After arriving at Schiphol airport (and after giving our family some hugs of course) we bought our first Dutch treats in a small supermarket and enjoyed them thoroughly. 

Divided over several cars we travelled from Amsterdam to Best where we arrived late in the evening. Steven’s parents allowed us to use their house as our base during the home leave and we really enjoyed being there. They had already prepared a basket of all kinds of tasty Dutch snacks and food so we felt really spoiled. After putting the children to bed I (Steven) sat down to get the last preparations done for the preaching/presentation that was scheduled for the next morning in our local assembly in Eindhoven. Around 03.00 I finally went up for a couple of hours of sleep.

It was lovely being back in our own assembly the next morning and to once again see many people we had not seen for a long time. The preaching/presentation went well (in my own estimation) in spite of the lack of sleep. After the services we went ‘home’ where some of our good friends paid us a visit. They nowadays live in Switzerland and they were in The Netherlands just for a short while so this was the only opportunity to see them. We had a really good time which only got better once the fries, frikandellen and kroketten arrived.

We spent remainder of the first week visiting with friends and family, something that we really enjoyed. Meanwhile we also took Leah and Simeon to the doctor because the fever kept coming back. They both turned out to have bronchitis and after starting with antibiotics they soon felt better.

One of the highlights of the first week was a visit to my former employer, PwC. When we were planning our home leave we also received an invitation form a former colleague to also come and share something at PwC about what we had been up to. So on Tuesday afternoon, Vikki, myself and Simeon went to the city centre of Eindhoven (with an outside temperature of 38 degrees) and visited the new PwC office there. We received a very warm welcome and I had the opportunity to share about our life in Peru for over 45 minutes. After the presentation I went with some former colleagues to a restaurant for dinner where we had the chance to catch up properly. It was very nice to experience the interest that was shown in how we were doing even though I left PwC about 2 years ago.

On Friday morning we had packed again and we were ready to drive to France together with my parents but more on that in the next blog.