Visits to Holland

At the end of May Jim & Juliet Kilpin visited Holland to meet the Dutch UE teams who were themselves meeting together for the first time. There are now two teams in The Hague and one in Rotterdam with a fourth emerging in Amersforrt. The second team in The Hague has grown out of the work that Matt & Lindsay started several years ago – a church planting team planting a church planting team if you like! The team in Rotterdam is reasonably established and leads Thugz Church which ministers with and to many from the West Indian (Antillean) community who are caught in a drug and gang subculture. They say they have found in UE people who speak a common language and share common values and are looking forward to learning from others involved in similar situations. For the team in Amersfoort this was an opportunity to meet with others from UE and consider their relationship.

We spent the weekend in a lovely retreat centre near Amersfoort and spent time eating, chatting, listening to stories, playing football, roasting marshmallows, having water fights, playing games, eating, praying, sunbathing, drinking more coffee, singing, watching puppets and magic tricks and eating some more!

The pictures show the Dutch teams and Matt giving out the Dutch translations of the UE liturgy as they commissioned the new UE teams. Jim and Juliet are looking forward to taking most of the UK team leaders over to meet some of the Dutch teams for their team leaders' day on 20 June.