In our last newsletter Alette and I announced that we were expecting to move to DR Congo around January 2015. However, a number of events and circumstances highlighted and confirmed the need to change that plan to staying in the Netherlands for a year after we get married next month. It is a big shift, yet one that brings much peace and life. We will explain more in this newsletter. In our next newsletter, hopefully our first as a married couple, we hope to pick up writing about the ministry projects again.
Shalom,
Johan
Change of Plans – a year in the Netherlands
A year ago when I was in Congo I felt it was right to start preparing to move there after finishing my studies. So I set myself towards that goal. When Alette and I met, we laid down our individual plans, but the Congo plans seemed to resurface and were confirmed later. We discussed and prayed about first having a year in the Netherlands after getting married before making such a big move, but we had no peace about it at that time. We would just be waiting around and not be able to make a nest of our own. After a year we would have to uproot again. Instead, it seemed better to make our own home in Congo right away and be less involved in ministry in the first year. Following that insight we were preparing both to get married and to move, as we wrote about in the previous newsletter.
However, in the mean time it became clearer that I was becoming increasingly overworked. The symptoms started years ago. I often finished projects, assignments for my studies, admin tasks and other work with a heavy heart, lots of prayer and sheer willpower, just waiting for one thing to be over before I had to get myself do the next. Not that I didn’t believe in doing these things, but my heart felt increasingly burned out. After my summer travels last year, I came home weary. This whole academic year I simply was counting down towards the end, where I hoped to finally be able to get some months to recover and spend more time in prayer. Friends have pointed out to me the need for more rest or even a sabbatical, but since everything in my schedule has been back to back for years I didn’t know when to do that.
Last month I knew I was done. I ‘only’ had writing my thesis left, but it sucked the life out of me and nothing was happening anymore. I sat behind my laptop for days just staring at the screen, unable to get myself to work anymore, even if I had to work on something that interested me.
Additionally, Alette and I started to feel an increased desire to be more involved in the prayer movement in the Netherlands. As we were preparing for Congo we also saw the need for a stronger spiritual home community and a strengthening of relationships. We saw ideas and needs within Forerunner foundation that would be left unaddressed before we would leave.
Then, finally, one day when I woke up I just knew I couldn’t finish my thesis on time anymore, especially since the stress really started taking its toll on our relationship and wedding preparations. So we talked with mentors, friends and family, our support team and Andrew and Amethyst in Congo and everyone wholeheartedly advised us the same: just take a year to build the foundation of your marriage, get rooted in a strong spiritual community, built your support team and ministry, be involved in a house of prayer, write your thesis, and take a sabbatical to rest and recover and become inspired again. Instead of living for what I feel I should do, I want to learn to live for what I believe in and want to be doing. Motivated by my heart, out of relationship with the Father.
As Alette and I prayed and talked about where we would want to live for this year, we realized we both had been thinking about the same house of prayer in Amersfoort in the middle of the Netherlands. So we ‘spied out the land’ and had much peace about joining them part-time, as well as connecting with the church we visited in that city. They received us with open arms and we immediately felt that the getting rooted in a community that we were looking for was already taking place. Soon after that we got offered a lovely house for us to stay where we actually do get to nest without having to buy all the furniture. It even has a garden! It is a house that is dedicated to the Lord for prayer and community living. It is exactly what we get excited about! So we are looking forward to making our home there for now. Alette and I will be part time staff at the house of prayer and study part time and just have time to do more practical things, such as gardening or other things we’ve wanted to try out in our own home for a while.
In addition, as we have become more connected with topics that touch on Kingdom principles, such as sustainability and healthy food, I also am looking to choose a thesis topic that really resembles the things that I want to grow in and serve with in the Kingdom. Over the past years and even months I keep getting connected with people from various nations that also have a vision for God-centered, sustainable, healthy communities that can serve as places of hope, healing and refuge. I am excited to learn more about it once my energy is returning and I may have time for it again. We both sense that this may be the direction where the Lord is taking us for the future and that this year, including the thesis, is a great training time to prepare us for that task and to receive blueprints for starting and supporting sustainable communities centered around prayer.
You may wonder: what about Congo? We don’t know it for sure. We believe God really has spoken about moving there and so that’s what we are expecting will resurface for after this year. However, His ways definitely are higher than ours and sometimes He sends us on a road towards a destination simply for what we’ll learn on the way. We will therefore continue to pray in that direction and stay connected with Andrew and Amethyst while we make the most of our precious extra year here.
One urgent question we had was: what about the money? I feared initially that it would be wrong to just sit in the Netherlands for another year and live off of support. I wanted to get a job and was anxious about how God would provide. But as I saw the need for rest and prayer, as well as how I have to work on my thesis, I realized I that can’t get a job ‘on the side’. A season of rest is also a part of a long-term life calling. In addition, Alette and I will be living out our calling in how we are involved in the house of prayer and prepare ourselves for the coming years. We had confirming words in one week about how God was going to send the ‘ravens’ with provision, just like He did when He had Elijah wait at a brook during a time of drought. Since then, a number of unusual provisions have happened, even in regards to the coming year. So we continue to put our trust in Him to be our provider as we give ourselves to be diligent in what He gives us to (not) do.
We can imagine that you may have questions or thoughts for us. Please feel free to share those with us. Thank you for your understanding, your prayers and your friendship. We hope that we will be able to connect with you more in the coming year.
Johan
