Happy Thanksgiving

This past week has been pretty routine. It is actually nice to have a bit of a routine now, makes Leuven feel a little more like home. Don't get me wrong, I still am very much looking forward to my stateside return, but I am getting more content here. The weather may have helped some. For most of November we hadn't seen the sun, but this past week we had 5 days in a row that were sunny with no rain. There was beautiful frost on the ground each morning and usually a soft fog setting over the city each night. But alas, the weather didn't hold out, and yesterday on my birthday of all days, the rain came back.

Today we head to the UK on the Eurostar high speed train. We are really excited about this trip, as is my daughter Mia that loves to ride on trains. We will spend one night in London with some old friends from high school. Then we will be heading out to Oxford where we will spend the remainder of the "holiday". (Holiday is in quotes because this is not an official holiday over here, so we are importing it for our own enjoyment.) While in Oxford we will hookup with some old friends from grad school, and also meet up with some new friends from Tabor! This will be an exciting trip and we are really looking forward to it.

One other note, we are feeling more at home again because we have found a church to go to. We were originally attending a small International church in Leuven. The setting was very multicultural, but the church was not child friendly. We had great difficulty getting Mia to be still, and on one occasion were asked to quiet her down from the pulpit. This was a bit embarrassing for us as you can imagine. Our friends mentioned another church in a nearby town that was reachable since we now had a vehicle. We visited last Sunday and we loved it. This Sunday was very much the same, Mia is really enjoying it as well. The church is mainly British, but the pastor is from Australia and we have met a few Americans as well. I even got to chat about the NFL with a couple guys! I would guess there are probably 5 continents represented in the church body.

Last week's message I really enjoyed. The sermon was on John 10 where Jesus uses a parable of the sheep to describe his relationship and purpose here on earth. The pastor began with a story about a farmer he knew in Australia what had thousands of sheep. "He of course knew every sheep by name as well, they were all named 'stupid'." I thought that was funny. We are of course the "stupid" sheep, and Jesus is the good shepherd that has laid down his life so that we might have life, "and have it to the full". This weeks message was on another passage in John, the first 4 verses of chapter 14. I never knew the background of this passage, but apparently this is a traditional speech that a man might give to a woman to propose to here for marriage, back in the first century anyways. If she says yes, then we would go to put an addition onto his father's house so that they could live there. When he was finished, he would come back to retrieve his betrothed to return to their new home. I thought this was an interesting passage that is another instance of the analogy of Jesus as the bridegroom and, in this case, his disciples as the bride.

On that note, enjoy your Thanksgiving everyone. Eat lots of Turkey and Pumpkin pie (with Coolwhip) for me!