Earlier this month, I was  invited to attend the national conference for the Foursquare Churches in the Netherlands.  This was mainly for the purpose of building relationship with Piet Brinksma, the National Leader, and the National Youth Leaders there.  The entire trip was a blessing from start to finish.  On the ride over, I sat next to a young Norwegian man who remembered me from the Quart Festival outreaches we have been doing in Kristiansand.  He worked at the McDonalds when we had sent teams of youth in to clean the restaraunt for free.  As I heard more about him, I learned that he is 22 and is living a very missional life.  He travels in Norway and in Europe giving (well researched and educated) talks about creation and archeological evidence surrounding the Exodus of Israel.  This guy was bright!  Both in mind and in his life.  He works hard to finance all of his own travel, and even sometimes to finance other people to come with him.  Norwegians have a strong heritage as missionaries, and this guy was no exception.

The conference went extremely well.  I was spontaneously invited to share (along side Foursquare's Missions Director Jonathan Hall) in a workshop about reaching the next generation in Europe and engaging youth in missions.  I also spent a delightful 24 hours building a new friendship with Marco and Paulienn DeBruin (National Youth Leaders for Foursquare Netherlands).  They are a wonderful family and a terrifically missional couple.  We spent some time in down town Breda (near the Belgian border) where they live.  I was reading the capstones for graves from the 15 and 1600's in old Dutch.  Amazing to see some of the similarities that the Norwegian and Dutch languages have! 

This was a very encouraging and insightful trip.  It was great to see the unity and synergy among the 40+ churches in the Netherlands.  The Dutch are friendly and sincere people.  The cheese is awesome too!