Alright folks, let the stories begin. Everyone can rest assured as I have made it to a bed for the night and am not left wandering the streets of Amsterdam tonight. But let me explain how I managed that first. So I spent all day roaming the streets of Amsterdam with my bags looking for places to kill time. I stumbled across a few touristy sites in addition to a street of sports bars with tons of TV's outside to watch the opening match of the World Cup - can't wait for the Netherlands game on Monday, I have a feeling it's going to be a little wild :) After wasting enough time, I headed towards a place just outside of downtown where I was planning on meeting the group that I am planning on working with for the next few days, Oasis. If you haven't heard about this group yet, go check out this video for a good idea of what they do - it's quite inspiring!

Oasis
So after a good hour or so of crisscrossing the streets back and forth, I was convinced that google maps had taken me to the wrong location, as it appeared I was in the middle of a strange residential community, so I turned around and headed back to the central train station where I was hoping to find internet. It turns out that my phone doesn't work here in the Netherlands, or I just haven't quite figured it out yet, which made it difficult for me to reach Sophia, another girl in my program who had been here for a day already and I was planning on meeting at the event tonight. So I started walking and after about 30 minutes, looked up and who other do I see riding towards me on a bike, but Sophia!! So I flagged her down and we rearranged some seating on the bike and headed off together with another guy, Paulo from Brazil, back to where I had come from. Turns out google maps wasn't wrong after all and I just managed to miss the exact corner that this place was on. Fortunately a bike makes things much quicker!

For the rest of the night, we danced and ate and got to know one another better. I'm really becoming a fan of these circle dances where you all face one another, it really gets the energy flowing in a room (especially when brazilians are involved). Which reminds me, at one point in the evening, I found myself dancing with a brazilian lady who commented that I was a very good dancer because of my hip action - ha, who would have guessed they heard the day where a brazilian commented on my dancing ability! Needless to say the evening was a blast, and is also where I met Inge who warmly welcomed me into her home (can't say thank you enough!). And so that is where I am now.

I need to head to bed here soon but I thought I would reflect quickly on the night. I think one of the things that stood out to me is who you can create 'spiritual' spaces in any circumstance. Regardless of how we may define spiritual, there was something different about tonight, which for me, felt very spiritual. At the end of the dancing, we all found ourselves in a big circle, exchanging smiles and thinking back on the memories we were making with one another. As I glanced around the circle, I was able to identify that feeling that emerges in all of us every now and then that this - where we are right now and what we are doing - is right! It was the same feeling I felt after leaving Karlskrona. I am blessed that God keeps leading me into so many incredible groups of community and I am amazed at how quickly some communities form. As I head off to more and more countries this summer, I hope I can take a hint of that ability to ignite and sustain the communities that have impacted me so much - people are just too cool :)