Week 1 in Utrecht: Lessons in unexpected places

I’ve been in the Netherlands for 5 days and my world has been rocked. I thought that I had no expectations of what my time here would be like, but my first foot in the door of the hostel disproved that. I certainly wasn’t expecting squeezing 7 girls into a space half the size of my bedroom at home, or living with mice and grime and a constant smell of weed. Whatever I expected was the opposite of this, and when I try to come up with an explanation for why I had those expectations, it comes down to the fact that I’ve never known anything different. I’ll admit that I almost didn’t type that because I’m scared of that sounding princess-y but it’s the vulnerable truth. I live comfortably. I have a queen-sized bed in Coppell and a full in College Station. A maid keeps my home in Coppell clean and my roommates in College Station are neat freaks. I had been dreading sharing the upstairs in Coppell with my brother for an entire summer because he leaves dishes and water bottles lying around, but now I’m stepping over six other girls’ dirty laundry, keeping a constant eye out for mice, and wearing shower shoes every time I go to the bathroom. But God is faithful and He’s been changing me from the inside out and He is the single reason that I can write this post with a thankful and renewed heart and not a bitter, disappointed and grossed-out one. I honestly wouldn’t want to be staying anywhere else for a whole month. If someone offered me a hotel room right now, I would reject it. That’s a far shot from what I told my mom when I called her crying my first night here.

I would like to say my first response to the hostel was prayer but as mentioned above, the response was tears. My second response was prayer, and it was sitting on my top bunk in that dimly lit room, after tossing aside a plastic pillow, within the first hour of my arrival, that God joined me in that dirtiness and put His arm around me and guided my hand to my prayer journal and my Bible. He comforted me so deeply. He reminded me that He is the King of Kings and He dives far deeper into far dirtier situations every millisecond of every day. He placed this thought on my human mind: within every millisecond of every day, He is immersing His 100% pure hands into billions of disgusting and disheartening situations all at once. Situations that I would immediately turn my nose up at — much like the hostel situation, which I did immediately turn my nose up at. Jesus looked me square in the eyes and reminded me that this trip is not about me. Not a single inch of it. The point of this trip is not that I am experiencing Europe. I think it had begun to become that in my mind due to the anticipation and also due to the sad truth that I was placing my excitement not in spreading Jesus’ name, but in traveling. This trip is not about where I stay or if I feel comfortable. This is completely and totally about Jesus, and Jesus knew it would take a living situation like this one to open my blind eyes to that fundamental fact. I thought I was putting myself out there and stretching by signing up for a mission trip to the Netherlands. I thought making myself uncomfortable meant going somewhere new with total strangers. (If only it could always be as easy and fun as our human minds conspire to convince us to believe). I had convinced myself that sacrifice was giving up a month of my summer and sending out support letters to people I barely knew. And these things are surely uncomfortable and sacrificial in some ways, but Jesus is showing me that sacrifice can run so much deeper than that, and it can look so different to everyone. In this moment, to me, sacrifice is in dirt-coated windows and floors. It’s in the mice hiding in the kitchen. It’s in the smell of floors that are rarely mopped. It’s in the fact that I just glanced up and saw a spider crawling across the ceiling (be cool, Regan. Be cool).

I didn’t know what my living conditions would be like this summer, but God did, and He sent me here with purpose. He’s reminding me that that needs to be enough.

Then he said to the crowd, “if any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” – Luke 9:23-24

The reason that the hostel has become a place that I would actually choose to stay lies in the people it contains. It lies in the fact that it represents people from all over the world with different belief systems, different values, and altogether different stories. We all came here for different reasons but we all go up to the second floor — with the couch and chairs and kitchen and porch and TV with the weird Dutch commercials — and have meaningful conversations for one common reason: connection. We are all connected in the simple yet incredibly complex fact that we are all human, and we are all searching for meaning in our lives whether we acknowledge that or not. After the first night in the hostel, my perspective radically shifted. I sat out on the porch on a hard plastic yellow “couch” and I listened. I listened to what the 30-year old Australian had to say about Jesus and relationships and politics and partying and religion after spending yet another day getting high and drunk because he needed to, as he said, “cover up the pain”, and I watched him roll three new joints. I listened to the twenty-something Dutch girl share her story about growing up as a Jehovah’s witness, recounting vivid stories of church, pondering her beliefs and asking me about mine and then turning to me suddenly 10 minutes after the conversation ended, asking me if Christians were allowed to be gay. I listened to the quiet, soft-spoken middle-aged Servian man next to me as he explained politics and economics of Russia and Servia and Germany to my American friend beside him. I listened to the young French guy decline a seat because he “always stood” since he was sitting down while traveling so much, and then I observed him listening with me. This night spent sitting and listening and absorbing stories from three different continents out there on that one small and strange little porch in Utrecht, Holland is a night that will stick with me for the rest of my life. It’s the night that I truly realized how big the world is; how real the people across the world I never meet are and how tangible their stories are.

God, man. He’s huge.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. – 1 Corinthians 15:58

This picture isn’t from my first night at the hostel, but the second! For our ministry with StudentLife at the University of Utrecht, we held an “open huis” at the hostel where people of all backgrounds came to eat dinner, play games, and talk.

But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of the messengers who bring good news!” – Romans 10:14-15