We celebrated our first major Dutch Holiday last week, Koninginnedag, or Queen’s Day.  It celebrates the birth of the Queen of the Netherlands on April 30.  No, not the current one.  Her mother, Juliana.  The night before is called Koninginnenacht (Queen’s Night), which is a big festival featuring live bands throughout downtown Den Haag.  We spent the night with our fabulous Dutch friends walking the streets, listening to music, and enjoying delicious Dutch snacks like streetfair Pannenkoeken!

The entire weekend people started coming to our street to stake out their spots for the big Queen’s Day flea market.  People camped out overnight all up and down our street.  The next morning we were stunned by the massive street fair that was already in full effect right outside of our flat!

Queen’s Day video

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from Heather Good morning Holland! It’s Queens Day! It was such a treat to wake up to a humongous flea market literally right outside our door.  The whole street is alive with music & brimming with vendors of food, flowers, antiques & lots of baby things (I had such fun…Le Petit Bateau sweaters, dresses & onesies galore!)  We are having a joyful day as it seems the whole population of the Hague strolls past our window. There are hundreds upon hundreds of vendors lining thestreets, selling their wares.  It is a perfect day to enjoy our neighborbood & celebrate the Queen’s birthday, surrounded by a sea of orange.  Later in the afternoon we had our food crawl with the fun dutch couple that lives above us.  We had homemade donuts, oliebollen, proferitoles, BBQ…& more.  It was such a wonderful holiday!

Heather and I were very excited to have the opportunity to share the Easter story with the children of APCH this year.  When we first arrived at APCH we learned that they traditionally had a party on Easter. We quickly decided that we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to share the message of Christ’s Resurrection, particularly since Easter is one of the most attended church services of the year.

We were blessed to have such a wonderful & diverse group of children at the Easter morning program; there were children from all over the world, with a great mixture of visitors and regular attendees.  We began by teaching about the time leading up to Christ’s Cruxifiction, beginning at Palm Sunday, telling them about Christ’s tremendous sacrifice on Good Friday, & helping them process their thoughts with a a coloring activity.

We then Shared the story of Christ’s Ressurection using John’s eyewitness account of what transpired that glorious morning.  We finished with Heather telling the short story, “What was in Jeremy’s Egg?”  After the story, the children were to bring the empty egg their teacher handed to them to Heather if they understood what it meant that Jesus’ tomb was empty on Easter morning, for them, for us all!

Heather and I will never forget our first Easter Sunday at APCH.  The Lord has blessed us with a very unique opportunity to reach the children of so many different nations.  What a blessed day!  Hallelujah, “He is not here; he has risen!” (Luke 24:6a).

Dear Friends & Family,

We have been here in the Hague, South Holland for two months now. It has been a real challenge to get settled into our new life & surroundings here. And we have come to realize…we are unequivocally, unexpectedly missionaries! If we had only known! We would have sought out your prayerful support sooner, because we are stunned how much we deeply need it; we are 100% in a foreign country and on the mission field! It is a unique, complex, beautiful, and especially right now as we are acclimating, overwhelming situation that the Lord has called us into. We know God called us here after waiting two years for God’s leading in where he wanted us to serve, but wow, did He have something big in mind for us!

The church we are serving at, the American Protestant Church of the Hague, is a joyful combination of peoples from all over the world. This church is a HUGE mission field, (as are all churches in some ways); but we are truly in a foreign land now serving the Lord and his people from literally all over the world. We are excited to have such an amazing opportunity to serve these children, teens, their families and in a way, the world, but also humbled by the challenge.

It is surreal and overwhelming to run excellent programs as foreigners while feeling completely handicapped in the modern world…we had some real struggles with connecting to the modern digital world. After two months we are so glad to report we have the internet & a telephone at home! We can run these ministries and feel called to do so, but we have been overwhelmed because it takes time to get set-up, meet people, even come to terms with where we are now living (& not be surprised when we wake up!) and move past culture shock. Our dog Cody is doing well adjusting to his new street however. He has made very good friends with the kitty next door & loves the vegetable salesman who gives him carrots!

We are realizing quickly we are at a loss not being able to speak Dutch here as well. We wish we did & this summer will have to work on learning a bit. Almost everything is in Dutch: directions, street signs, product packaging, appliance manuals, contracts. Google translator is helpful, but takes a very long time which we are very short on. Every time we get mail, we need to find someone who speaks Dutch so they can translate for us. This has been particularly stressful with immigration and official papers, healthcare, and setting up our home. The funniest was last week the immigration offices sent us a whole booklet in Dutch only, on signing up for a beginner’s Dutch course! Hello…we don’t speak Dutch – that’s why we would take a beginner’s course!

We clearly can tell we were called here in ministry. There are so many fantastic, amazing young people here & it takes a huge group of wonderful adult volunteers to shepherd them all! Please pray that we can raise up more core volunteers for our Youth and Children’s Ministries especially for this Fall, so that we may get fully organized soon.

In our new Dutch life, some of the most helpful, loving people have been the young local Dutch people themselves who live on our street. We live on an incredible international street and we have felt some of the most love and support from total strangers. We have very easily made friends with the locals: they are joyful, kind and fun. There are many young interesting shop owners here on our street which is just like Georgetown in Washington D.C.; very hip, very international and one of the biggest blessings to us! We thank God our apartment is here, we would be so lost without the joy of our street and new friends. Our upstairs neighbors are an adorable Dutch couple who have helped us with numerous translations and are one of our first young couple friends, the Dutch lady that with the deck next door had all of us (including Cody!) over to a wonderful loud Dutch/Russian party. We are very blessed to be here; now we just have to get it working so we can have a normal life and serve well!

There is so much need for the Lord here, and we are blessed to be entrusted with this ministry. Would you please partner with us and pray for us? The young people we are entrusted with desperately need Christ. Many are only here in the Hague for two to three years and move somewhere else new. It is a unique opportunity to share the Gospel with these precious young people; we are pastoring all who are 0 to 18. We desperately need your prayers and support. We, this church, Holland, Europe is in a true power struggle between those who seek to bring God’s Word to all people and powers that seek to confuse and darken that hope for the world.

But we know that “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord.” –Romans 8:39

In Christ, Heather and Brad, Cody and Baby Fuller (arriving July 20th!)

After being trapped in a storage facility in Massachusetts for over 2 years, and floating across the ocean for nearly 2 months, our belongings finally arrived in our new Dutch home! We are delighted!

Rather than use the door like mere mortals, our Awesome Dutch Movers constructed this elevator to ascend through our front window with all of our belongings in tow.

We could not be happier our kayaks made it to the land built on canals. Big adventures on the horizon!

Yes – our ginormous couch made it as well. We would not let Europe’s size deter us from maximum comfort. We have so many great memories on this couch with friends & family in both Washington D.C. and at seminary on the North Shore of Boston. We are so excited to welcome new friends to join us on this couch (it is awesome!). And we hope some dear old friends will fly over & join us for some more late nights of food & fun!

We are very excited to get our terrace set up so we can get a grill, commence with the grilling! Cody is thrilled to have his dog-arondick chair here with us!  Overall we just feel very blessed to live on such a wonderful street & in such a cozy home. We can’t believe how well our things fit; its seems meant to be! When we finish unpacking we will update with final photos…or just come on by!

Brad & I are so very excited to announce we are having a baby girl! She will arrive in late July, & we are so excited to meet her! I am overjoyed to be having a little girl!

It has been a unique challenge learning a whole new medical system here in Holland. Babies are mainly born with midwives & often at home which was a big shock! I have a midwife & a dr. & will be delivering at Bronovo hospital here in the Hague; it seems very nice. I have had lots of appointments & lots of tests to redo here in the NL; they didn’t accept all of our American tests & they have some very different ones as well. This is going to be one checked out baby!

We do have a prayer request as it has been a stressful move, & my health is struggling under the weight of it. I’ve lost 5 pounds since we arrived 4 weeks ago, & keep losing – though I am trying! You’d think the chocolate croissants alone that I’ve eaten would put it back on! I weigh what I did at 10 weeks pregnant, & am now 22 weeks. As of this week I am under the care of an Ob/gyn for the next month so he can monitor me. My sugar, blood pressure & potassium are too low. If I can bring them back up I can go back to the midwives which I do want.(mine lives across the street from me above the cheese shop!) otherwise I am classified as high risk because of my levels, which I don’t want. Needless to say, I’m really exhausted & it’s scary.

I would love your prayers for the baby’s & my health. The baby is just perfect right now (the stomach is a little small) but I am not quite as healthy. I was super healthy when we moved, & have had an easy pregnancy, but a very complicated international move (& some culture shock) & the new ministries we are running all in one month are taking their toll.

Thank you for all the care & support. We miss you all back home so very much! We don’t have a landline or internet yet, so can’t call outside holland or Skype yet. Every time we get a letter from home it means the world to us, so thank you for writing!

With love & prayers for all of you, Heather