oh the Dutch, the Dutch

I read a book, by Floyd McClung called, "Living on the Devils Doorstep".  A major part of the book is about his christian life in the red light district of Amsterdam.  Just when I had finished reading the book, I got a letter from a friend who suggested that I go and work along side him in a christian youth hostel in the red light district of Amsterdam. I believe this was Gods providence.  The book prepared me for this.

I have said things about this on a number of occassions, so I will not repeat them all here, but looking back, it was both the one of the worst and best experiences of my life. It made me the man I have become and I am so grateful to God for that.

The hostel was called "The Shelter and the general manager was a man called Feike.  He is an outstanding bible teacher in my view.

One christmas he went through the pass over and it was from him that I learned that there is a piece of bread in the meal that they Jews do not know what to do with.  I said, "That is a physical object so they do not have the option of doing nothing with it, so what do they do with it?". One of the girls at that very meeting had grown up in Isreal so she told us all that they hide it and tell the children to go and find it. The child who finds it gets the prize.

Fieke told us that it was this bread that Jesus broke and said, "This is my body, broken for you".  The people present at that time, would have been astounded at this.  It was after he rose from the dead and broke the bread again that they recognised him

As most Jews today, do not accept Jesus as messiah, they still do not know what that bread represents.

I also learned team work from Fieke.  Some of the guests were homeless young people who would try to manipulate us into giving them chips ( French fries) and burgers rather than a proper meal. They would delay coming into the dining room until they knew that all the preper food had been served and only burgers and chips were left.

Fieke told the govornment agency that funded them that they would have to tell them that they had to turn up for meals on time or they would get nothing and that we had to enforce that. He said, "You have to learn that when one of you says no, you all say no, you have to be consistent.  You cannot think that if you are nice to them you will win them for Christ. You won't. They will laugh at you behind your back." I realised immediately that he was right.  He said, "I want them to know that there is an alternative way of life that is in christ".

It was tough discipline, but neccessary

Fieke made it very clear that he only had us for  a short time, and in that time he wanted to train us and teach us things for life.  I hope that over the years I have emulated this approach because I strongly agree with it.  To this day, I still look back and thank God for what I learned from Fieke