All around Europe there are opportunities to live and work to share life and faith. Here are some of the places where we would love to see you engage.
The Challenge of a life time!
This is the experience of one family
We are Ellen and GertPaul van der Vlies. We lead the studentwork in Bergen, Norway. Whilst working for the Navigators in the Netherlands, we felt God calling us to go abroad. But where?! It took us multiple years to find that out and the end result could not be more surprising to us. In hindsight God was gracious and patient with us, using a long process to prepare us for what was coming. Through insecurity, uncertainty, doubt and lots of exciting opportunities, He brought us to a place where we really felt His calling to go to Norway. This strong feeling of calling has helped us ever since: in the ‘honeymoon phase’ of getting to know our new country and in the struggle that came soon after with the language, the culture and the ministry.
One of the beautiful things about following God to an unknown place is that you really see Him at work in providing everything needed for the task: we sat front row as we experienced God providing funding, a house, a school, and many other things.
We have now worked and lived in Norway for 5 + years and can now say that we have a reasonable understanding of the culture, both of Norway and of the Navigators here, the language and the student culture. Whereas finding friendships and really feeling part of this culture is still a challenge for us, our children have fully embraced Norway and have integrated so well here. It has really helped us to go all-in: to dive into the culture, to force ourselves to speak Norwegian as much as possible, to put our children in Norwegian school and adapt the habits people have here (from cycling to hiking, from direct to in-direct communication, etc 😊).
We ourselves are growing more than we could ever have imagined: to meet God in the struggles, to depend on Him, to hear His voice and to deal with the silence. To be confronted with yourself and to see His moves. It has all been, and still is, both a beautiful experience and a challenging, sometimes hard learning process. But we wouldn’t have wanted to miss it!