Master Gardener is here checking her own photos!

 So, although once again, I didn't take "before" pictures, at least you get to see the after here. Nora and Anya worked with me over two weekends to "dig for buried treasure", ie. the bulbs.  We hacked through extensive tree roots that filled up two wheel barrels.  Then headed to the garden center with two Tyndale Students, Zana from Serbia and Assel from Kazakhstan to pick out the plants you see here.  The bulbs are reburied in hopes of a beautiful spring!  The sweet reward of a banana milk shake was enough to keep Nora happy.  Anya was happy too, just not in the mood for a photo to prove it. :)

Dinner time... In the wake of the Zimmerman trial

Just checking into the news back home, makes me even happier that our dinner table is filled by people of all shades!   The dessert bowl proclaims the truth that it is "for all" in the newly acquired Greek of the first year students here at Tyndale.  That's a foretaste of heaven!

Tyndale school cafeteria with Lee Baiden from Ghana, Apollos Makara from Rwanda, and Galete from Ethiopia, and Matt Sears Kauffman from USA.

This is Anya and Nora's new very good buddy, Lee Baiden.  He is a 2nd year student who in his "spare time" delivers about 400 newspapers daily.  Why does he work two jobs in addition to a full time course load?  Be cause he is a published author who writes books on Africa, and the ability to do that, doesn't pay, it costs.

Why Greek? 5 minute video

Some of you have asked, "Why Amsterdam?", "Why Tyndale", and you may now be asking "Why is Matt studying Greek? This 5 minute video, posted by one of his professors, provides a great answer. Matt Sears Kauffman, my dear hubbie, has been studying 10+ hours a day, in addition to class, seeking to comprehend Biblical Greek. We are just starting this journey but we know it is one that God wants us to be on, goat ice cream and all!

Goat Ice Cream and New Friends

Today, while Matt was busy translating Greek New Testament passages, the girls and I took a bike trip with new friends Lucia and Flores. I had borrowed a tandem bike, so Nora and I rode together to a local forest and farm.

The girls had soft serve goat ice cream! Lucia is from Brazil and just graduated from the program Matt is starting in and she is a great encouragement to our whole family. 

Flores is a great example of multi-cultural Amsterdam; Dutch Dad, Korean Mom, and Lucia has been his Brazilian babysitter, teaching him English!! 

It all combined to made for a great outing! The goats liked Nora's shirt, I guess it reminded them of Dutch flowers!

It's all Greek to me, or Dutch.... or Hmmmm

Matt is learning Greek (a full years worth in 8 weeks), the ladies are working on Dutch and we are all learning a new land!! 

Except for a few days last week when we rented a car (thus the cool pictures), we are being home bodies, or "dorm" bodies and enjoying the new friends, who are really family as brothers and sisters in Christ! Matt's classmates hail from Ghana, China, Ethiopia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Holland, Serbia, India, etc. It has been such an encouragement and people are very warm to our girls too. We're seeing some positive things already as they are feeling more settled.

Another reason we are staying home is kind of a taste of being a foreigner in a "highly developed" country! The public transport is really expensive unless you get these special cards, and you can't get the special cards unless you get bank account, and you can't get a bank account until you get a special number from the municipality, and you can't get the special number from the municipality until you have your visa.... sigh!! Actually, we got the bank account today using our Social Security numbers after about 5 attempts, but then we can't use it until we have a phone number, and we can't get a phone number until we have a SIM card, and they were all out of SIM cards when Matt tried in town.

You would think I would be frustrated, and alas, I would be except for three things that God provided.

1)Before leaving the States I had a lovely conversation with a woman who had lived here for a year and she loved it. She had said, "if you can get through the bureaucracy of getting established, you will love it!" Words of wisdom!!

2) I stumbled upon the audio book while looking at the Tiskilwa online library system, "Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World", and am loving it! It's slowing me down and helping me think that this is my chance to be still and listen to God too!

3) They people at Tyndale are WONDERFUL and I am so blessed and invigorated by the conversations here that I don't mind that I literally have not left our little suburb and have yet to actually see Amsterdam. All in due time!

Much love to you all...

Except for a few days last week when we rented a car (thus the cool pictures), we are being home bodies, or "dorm