Love Leiden

For the last couple of weeks our team that is working in the Mors area of Leiden has been hosting fun afternoons for local mums and their kids.  Most of these families are isolated from the bulk of society.  The central part of the Mors area where we are active is roughly split half white Dutch working- or under-class, and half Muslim immigrants, mainly from Morocco (with some from Turkey, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iran, etc.).

Many, if not most, of the residents of the Mors will not get any kind of summer holiday away, something that us Westerners take for granted.  We thought it would be a nice idea to just gather on the grass field by the youth centre with some juice and games/craft ideas. These afternoons have been organised on the back of the regular weekly Tuesday afternoon Moroccan mums group.  However, for these holiday afternoons we have also had another white Dutch family coming along too, actually the mum is a member of the discipleship group here that I lead.

What has been interesting to see is that, other than the female leaders, the group has been basically split Muslim-white and the two have not been able to effectively mix.  For my part my efforts to integrate with the Moroccan ladies and their kids have really not worked.  I could speculate on several fronts here as to why, but basically it boils down to culture differences.

All this has made me think about whether I am called to work with immigrants here in Leiden.  It’s certainly not what I envisaged before we left the shores of England.  However, I didn’t want to ignore the call of the poor and rejected here either.  Not sure what lies ahead in this respect.

Just as I was wondering where I fit into it all I got an email from the above mentioned Dutch mum in the discipleship group who came to faith last year.  Here are a few translated extracts:

You all know how negative I was (and still am) about this area.

You guys really are a picture of people living in God’s will.

These kinds of ‘pictures’ give me genuine hope again, just like I used to feel.  And you really need hope to live in an area like this!

I had lost this sense of hope for the last few years, but now it’s creeping back – thank you Jesus!

Great to read when I was personally wondering if I was being of any use here.  Thank you Jesus.

The second little encouragement was that we had only planned 6 such afternoons, partly because we wanted to start fairly small, and partly because of our own holidays.  How wonderful then to hear that the Moroccan ladies have organised another similar afternoon all by themselves for the following week.  Just what we had hoped for.  We are being catalysts for growth in the community.

On a separate note, I have enrolled on an advanced Dutch course starting September.  It’s called ‘Dotting the Is and Crossing the Ts’.  This should take me properly to level 5 language.  I still find language is my biggest hindrance and I really need to keep improving.  My fears that my learning would stall after I finished my previous course last October were well founded.  I also need to be speaking more Dutch through the week.  I am really looking forward to getting back in the classroom again.  I haven’t seen any higher level classes than this.