Saturday, May 6, 2017

Back to the Future... Living in The Netherlands

After eight years in China, about which I have just entered a relatively small number of posts, we moved in the summer of 2015 to The Netherlands.
The first reason was that we felt God sent us there for a number of years to support my aging parents.
That is also the reason for us settling in my hometown, Drachten.
Drachten is a relatively new town (established after 1640, when under the direction of one of my ancestors, Mr. Bolleman dug a canal to facilitate the digging of peat in the area. Drachten is a significant centre of Christianity. While there are about 45,000 residents, we find quite a few, relatively large churches of Reformed background and "De Bethel", a Free Baptist megachurch.

I was blessed to get a teaching job in the area, even when we still lived in China. That was at a "Christian" school in a nearby town. Since I was not rehired for a second year, I had to find another job, which I got at a Christian school in Drachten, which originally was established as a parentally organized school for Reformed Christians (Liberated).

I have started a website, www.depoarte.org to share my theological views and concerns in the Dutch language. I also translated Stephen Westerholm's "Justification Reconsidered", and later I found a Christian publisher willing to publish this book in the Dutch language.

If I have the time I hope to share some of our experiences of living in the old country, where church and society have changed so much. Yet, we also have changed, and so -it seems- we have a somewhat different perspective on the current developments as those around us. What's new?

Drachten, May 2017

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