Welkom...

... to mom, dad, Tammy and Shok who arrived in the Netherlands at 9:59 this morning!

I'm looking forward to having them stay for nearly two weeks!

Also, came across a great quote today:

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
~ Dinah Craik

And with that, I wish you all a happy Boxing Day. Or, as they say in the Netherlands, Happy 2nd Christmas Day!

New Blog Alert

http://kristadutt.blogspot.com/

Click here, my friends, and be treated to Krista's new blog!
Krista is a dear, dear seminary friend of mine. We've had amazing times together, including a heavenly week in Rome in September of 2005.

Nativity

(Click to enlarge.)

Canada


The Belated Summer Vacation Photo Journal continues...
Esther (above, with fruit) left her Elkhart home early one August morning, picked me up in Archbold, and we proceeded north, in order to visit ...


our dear friend Kristen, who resides in what many of us consider a land flowing with milk and honey (or at least stroopwafels and blueberries). We spent 48 lovely hours together, culminating in a visit to ...


Lydia and Drew, my very hip neice and nephew-in-law.

It was a road trip to be remembered. Sunglasses on, funky mix-CD in the CD player, crazy city driving, trouble at the border!, picnic in the park, coffee and donuts in the city, a thrift store like no other, a visit with Kristen's cool 'rents and her apartment-in-progress, ice cream, a mysteriously disappearing DVD player and extensive conversations about the merits of owning a laptop.
What more could one ask for in a road trip?

My classmate, Juan Quevedo-Bosch, was born in Cuba and is a resident of New York, where he works as an Anglican priest in a multicultural parish. He wrote the following, which I would like to share with all of you.

Thanksgiving is an American festival strongly embedded in the mythogenesis of American identity.... It is celebrated by a family dinner with a detailed and prescribed menu, the center piece of which is the roasted turkey and a number of other elements that reputedly were part of the first Thanksgiving dinner. This seder of American manifest destiny could not escape unnoticed by Hispanic pilgrims themselves and reappropriated. Thanksgiving was dropped, perhaps since thankfulness is hard to come by for the oppressed marginal and it was renamed El Dia del Pavo (The Day of the Turkey) rather seriously. Bemused, I asked what was this Dia del Pavo all about and heard this most interesting new mythology. When the American pilgrims fathers came they were ambushed by North American natives and if a nearby turkey had not sounded the alarm, they will have surely being exterminated. This pavo salvador (savior turkey) was rewarded then with becoming the pie de résistance for the day of the first pilgrims! Putting humor and amazement at their ingenuity aside, I notice the shift in roles of the North American Indian, from savior to attackers, and how the savior role is displaced to the turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!