Hospitality

Thursday through Saturday of last week, Megan and I went to Brussels, Belgium for a little belated birthday trip for me.  She put it all together and we really enjoyed our time there (not to mention all the foods you can think of that start with 'Belgian').  We'll tell you more about that trip and show some pictures in another post.  I wanted to share a story that actually started at the END of our trip that culminated last night.

We were at the Brussels South Charleroi Airport in line to go through security when we heard American-accented English from the group behind us.  Megan, being the instigator that she is, turned around and asked where the three were from.  'Washington D.C.', they said, though one had been studying in southern France this spring.  Turned out they were headed to Budapest on the same flight as us and had been given some faulty information about how to get into the city and to their hotel.  We told them to just follow us once we got off the plane and we'd help them get there.  We hung out by our gate and were able to recommend a few activities for them to pursue.

When it was time to line up at our gate to board the plane, we overheard another group of three speaking American-accented (well, at least 'non-British-accented') English.  They asked US where we were from, and they were just as surprised as the first group that Megan and I actually live in the city they were going to visit also.  We got to talking with them and told THEM to just follow us once we got off the plane and we'd also help them to get into the city and on the way to their hotel.  We arrived, they found the ATM and we tried to get them their 72-hour public transportation passes.  The kiosk was down.  Bummer.  So, we decided to just grab an airport shuttle to a part of town where all three groups would easily be able to hop on another form of transportation to reach their various destinations.

On the ride from the airport, Megan and I had a quick conference and decided to invite them all over for supper last night (they all fly out today).  Two of the girls started crying a little at that because, "It's been so long since we've had a home-cooked meal.  Actually, it's been a long time since we've been in a HOME!"  They were all excited about the idea so we passed around enough e-mail addresses and phone numbers to coordinate getting them over.

10 minutes before the first group arrived, I finished putting together our new dining room table and chairs (been saving up 6 months to finish buying furniture for our flat!) and they helped us 'break it in'.  The enchiladas were the best we've yet made (becoming pros at them), we played the 'Holly Nelson' game and 'Apples to Apples' and all had a really good time.

It's amazing to us how many opportunities we have to host people in our flat, cook for them, entertain them, and share the love of Jesus with them.  Conversation turned to spiritual topics several times and we did our best to model a Godly marriage to them.  We LOVE doing things like this, and now we finally have a table that can seat up to 10 people.  It will be well used.  THANK YOU so much to those who support us in prayer and financially so that we get to love on people, we wouldn't be here without our team.  (that's you!)