Getting There

We're getting there. We really are. We still haven't completely arrived... but we're getting there.

I like the above photograph of my friend Jeroen, standing in front of an empty moving truck with his arms out to the sides as if to say: "Ta-da!" or "We did it!" or "Wie wist dat het zo makkelijk zouden zijn!?!?" It definitely seems like we're turning a corner in our church's relocation process, and yesterday was a key step in getting us to such a point.

Our work days over the last couple of weeks did not go quite as smoothly as we would have hoped. We kept running into unexpected obstacles (isn't that always that case?) -- some caused by our own stupid mistakes and some caused by unavoidable circumstances -- but we pressed through it all. And even though all of the painting is not completely finished (not even in the two big rooms, which we had been hoping to complete by this point), enough of it was done that we could move our church's vast collection of stuff from its temporary storage location to our new ministry center on the Herengracht (making it more accessible for when we are completely finished with the painting and avoiding the extra €400 per month in storage fees). So that's precisely what we did yesterday: we moved our stuff in.



Again, as with each stage of the process -- from moving out of the Zolder, to fixing up the Kelder, to moving into the Kelder -- we had the joy of working together as a team, as a family, to make things happen (this sense of teamwork is very evident from the above photograph, where Leslie and Maria offer "moral support" as Kor does the dirty work and Andrew stands by with a strange look on his face!). Seriously, I'm consistently surprised by how much fun we can have together -- even while we're working our butts off (and I should certainly mention that Leslie and Maria were not sitting down for the whole day!).



Working on the Kelder end of things (we had a separate crew at the storage facility, loading things up), I really enjoyed the time with Jozalien, Leslie, Kor, Maria, (myself), Andrew, and Claire (pictured above, from left to right). We decorated our piles of stuff with Christmas lights, we sang songs and pretended that we were playing "Tetris" with the boxes and furniture -- and we worked hard to accomplish our objectives for the day.



So you still couldn't exactly say that we're "moved in" to our new facility. More or less, we just transferred storage facilities. But still, I feel good to know that we're getting there. Langzaam maar zeker -- slowly but surely -- we're getting there.