EN End of the radiosilence

For four and a half month, it has been silent here on my blog. I wrote my last update (only in Dutch) at the end of March, when I had just returned from my time in Hawaii. When I think about how it’s already august, I can’t help but wonder where April, May, June and July have gone. I’ve been in the Netherlands for almost five months now and I think that may be a record for me. The last time I stayed in the Netherlands for this long at a time, was probably at the beginning of my last year in high school. Not a lot has happened in my life over the past few months, but there still are some things to write an update on. And don’t worry, my time in the Netherlands is almost coming to an end, but more about that later…

I ended my last blog with a plan for the upcoming time (however long that would be). I still wanted to go back to Mercy Ships as soon as possible, partly because I knew that’s what God wanted, and therefore I would stay ready to go. In the meantime, I would stay home and if it would look like it would be a longer while before I could return to Mercy Ships, I would look for a job. During that time I stayed in contact with the Dutch office and it didn’t take long for us to realize it could indeed take a while before I could return to the ship. I therefore decided to look for a job and I could start one almost immediately at a tulip farm. There I first worked a few months in the tulip selection out in the field and later I helped with cleaning the bulbs at a production line.

 

The rest of the spring months, not a lot happened in my life, other than that I decided to apply to university. One of my reasons for this was that I wanted to use my time well if i had to stay in the Netherlands for a year or longer due to the pandemic.

The months of July and August (so far) have been filled with a lot more fun. All of the past months I’ve been home, I’ve spent a lot of time with family, but when the weather became nicer, we could also go out and do more fun activities. We went out for a day with a small boat, went canoeing and waterskiing.

At the end of July I also went to a summer camp for a week. I joined as one of the leaders in the kitchen, which meant that together with two other girls, I prepared the food for the 40 teens and 20 leaders at camp. We mostly did a lot of cutting and even more groceries. It was a jampacked and exhausting, but super fun week!

 

 

I had already been doubting my choice for university for a while (because when ever do I not doubt about that?) and when my doubt became bigger, I thought about postponing the start of my studies to the Spring semester in February, to give myself a little more time to think about it. I knew this was possible for my uni, but I had no idea what else I would want to do in the upcoming six months.

That was, until I received and email, from Mercy Ships. An email that said they desperately needed volunteers for different positions on board and for two of those positions, I could apply with my experiences and skills. For me, it was an easy choice to make. I immediately contacted Mercy Ships and before I knew it, almost everything had been arranged. It was a bit stressful, because everything was happening so last minute (I would have moved to uni last Friday otherwise), but now I have booked my flight to Tenerife, leaving next Wednesday, the 19^th of August. Life on board is very different from normal, but I’ll tell you more about that in a next blogpost.

Exactly four months ago I would have gone back to the Africa Mercy. I have been in the Netherlands for four more months than I had planned and had been waiting for four months for an update to tell me I could go back to the ship. Next week it will finally happen and I will, if all goes well, set foot on the Africa Mercy, where I will stay for three months. I can’t wait!

 

In the upcoming months I will keep posting updates on this blog, probably in the same monthly rhythm I used in Hawaii, but maybe even a bit more often.

 

For now: thank you for reading and until next time!