Sunday in the Park

The weather slowly began to break on Sunday, moving from cool and rainy to cloudy and eventually to warm. We saw Miriam for the first time (she was in a weekend workshop) and had a chance to catch up, albeit only a bit. She was off to the workshop and we were off to their church, Crossroads. Bob drove us back to Amsterdam from Almere which was an easy drive on Sunday morning.

Crossroads is a rarity in the Netherlands, a church that is growing. Approximately 500 people attend each of the three worship services for a total of 1500. The church rents out a high school auditorium with electronic capacity for sound and video. Bob & Miriam told us that most Sundays have a routine but on this Sunday the church would have very different services. A Ugandan children's choir sang and danced with an energy rarely seen in churches in the north. There was a memoriam for a woman in the congregation who had died earlier in the week. There was a baby dedication. A young leader of the church leadership team preached. It was all well done.

We met with a friend, Naomi, who attends the church but is also Ethiopian-Japanese. We had attended her wedding in Addis when she married our friend Araya. She is in Amsterdam looking for a job back in Addis but will be returning in a couple of weeks. We enjoyed meeting up with her, seeing her in her context (she grew up in Holland).

Bob took us then to Zaandam to a tourist park to see the few windmills that were left standing and running. The area once had up to 1000 windmills 300 years ago in what Bob described as the first industrial park in the world. Located right on the Zaan river, the windmills used the wind and the water to power industry. It was the rise of the English industrial revolution with steam and engines that led to the rapid downfall. At some point the city fathers agreed to preserve a remnant of the windmills as a memorial to a lost way of life. Today it is a tourist park with the windmills grinding oil seeds, colored rocks and materials for paint colors and other uses.

The entire time we toured the scent of chocolate was in the air. Across the river in the town of Zaandam a factory was busy making chocolate. What an added treat to the senses!

By now the weather had changed. Sunny and hot and humid. We had shed our outer layers and were looking for shade where we could. The girls were all eyes and ears as we saw how wooden shoes are made, how cheese is made (we saw mostly the end product) and how the colored paint dyes were ground and made. Bob kept the tour lively and enjoyable. We lunched on Dutch pancakes which are as big as a dinner plate with various toppings on them, ranging from meat and cheese to sugar and spice. By the end of the afternoon we were tired but happy with our first tour. Memorable.