There are very few front porches. Many houses are flush with the pavement or have a couple of steps up to the door and nothing else.

Most houses are made of brick, and people still lay it by hand.

Narrow rural roads

Streets are extremely narrow. Many a normal street is barely as wide as a typical Montanan alley.

I have seen very few potholes in my frequent biking, not like the ones you get in Missoula. Cobblestones, however, are brutal to bike over.

Cars are new and well-maintained. You almost never see old clunkers, or even cars more than five or ten years old.

Cars are also extremely small. You see a few vans, station wagons, and pickup trucks, but they are very much the exception. The average car is much smaller than the average car in the U.S. I did see a Subaru Forester once and stared at it in a bit of befuddlement. It’s such a Missoula sort of car.

Horse meat. In the grocery store. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m going to. I have eaten duck, kangaroo, quail, and various new kinds of fish here.

There are no deer! I bike past fields and along rural farm roads which, in Montana, would have deer or antelope or something bouncing across them all the time, but there are none. The closest I get are burros in fields. Yes, actual burros.

Burros and/or donkeys in a field

On the other hand, the birds never stop singing. Apparently no one told Belgian birds that they’re supposed to fly south for the winter.

No two toilets flush the same way. Most have some variation on two different buttons, one to use a small amount of water and one to use a larger amount, but some of them have a Start button and a Stop button, and some have a lever thing you pull up on, and some of them have the buttons on the wall instead of on the toilet.

Speaking of toilets, there are very few automatic toilets or sinks.

Speaking of toilets, you have to pay to use them in public. Usually 35-50 cents.

Nearly every set of stairs I have encountered is some variation on a spiral.

You often have to bring or buy your own kitchen appliances like stovetops and things when you move into a new place you’ve rented. All I had to buy was a refrigerator.

Speaking of refrigerators, they’re tiny.

There are still plants growing in the fields. Until November or even the beginning of December there were still flowers blooming. So weird.

Everywhere you look, there’s a marvelous castle or old church. Belgium has more castles per square kilometer than any other country in Europe.

Buildings crammed together in Brussels.

Belgium has more everything per square foot than anywhere in Montana. By this I mean that everything is extremely close together. Villages are only a mile or two from each other. There’s a farmhouse on every hill. Houses are often tall and narrow and squished up against each other (even in villages). Major towns and cities are ten or fifteen miles from each other. There are no wide open spaces.

Most buildings are made out of brick, especially houses and apartments. People still lay brick by hand, with a trowel.

People kiss each other. All. The. Time. You haven’t seen somebody since yesterday? You kiss him on the cheek. You just met a new acquaintance? You kiss her on the cheek. Actually you kiss the air near their cheek. Once, in my first month here, I was at a French friend’s house for dinner, and someone I was unacquainted with was coming late from work. He came in and, since I was sitting closest to the door, came straight to me and stuck his face out at me. I had a momentary recoil of horror (What are you doing?), and he had a momentary recoil of rejection (What a rude person!), and everyone at the table burst out laughing and kindly explained to me that he was French and expected a greeting kiss on/near the cheek, the way an American would shake hands, and explained to him that I was American and new and wasn’t used to strange men sticking their faces in my personal space. We also ended up laughing at each other/ourselves.

One of my excursions, to see the Flower Carpet Brussels creates for three days once every two years. Click on the photo to see more pictures.

One thing I never thought about before was how much lecture preparation is necessary. Since this is my first time teaching these classes (Introduction to Theology and Christology/Soteriology), I have to start from the beginning and write lectures for 12 weeks of 3-hour classes. After reading textbooks for most of June and July and writing lectures for most of August and September, I have about 8 weeks of each class prepared—and I’m already done teaching the second week! And as soon as I’m done writing those, I have to start on next semester’s lectures. As I knew it would, my being a tourist has reduced quite a bit in favor of my being a teacher.

I have to say, it’s a rather magnificent job to have, getting to read and analyze theology books and write a couple hundred pages on theological subjects, with the goal of teaching them to people who may be complete neophytes to theology. But sometimes I have to force myself to do it and to focus on doing it. I could use your prayers for focus specifically.

My desk, where I do most of my studying and lecture-writing

The best part, after my two whole weeks of experience, is definitely the teaching. I rather adore it. When I was itinerating, I loved the part where I got to get up and tell people all about what God was doing in my life and calling and European missions. That love has transferred to the process of teaching, which is really quite similar. I stand in front of people and tell them wonderful things about God.

After my second day, as I was biking home from school, I realized to myself that the act of teaching doesn’t feel like a job, even a job that I enjoy (I loved library cataloging, but it was still a job). It feels like doing something I love. It causes the same emotional sensations in me that doing things I do just because I love them does, such as reading or bicycling or taking interesting photographs. It might perhaps be almost like the feeling I get when I write fiction (though nothing is quite like that in the world). And to think that once upon a time I declared to myself my intention of never becoming a teacher (that was a very long time ago).

My 7:30am bike commute to CTS.

I have two classes of a dozen students each (large class sizes, for CTS), and each one has a couple of Americans, a couple of Nigerians, a couple of Belgians, a couple of Dutch, and one English student (each), with the odd Italian and Pakistani and Ghanian thrown in for good measure. Most are college age, but a couple are a little older and have already been in full-time ministry. Some of them have amazingly good brains. Some of them know absolutely nothing and ask the most interesting (and difficult) questions (“Is God still faithful to Israel?” “If God is King of Kings, how is Jesus King of Kings?” “If there is natural revelation, what about people who see the existence of God through nature but never hear the gospel?”).

One of the classes told me they would never have imagined I hadn’t already been teaching for ages. I think this is because, for one, I’ve spent my whole life contemplating the topics I am teaching on (when I was about 9 years old, for instance, I would probably have told you that Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection for our benefit were only logical, given the nature of God—though not necessarily in those words); and for another, I’ve just spent two years doing public speaking almost every single week, which has helped me feel comfortable and natural being in front of people and speaking to them. Thank you, two years of itineration!

And, yes, I have cried in three out of four class periods. Once was when I was talking about the importance of John the Baptist to the life of Christ and read Isaiah 40, where Matthew and Mark get their prophecies which John fulfilled. (Go read it. Go, right now. And think about John the Baptist declaring this about Jesus before His baptism.) The second time was when I was talking about Jesus’ servanthood as revealed in the Last Supper and read Isaiah 53. (Go….you get the point.) The third time was today, in my Intro to Theology class, where I’ve been talking about the attributes of God (holiness, love, justice, and so forth), and in my section about faithfulness I told them about my own experience of God’s faithfulness. I don’t think I could not cry while discussing such wonderful subjects. But I warned them all ahead of time that it was entirely likely I would. And who knows, maybe now whenever they read the beginning of Mark and read about John the Baptist, they will remember about Isaiah 40 and remember that it is so lovely that their theology teacher cried about it in class. (I don’t think I’ve ever had a theology teacher cry in class, which makes me wonder what’s wrong with them.)

Most of my students have been mostly paying attention, which is perhaps as much as a teacher can ask for. (And of course those who don’t seem like they’re paying attention very well might be.) There’s often discussion and questions asked, and a couple of times students have kept talking about things we talked about in class as they put their things together and leave, which means they’re interested. Quite delicious, I must say.

I can’t wait to teach again on Monday.

Footnotes:
*I also got to watch the building next to my new apartment get completely torn down, observe a crane pull the demolition backhoe out of a hole it fell into (almost falling into my kitchen as it did so), and usher men through my apartment to look at the hole they accidentally drilled into my guest bedroom. That’s enough for a whole blog post itself.

My new friend Sigmund, chomping away at the building next door. This picture is taken from my bathroom window.

The Belgian Synod Attestation is a statement from a religious body in Belgium attesting to the fact that you are a religious worker in official standing with a religious body in your home country which has official affiliation with the Belgian Synod. The application for it requires these documents:

• The application, which is longer and more complicated than the visa application.
• A notarized affidavit from the Assemblies of God that it is what it is and you are what you are in relation to it.
• A notarized letter from the Assemblies of God that it endorses your visa application and guarantees your salary.
• A notarized letter from your insurance company affirming that you have insurance that is effective worldwide.
• A list of your educational credentials.
• A photocopy of the official agreements between the Assemblies of God and the Belgian government or the Belgian Synod, or something Belgian.
• A photocopy of your passport.

6. All of this must be scanned and emailed to the nice person with AGWM who will pass it on to the Belgian Synod. It can take up to three months to get the attestation.
7. Select the FBI background check request as the second thing to do. Really it should have been the first thing. Tsk tsk.
8. Rush madly about all the tiny towns in the area of western Washington where you still are until you find a police station that is doing fingerprinting. Find out they require cash payments and run to the nearest ATM to get some. Get fingerprinted, which is a most interesting procedure.
9. Go to a Rite-Aid to buy a money order to send with the FBI background check request, and stand in line for ages only to find out they, too, require cash. Spend more money at an ATM to get more cash and stand in line for ages again. Get the money order.
10. Send in your fingerprints and request to the FBI. This can take up to 15 weeks to get back.
11. Finally go home to Montana and start packing your house.
12. Pack a lot.
13. Receive the original documents from AGWM that were sent in digital form to the Belgian Synod. Don’t lose them. I almost did.
13. Pack some more.
14. Find out from another missionary also going to Belgium all the absurd things you have to do for the medical form required for the visa. Realize you’re going to have to go to Billings (5 hours away) to get it apostilled (a governmental certification).
15. Suddenly receive the Belgian Synod Attestation in the mail with a lovely cover letter, only a month after you sent in the application.
16. Pack some more.
17. Find out from another missionary that if you send in your background check request to an FBI-approved channeler, you might get it way faster than you will from the FBI.
18. Rush madly about Missoula to find a place to get re-fingerprinted (electronically, which is also a very interesting procedure).
19. Send off your second background check request with an even larger fee.
20. Make a doctor’s appointment for the medical form. Make sure they know you have to have a notary present. Make sure they make sure the notary knows he or she has to have his or her notarial certification present.
21. Pack some more.
22. Study a lot of Dutch. Ik leren Nederlands graag.
23. Find out you actually have to go to Helena (3 hours away) instead of Billings for the apostilling of the medical form. You have to make an appointment and pay another fee.
24. Pack some more.
25. Sell a lot of stuff.

This is where I am presently. Here are the additional steps I know about but have not yet taken:

26. Go to your doctor’s appointment and have a lot of bloodwork done to certify the following:

And has found him/her free of one of the following illnesses as mentioned in the annex of the law of 15/12/1980 and representing a danger for public health :
1 Illnesses requiring quarantine as stated by the international health regulation n°2 dated 25 May 1951, of the World Health Organization;
2 Pulmonary tuberculosis, active or progressive ;
3 Other contagious or transmittable diseases by infection or parasites if they are subject in the host country to provisions of protection of the nationals

Who knows what these are?

27. Wait for the bloodwork to come back, possibly several days.
28. Pack some more.
20. Go back to the doctor’s and have the paperwork signed and notarized.
30. See if the notary will also notarize your signature on the visa application.
31. If not, find some other notary to do it.
32. Make an appointment in Helena for the apostilling. Send them a scan of the medical certificate first to make sure it’s been notarized properly.
33. Drive to Helena and get the medical certificate apostilled.
34. Hope desperately the FBI-channeler background check has come.
35. Make sure you have all the pertinent forms from AGWM. Make lots of copies of them.
36. Get a certified check in dollars from your bank made out extreeeemly carefully to the Consulate General of Belgium.
37. Place 2 copies of your visa application (which took about 3 minutes to fill out) tenderly and graciously into a large envelope with the following:

• Your passport
• A language form completely in Dutch explaining that you want all your paperwork in Dutch because you will be living in a Dutch-speaking section of Belgium. The other options are French and German.
• 3 passport photographs
• The originals and two copies of all the documents you already sent to the Belgian Synod
• The Belgian Synod Attestation
• The FBI background check
• The signed, notarized, apostilled, and bathed in camel’s milk (not really) medical certificate with two copies of the same.
• Yet another fee, the certified check.
• A self-addressed, self-stamped address so you can get back your passport and all the other documents, which you need to have in hand to get into Belgium.
•  Your firstborn child who can spin straw into gold (not really).

38. Take said envelope to the post office and give them a lot of money to send it very quickly to the Belgian Consulate in Los Angeles, which has jurisdiction over Montana.
39. Have your bank wire yet another fee, in Euros, to the Consulate.
40. Gnaw on your fingernails and pray it doesn’t take the possible two months that it could take, because by this point you want to be in Europe much sooner than that.
41. Pack some more.
42. Have a goodbye party.
42. Find out, oh frabjous day, that you have been issued a visa.
43. Make an appointment to receive it.
44. Fly to Los Angeles. Yes. Fly to Los Angeles to pick it up. You have never had any desire to go to Los Angeles—in fact you have sometimes in the past said to yourself that while San Diego is perfectly lovely, you never ever want to go to Los Angeles. Nevertheless, fly to Los Angeles.
45. Figure out how to get to the Belgian Consulate from the airport.
46. Do whatever you have to do at the Consulate to get the visa.
47. Go see the La Brea Tar Pits, because they’re like 3 blocks away.
48. Fly home again.
49. Buy a plane ticket.
50. Go to Belgium, taking care to bring all the reams of paperwork with you to bemuse the poor immigration agents.

This has taken you five months. But if all goes to plan, you will be celebrating your 35th birthday at a missionary convention in Croatia.

At Missionary Training and Renewal, I met several different people who had some connection to the school I will be teaching at in Belgium, Continental Theological Seminary, so I got several different perspectives on it. One woman on the Europe leadership team had worked there for years some time ago and told me a lot of the practical things I wanted to know, like what the physical structure of the school is like (it is in an old chateau which was constructed out of the horse stables belonging to an ancient castle…). I had a lot of questions answered that people are always asking and I have no idea about since I have never been there. (Alas, I have no pictures that I have permission to use. But you can go here and see pictures for yourself.)

With Paul and Angela Trementozzi (on left) and Joseph Dimitrov (on right).

On the very last day, at the commissioning service, I got to meet two presidents of CTS. The last president, Roland Dudley, is now teaching at Trinity Bible College, my own alma mater, and I got to be introduced to him in passing there. The current president, Dr. Joseph Dimitrov, was also there. Dr. Dimitrov is Bulgarian and is the first non-American president of CTS. I’ve talked to him on Skype once, but I actually met him properly, and he prayed for me during the prayer service at the end.

But my first meeting was with Terry Hoggard, CTS’s Director of Development, and it answered my most important question: What on earth do you want me for? I have caught myself wondering, What have I got that someone else can’t provide for you? Am I really going to do something indispensable? Am I worth people supporting me when they could be supporting orphans in Africa?

Without knowing any of that, Terry told me about CTS’s goals for the future, and those goals are something I can contribute meaningfully to. The European model of theological education is totally academic and intellectual. Now, I adore the academic and intellectual, as anyone who knows me knows. But, he said, they need to learn how to integrate the intellectual with the spiritual. European students don’t expect their spiritual life to be enlivened by their theological education. The CTS leadership is making a concerted effort to move in the direction of community and spiritual life. Forty students were filled with the Spirit there last year! That’s nearly half the student body.

Davidson Hall at Trinity Bible College, my first dorm, now being refurbished for an academic building. Picture by Alyse Erbele.

Ever since I was at Trinity Bible College (I graduated in 2003), I have longed to help students make that connection. When you go to Bible college, you’re often warned to take extra great careful care for your spiritual life, because being in theological classes all the time can kill it. (Never mind that if you don’t take extra great careful care for your spiritual life, anything will kill it.) But I found the exact opposite to be the case. My spiritual life was enlivened and expanded by being at Bible college and in theology and missiology and Greek classes. When I learned something about, say, God’s purposes behind the sacrificial structure established in the Pentateuch in an Old Testament class, or about how Francis of Assisi became a Christian in a Christian history class, or about particular strategies for reaching a particular people group in a missions class, or about the significance behind Paul’s use of a participle in a particular passage in a Greek class…my mind expanded and with it my heart and my excitement about what God does and my enjoyment of who He is. Oh, I loved it.

That’s the teacher I want to be, not just one who says, “This is what a participle is,” but one who shows why the participle is important to the structure of Paul’s sentence and the overall goal of what he is trying to teach about God and the church. Or not just one who teaches the dates that Francis of Assisi lived and the structures he established in the Catholic Church, but one who can show how his life was transformed, how God used him to transform aspects of the Church of his era, how similar that is to what God did through John Wesley, how similar that is to what God wants to and can do in the Church in Europe…

CTS needs me. Isn’t that crazy? I need CTS, because I don’t have much teaching experience, and being there will give it to me. But they need me, too, because I have a perspective they are deeply wanting, and the very thing I have wanted to contribute to any school I am in is the very thing they want from me. Why, yes, I am actually worth people supporting. Because I’m called by God, for one thing, and because I’m going to go do something rather special He’s laid out for me.

He has told you, O man, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?
                                                                    Micah 6:8

Probably my favorite part of my three weeks in Springfield was all the time spent with the other Europe people. We had three days of classes/sessions together during Training and two days during Renewal as well as a couple of picnics and other such get-togethers. I got to meet people I will know in the future, not necessarily people I will be directly working with in Belgium, but other new missionaries who will be in Spain and Greece and Wales, and I’ll get to see them at future Europe gatherings. I made some good friends.

Belinda and Rhonda, new European missionary friends

The Family
The European leadership is making a concerted effort to create a family-like atmosphere of support for all the missionaries. Gone are the days of someone striking out by himself and living alone in a little hut somewhere, to live or die entirely on his own work. New missionaries are given mentors and help in acclimating to their new culture, and there are yearly get-togethers in areas. We don’t have to struggle through our problems alone and are not shamed for facing problems. I love this emphasis on the family of missionaries in Europe.

Europe Leadership

Paul and Angela Trementozzi

The world is divided up into regions, each with its own director. Europe is a region (but does not include Eastern Europe, which is part of Eurasia), and its directors are Paul and Angela Trementozzi, who are two of the dearest people I have ever met. Then each region is divided up into areas. Belgium is in the Northwest Europe area. I guess I can’t get away from the Northwest, which is fine with me. My area directors are Tim and Marketa Southerland, whom I didn’t meet until my last week there. There are other people in other areas of leadership while also doing their own ministries in Europe, like a missionary who is working in Romania and is in charge of the outreach to the marginalized of Europe. We got to hear from all of them, learn from them, talk to them, pray with and be prayed for by them, watch soccer/football with them. (I tell you, those Europe missionaries are crazy about their soccer/football.)

I found it splendid to learn about the overall missions strategies for Europe. I tend to like to see the big picture before getting into details, and they provided us the big picture, the DNA of missions in Europe that unifies all the individual ministries that all the individual missionaries are doing. No matter what you’re doing in Europe, it’s hard to not somehow be involved in one (if not all) of these three things: reaching the secularized, touching the marginalized, and revitalizing the European church.

We were all given this coin with the DNA and goals of Europe missions on it.

Revitalizing the Church
How will my particular little task, teaching theology in a Bible college, fit into these goals? Well, I will probably be indirectly involved in all of them through my students and the ministries that they go on to do. But the biggest one for me is church revitalization. I will be teaching some of Europe’s future church leaders, helping to create a culture of passionately spiritual theology in their lives. The European church as a whole is so dead and dry, but Continental Theological Seminary is turning out Spirit-filled leaders who won’t let it stay that way. It has always been a deep interest of mine to help people within the church become spiritually, psychologically, and interpersonally whole and strong, to help bring them to theological and emotional maturity. Those people will then go out and plant strong, mature, living churches. Those churches will reach Europe’s marginalized and secularized. I get to play a part in all of them.