a week in the life.... man, weeks are too short!

things happening all the time here... it has been a busy week! 

 -  for Reckoning (the non-profit) we were invited to participate in the Bos en Lommer festival in the neighborhood of Bos an Lommer here in Amsterdam. We put up a giant canvas for people to paint on, we made artist trading cards (art on playing cards) with kids, and gave everyone that stopped by a chance to do something creative!  It was very well received by the city office that invited us to participate as well as all of the kids and parents that stopped by. Hopefully this will be a strong part of our getting to know more people in the community of Bos en Lommer so that our upcoming project in Oktober can have a significant impact! very cool...

 - I am working on some potentially big projects with my business, Embellish. I have been doing sales and overall marketing assitance with our friends, Ben and Ge, and their "Shoes Garage" - sales of up-scale shoes by Trippen and Veja (Brazillian fair-trade smeakers)!  Great to be working there, but this week has been a bit slower than had hoped... next week! I am also talking to a couple of galleries in the area about some strategies for them and growing them in the international markets. looking very promising.... keep you posted on that. Overall, locally, i think my work needs to be focused more in event planning and catering if need be. So July is going to be spent strategizing and making the most of the connections that i have :) and making more!

 - shawna and the kids are leaving for russia on tuesday and i will se living at friends Ben and Ge's house while they are in France for the summer!  this means I get to live alone for over a month!  our friend Alycia Lee just moved out here as well, so she will be holding down the fort at the Snow house. good times this month and really refueling for a busy busy fall!  

that is all for now - i am using a computer that is not mine at the moment, so i will upload some pics soon.... and the picasa site is coming together in regards to updating :) 

hope you are all well and will be keeping you posted on more developments! 

WOW... to say the least

Ok, so i am still alive (VERY alive, indeed) and have completely shirked my responsibilities in keeping this updated. please accept my most sincere apologies. enough of that.... EXCITING THINGS ARE AFOOT!!! please let me give you a reader's digest version of the past 6 months (wow... again) *** for a VISUAL tour of life, please click on the picasa link on the right***

DECEMBER
you saw a bit of the beginning, but there was a ton more...
- mom and dad came out (soooo great)
- my business to keep me here in the NL was officially registered
- there was a ton of company at the house the whole month - old friends and new, so it was really fun

JANUARY
- honestly, really spent really recovering from december
- shawna and i did a cleanse (jackie, i am sure you would have been happy not to be there for that :))
- i prepared for my trip to florida and chicago

FEBRUARY
- went to florida to connect with the international mentor network (by alex mcmanus) and be a part of their humana conference... met some really spectacular people that are in different corners of the USA working hard to live "missionally" and be major connectors and impactors in the name of God in their communities. rad people.
- flew to chicago to be with the family, connect with friends and supporters, take the rest of my stuff from mom and dad's place. it was really wonderful to truly RELAX with mom and dad and fall back into our family rhythm for a bit (i am tearing just thinking about it.... you all know how great my folks are) and have some really excellent time with them. with friends and contact in chicago, i met with TONS of people (booked end to end daily while in the city) and made more contacts for some cross-continent connections for my business, Embellish (more on that to come soon). very good time, lots of really great intentional conversations with dear friends that i care about deeply. my only regret: not having enough time to see everyone and call everyone. silly 24 hour days...

MARCH
- shawna was gone for the first part of the month in seattle for a class, so i hung out with the kids and decompressed from my trip
- the whole snow clan went to switzerland with our friends and neighbors, wanda and paul. they have a chalet in the mountains near martigny - wow. so cliche 'swiss chalet' it was incredible. such a fun expereince and made more friends up there - particularly a darling gentleman by the name of jean-françios who opened up his home us - best raclette ever.
- we worked really hard on RECKONING stuff (the non-profit started in shawna's name) and putting together a project for the beginning of may in a small village called nieuwkoop
- embellish (my company) had 2 catering jobs in one night! one for galery wm, the other for a birthday party for 80+ people - great success!

APRIL
- hitting the ground hard with RECKONING - meeting daily to finalize and execute the business plan, strategies, marketing materials and other pertinent information - maximizing contacts...
- the snow house was full again - family, friends, work.... shawna's mom, step-sis and her daughter came out (very fun to hang with the girls) followed by our dear friend, christine, who came out here to teach a class to us, the RECKONING team, on transformational team-building, followed by a class on transformational education (more friends - deborah and donna from portland flew out for this class, as it is part of the master's program shawna and deborah are a part of. the rest of us were invited to be in this since it is THEIR teams that will be afftected by these learning tasks and strategies). this information and intense time will be INCREDIBLY VITAL to the development and sturcture of RECKONING - sooooo great and it was an immense privilage to be a part of this.
- david young came out which was awesome (i you don't know this character, you should).
- april 30 - queen's day and ari's birthday - some of you may know about queen's day, but until you have seen it, there is little i can say to describe it. the city was a veritable madhouse and it was a great time. if you can, come out for it sometime soon.... it is really something not to miss.

MAY
- ending of the class with christine and more really good conversations and insights with her
- alycia arrived to join the RECKONING team!!!! very exciting and she is proving to be a very very needed part of the group (as we knew she would be :) )
- i turned 28... woohoo. please see the video that my AWESOME brother made for me... http://youtube.com/watch?v=BW6YqC-uMp8
could he be any cooler?
- our friend dave bart was out visiting - good times.
- did some grasssroots marketing for embellish - walked with a tray of food to all the ateliers participating in the "open atelier de jordaan" to get my name out there... good times.
- our project in nieuwkoop ended up getting postponed, but it is for the best
- finished applications for funding for RECKONING to a couple of major funding groups - we shall see! but the bigger thing, is that we are finding favor in the city here with RECKONING - the people that we are meeting with are not only on board, b ut they are pulling strings and inviting us in further to make this a reality! they are ally see the need for it and really beileve that we can make a true diffference in the city by combining public space art and transformational education!!!!!! this is so great!!!!

JUNE
- here we go.... working more on RECKONING with finalizing marketing materials and researching more funding avenues, etc.
- working on embellish and some potentially big projects with some cross-continent art exchanges... we shall see and i will keep you posted. this month is all about streamlining the business, maximizing contacts and really identifying key connectors for my business so that i can make a living here and stay in the country to continue to live in this community and LOVE the people that God has placed in my path here
- shawna and i had a meeting this morning with some culture and art planners for the city to participate in a festival in 2 weeks that will give RECKONING a presence in the bos en lommer area (the first neighborhood here that we are going to do a RECKONING project) - very excited to see what will come of that!

in the middle of all of these things that i have described above (if you are still reading this ;)), there has been really deep and maeningful changes in the lives of friends of ours here, in our own lives and in the shaping of the community of people that we have become connected with. We are finding favor in the city as a whole, and beyond that, the deep soul-changing building of relationships is taking place in very real and beautiful ways. i can't describe to you how much i feel the support and prayers of all of the people that i have been connected with thoughout this whole process - you have carried me and us and i am deeply thankful for you.

big stuff coming through little changes - and daily "fighting the war on boring" as my new friend elijah would say. i think that we are fighting more than boring, but i can tell you that life here is anything but boring as a result! if you made it to the end of this email, i hope that you are NOT bored, but rather encouraged and hungry to learn more about what is going on here - i would love to hear from you and hear more about what is going on in your corner of the world! i know that there have been big changes in your lives, and things get crazy and it is hard to keep up - but let's not let that stop us :) please know that you are always close in heart and mind.
much love and peace.... more to come soon ;)

please check my picaca site over the next couple of days... i am putting up pictures there, but am waiting today for more GB space! they should be up and with notes on them tomorrow so that you can get the visual tour of life here over the past couple of months ;)

so much going on

the wall party... and a poem by alycia


we look really gross and wet because we are really gross and wet. eww... but we did it! this was brigitte's first race!


the food, the girls


esmond and sebastian.... the party

friends, there has been a ton going on in just the past week! since the first, we have had a dinner party in which we drew all over a wall in shawna's dining room, i have registered myself here in the city (residence registration), i have registered the business of 'Embellish', we ran a 10k race in 1 hour and 2 minutes (it would have been under an hour if it hadn't been pouring rain and really windy out), and we catered another event last night. please look at the pics that i have on picasa - http://picasaweb.google.com/aliwats/December - or click on the link to the right here - so that you can see all of the pics of the past week and a half! it has been really fun - so happy that the business is registered and now it is time for all the admin stuff to be set up and get the residence permit settled on the 17th of this month! hanging out with our friend, Alycia Lee, while she is on sabatical has been wonderful... and she is still here in the country for another couple of weeks! in terms of hanging out with people, the wall painting night was awesome (people are still talking about it) and the party that we were invited to cater for last night have been the highlights. the wall painting really felt like a family event... many of these people that we love and care about here were putting dreams and images on a wall here in the house and really being pushed to create... so beautiful. please look at the images if you have a chance - they are well worth it! the catering job last night was a gift to sebastian, wanda's son, for his graduation/birthday party. wanda and sebastian's girlfriend, arianna, spent so much time and energy on this party and it was a really good time. being invited to be a part of it was really great, and the fact that they loved the food, almost to the point of being afraid to eat it, was and even better experience. i think giving away food to the bartenders at the end of the night was particularly fun. everyone had a great time, and hopefully we got some good contacts out of it! this month is going to be packed, so please keep checking in!!! oh... i almost forgot... we did sinterklaas in all of this too! ester and james helped us with that... all of the kids, shawna, myself and they exchanged little gifts and wrote poems about the people that we gave gifts to.... it is intended to be a bit of a roast, but it is really fun. ester is dutch, james is american, and they loved being able to share all of these traditions with us. earlier that morning, noelle and i went with shea and her school to watch sinterklaas come up the canal to come and see the kids. that was a trip all by itself... good times in the nederlands on dec. 5!

dude...

today, i registered EMBELLISH! my business here in Holland is official! and i received a letter today from the IND (immigration) to come to their offices on monday the 17th of december to get all of that taken care of and get the residence permit! now i have to send in all of this information to my lawyer, to the tax guy that i am working with here, get an administration set up, get a tax number for me and the business, wait to receive my sophie # (like a SS#).... ok, i am stopping now. that is starting to look overwhelming. but, the important thing is that i am in! i live here! this is so insane! please believe me when i say that i can hardly believe what is happening and that this is my life. it is almost as though i wasn't entirely sure that i could pull it off, but decided to think i could anyway..... and now it is actually happening! for those of you that have culture-shocked before, you know about this, i think. for those that have not moved to another country.... let's just say that it is one of the scarier/more exciting things i have ever done. i really should have my head examined. oh, wait.... i think i have. yikes. thank you thank you thank you thank you a million times over for your love and support in this... i think of you all all the time. i am sorry that i have not called as often as i should or emailed enough, but please know that i do think of you all the time.... you are very missed, and i would love to hear from you when you have a moment ;)

official (almost)

so, i am officially registered at Elandsgracht 33 here in amsterdam. the city knows that i am here. all of my paperwork has been sent into the IND (immigration services here in Holland) and i they didn't give me any trouble when i went in to register the address that i am staying at. THIS IS AMAZING!!!! and i really am having a hard time realizing that this is really happening! craziness... hard work is starting to pay off.... big.

thanks for your prayers and encouragement. i can literally feel them sometimes.

turkey day in a country without much turkey

funny thing about thanksgiving is that it is a holiday to celebrate all that the earth gives us in the harvest. the harvest here in Holland is a little bit different than it is out in the USofA. most of what we LOVE in the Thanksgiving feast is food that is really not natually occcurring here in Holland. so, it was a little expensive, but, we had some help from a friend back in the states come over and visit and pitch in for the big feast! we had a great time... i think the final count was 22 people in the house. it was so much fun! shawna's back room (not attached to the house... kind of an atelier) looked gorgeous - very warm and inviting, twinkle lights on the ceiling, tons of candles all over the room.... it was wonderful. we ate sitting on the floor on pillows - not normal, but very family-ish from the standpoint that we sat really close to each other and had to pass the food all over the room. it was a lot of fun. as ever at thanksgiving, we made WAY too much food, but we made the most of it and utilized our leftovers very well (quiche for the neighbors). 2 of the people that came to the house had never been invited to a thanksgiving dinner before, so it was really great to see how much they enjoyed themselves. everyone interacted as though they were all friends already.... even the 2 people who came with other friends who we had never met before. tons of laughs, food, wine, friends. it was wonderful... nice to have my fav holiday in another country and have other people that are not americans love it too ;)

"what in the name of ME is going on here?"

i just watched jesus camp and it scared the hell out of me. and not in the way they meant it to. if you have not seen it, i recommend it. watch it here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7168860244966080667

i had to consider carefully where in life i have seen this, where i have been prey to it and especially where it gets twisted. my heart breaks for these poor kids. they deserve to be loved better than this. again, read "listening for the heartbeat of God".... way better filter for life, i think.

i don't really want to be called a christian anymore... any other ideas for a different title? i don't want to be associated with these people at all...

YIKES.