New Roommate

Today I have a new roommate. My old roommate left a few weeks ago and I was really enjoying living by myself, but a new girl has come and I was the only room open. She seems really nice. So far I've only been able to say hello to her cause she's been going through all the introduction stuff. It's so weird to have someone else in here.

At the end of the week most of the staff will be leaving. At the Jordan we will have about 8 people left to work and then a couple leave after the second week. So all this means that my August will be very busy. I'm the only cleaner supervisor left, so I will be doing that job about every day. I'm really scared about that cause it's so much work. So if we could just pray that God can send us more workers for the month of August, that would be great!!! We are even more short staffed than the spring when I first started.

Something that I have been thinking a lot about lately is home. More so about why do we have to associate ourselves with one denomination? I mean I do it all the time; someone asks me what church I go to and I always say Southern Baptist. And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but why can't we every once in a while, come together as one body of Christ and show the community that even though we are different denominations, we still have Jesus at our core, and we, together as one body, want to share Him with you. I've been thinking a lot about how to do this. There is a thing called "Serve the City" and it happens all over the world. Christians from different denominations come together for one weekend to complete projects that need to be done in the community. And these are a lot of different things, from construction, to talking, to taking care of someone or something; it all depends on what you feel your strengths are. Why couldn't we do something like that at home? Even though we're not a city, we still have a lot of things that could be done in our town/county. I just don't want us to always be so seperated by our denomination and realize that we are all children of God and God wants us to serve each other as one body. Just something to think about.

My Parents are in Amsterdam!!!!! :)

Yesterday morning at 8:30 am, my parents arrived in Amsterdam.  I showed them all around my neighborhood, the Shelter, and our house (mom has a lot of stuff figured out, but my house is a little hard for her to navigate around...haha).

Today we walked to the Rijksmuseum and saw all the Dutch master painters, had lunch, and walked around some more.  We are really tired.  For dinner tonight we ate at The Pancake Bakery.  Here are some photos of our pancakes.

World Cup

For the last month, the country has been watching the World Cup.  This year The Netherlands made it to the finals against Spain.  Neither team had ever won a World Cup before, so it was a very big game.  A group of us from the Shelter went to Museumplien to watch the match with about 100,000 people.  There were so many people dressed in Orange all around us.  We stayed for the opening and watched a few minutes of the first half, but then went back to the Shelter to finish; we knew if we went there we would actually get to see it.  The Netherlands lost and I don't think I have ever seen an entire city so upset.  I was hoping for parties in the streets, but it was just sad faces of people walking back to their homes.  I have a video of their National Anthem before the game started.  I took it from my camera, so the sound isn't as loud as it actually was there with 100,000 people, but I can't get it to load.  I'm going to keep trying cause I would really like for you to see it.  Here are some pictures instead.

Everyone walking to Museumplien

A small sample of the 100,000 people

We were off to the side cause there was no way we could get in the middle.  This is also at the very front, there were 5 more screens to the right.

.....

Well...I haven't been doing good lately. I am completely exhausted. Me and my "give 125% in everything that you do" attitude has worn me out. Especially when I have to finish other people's work along with my own. I've had to ask to not be a CS for a few weeks because I am completely burnt out. I was having to be CS every other day until last week, almost twice as much as any of the other CS people and there are three of them. Today was my only day to work in a two week period and I had a cleaner who didn't show up, so I did all 22 of his beds in 1 & 1/2 hours, then cleaned all 8 of his rooms, then cleaned his chore for stairs, and then after lunch proceeded to do all my chores for the day and finish the chores from the person yesterday cause they were to "busy" to finish their stuff. I finally left and hour and a half after I was supposed to. And tomorrow I get to feed 98 people breakfast all by myself because I am scheduled alone on a Friday morning with a full hostel.



Out of all this negativity and exhaustion there is one bright spot. Today in cleaner time we discussed John 18:1-40 & 19:1-16 and I gave a few questions to the cleaners. 1. What was the crime that was committed? 2. Was it just, for him to be crucified? Which sparked a great debate and I just kept asking more questions and one cleaner just kept answering, and then I asked, "Why didn't Jesus take the way out? He could have just had Pilate take Him away, but He didn't. Why?" And his answer was, "Because Jesus already knew what was going to happen and He had to die on the cross to die for our sins."..........Just like that. He said exactly what we have been telling them all along. Now all we can do is pray that he really understands what he said today and how he can apply it to his life. All day I have thought about his statement and it has just made me so happy. Whenever something upset me today, I've just thought about that sentence and everything is better. No matter how tired I am from working here, it's chances like this where I see that it's all worth it. Just giving people the chance to read God's word, when they never would have done it otherwise, and see how they can find the truth in it, is so amazing. I just pray that they can really understand the scriptures and it can be something that is put on their heart and they can make a decision from it.