A Letter To A Friend

Blaine I'm glad everything's going so well for you. This time away from home has been a dizzy whirlwind of an experience. My concept of God has grown so much and He's shown me how big he actually is. I've felt more growth in the last 4 months than I have in almost 2 years. This trip has left me with a thorough addiction to traveling I think. In the next month I'm vacationing for 4 days in Prague. I'm very excited to have real time alone to explore the city and reflect with God on this entire experience.

I've definitely fallen in love with the city of Amsterdam. Though it's a seemingly confusing city at first it's easy to get attached to the quaint beauty of the old architecture, hidden shops, and cafes. Fridays and Saturdays are always the busiest with tourists coming in from the UK and France mostly. Sundays are quiet and sleepy. Like my friend Matt Nanes said "Sunday feels like the whole city has a hangover." Which I think is a pretty accurate description.

The hostel in the summer time was filled with guests from all over the world ranging from Israel to the Congo. The hostel was always filled with the sounds of music from the number of talented guests that used our piano and guitar in the cafe (one night a concert level pianist from France played, it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard). The other sound that the hostel was filled with was drunken guests who came in at 4 or 5 in the morning. The Shelter City is chaotic and messy which is the reason why I made it very clear I wanted to work there instead of the more subdued Shelter Jordan to the west.

Besides all the joy that's found in the hostel there's also lots of frustration. With yourself and people around you. Too many times did I feel inadequate to help those with problems around me. I felt like someone who trained in a wading pool but discovered at the day of the race that you would be swimming the English Channel instead. One night that's forever burned into my memory is a woman and her child from Israel wanted a room for the night. Even without her speaking you could see from her eyes that the world had broken her down and made her bitter and angry. She explained how she had been staying at a man's house in the city but saw that he had womens clothing in plastic bags in his closet in all different sizes. This for very good reason scared her and made her decide to check in here. We could only give her a room for one night which infuriated her and she made the remark she thought this was a "christian" hostel. She then explained how every religion had failed her starting with Judaism and now Christianity had failed her now to. The woman said she was going to try Buddhism next in hopes that they were better people. I felt so sad for this woman and her child. Blaine her child must have been one maybe one and a half years old. It felt like the child had no future with this broken woman who kept moving from place to place.

But amidst stories like this I've found so much hope but I'll write about that next
time.

PS: If you don't mind I'm going to use this part for my blog as well.

Best wishes,

Jeff