The Boil, The Computer, and The Assessor

Stain-glass window, Amsterdam, originally uploaded by cutjas.

This past week was filled with busyness. I came right out of weekend conference in Stockholm and had my day of misery (see last post). On Tuesday I was in the office all day and most of the night finishing up the artwork for the First serve ministry Fair we had this past Sunday. The First Serve Ministry Fair was a chance for people in our church to sign up for service opportunities within our church and within our community. It was a great success, but took a lot of work. I was in charge of making all the signage, graphics, and organizing all the ministry booths on Sunday morning. Thanks to some long hours and a lot of help from other folks we were able to pull off this event. I was happy with the way it went, which is always a good feeling.

During the week I was so tired. I have learned something about myself over the years. I learned that stress makes me very tired. I have friends and family that get stressed and can’t sleep, they are so restless; I am the opposite, I can’t stay awake, literally. As stress goes up my need for sleep gets out of control and this causes as much of a problem as not getting enough sleep. During this week I was pretty much sleeping and working, that was my routine. I also noticed that my body was taking a considerable amount of energy to heal from this boil I had contracted. All of this culminated with me sleeping for 10 hours Sunday night and then resting/vegging out all day Monday, but it was well needed.

This past Friday I made the short trip to Amsterdam for my formal Team Leader assessment with Laina Graf. This was fun to make the trip, I enjoy riding the train and I had a nice tram ride through the heart of Amsterdam, it was amazing to see the diversity in that city. I had a Three-hour interview with Laina and then was invited to stay for dinner. I did and am glad for that decision. Laina is a professional caterer and the dinner was incredible. I was also able to meet some of their friends and get to know their family better.

After dinner Phil Graf invited me to stay for his monthly poker game, again, I am glad I did. I was able to win 30 euro’s!!! This was fun, the game was myself, Phil Graf, one of phil’s neighbors and his coworker Vivian, then Stuart and Tione (Twan) who Stuart buys vans from. It was a good group of folks and we had a good night of fun. Seeing as this was my third time playing poker I was pretty happy to finish 2nd in that group. Honestly, my only goal was to win enough to be able to by my train ticket back to The Hague.
I ended up staying the night at the Graf’s and then headed back to The Hague the following morning. Once back in The Hague, I went to set up for the Ministry Fair and then went home to a shower and a good nights sleep.

I have noticed something that was new to me this past week. It’s been three weeks now that I have been gone and I am experiencing a little relationship withdrawal. I got a couple messages from friends lamenting that I am not around to hang out. Another one of my friends lost his dog (Norm, a 14 year old greyhound) and I was hard for me not to be around for these friends who I do miss.

I know that I am where God wants me to be and that this is part of the transition process, but it is hard and is something I will have to learn how to deal with. This experience has made email, chat, and online phones very important. The fact that I can communicate with family on a daily basis makes “not being there” a lot easier to deal with, still nothing can replace face-to-face.

With that said, I am getting to know people here better, I found a soccer team to play with. I was invited over to a Dirk’s house to watch Football (soccer) this evening. Last night I went with Kevin and Kathy Johnson out to a pub for jazz night. It was spectacular; the 5 piece Jazz band was really good and played an impressive show. It is funny how I am working on maintaining old relationships and starting new one at the same time, such is life though.

I did the announcements in front of church again this week it has been helpful to get some up front exposure to the church and for myself to get more comfortable on stage. I am currently working on a paper on the “Attributes of service” for a meeting we have this week called the “Thinklings.”

I have been monitoring my finances closely, as well as, keeping an eye on the current economic status of the markets. Who knew that being a missionary would also make me an amateur finance analyst as well? I seem to be doing well with money so far, thanks to folks at home and people here being so generous I have been able to keep my costs down, but I will still need to raise some more money to be able to stay until May 1st. Right now I don’t have a hard number, but I hope to be getting a better idea of that figure in the next couple of weeks.

I do have some prayer requests:
1) I am starting to move forward on organizing the 25-35 year olds in our church for social event, service projects and small group communities. Pray that God rises up leaders who have a desire to work with this age group. Pray that service projects arise and that we start to feel a sense of community around this age.
2) Pray for confidence. I have a lot to say, but have a big case of stage fright. I need/want to over come this, it will take time and effort, but I know eventually I will be able to speak that message I have.
3) Relationships – as some of my good relationships change and as I build new ones that I will be wise and diligent in my relationships.
4) Be praying for the IJM initiative that is beginning here in The Hague. There is a lot of passion around this topic of Justice and the anti-slavery movement, pray that we would turn that passion into action wisely.

I thank you all again for you emails, prayers, comments and questions. Its nice to have the interaction with everyone.

Take care,
Jason Cutshall

P.S. I did finish reading a book called “Murder in Amsterdam” this was a book given to my by my friend Steph (shout out!!). It was a really good book detailing out the contemporary cultural/political situation here in The Netherlands regarding the influx of new immigrants. The book was a good account of some murders’ of radical figures in the Dutch cultural/Political scene. I think that this was able to unearth some of the angst that is under the surface here in the Netherlands. I do recommend it for anyone who is interested in the challenges of multiculturalism/melting pots. This book raises a lot of good questions and takes a very objective reporter type approach, although I am not well versed in the Dutch pop Politics.