Boumans by the Danube

Monday, December 22, 2025

Boumans by the Danube - September 2025

September 2025 Boumans by the Danube Update

Dear friends,

Julie and I are at home on a Saturday with no meetings or obligations for the first time since returning to Hungary in late August after a short visit with family. Like many of you, we have been tending to various obligations with work, church, friendships, and other responsibilities and opportunities. So, sitting her as the sun shines in through the window and looking at the day today as gift and opportunity, I’ll share a few updates on our lives since our last update.

We enjoyed about two weeks in August of good visits with family and friends in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan. Highlights included attending a glorious outdoor concert with our kids in downtown Chicago, appreciating the glory of Lake Michigan, American breakfasts and craft beverages with good friends, and family time with our moms and siblings.

Since our return Julie has gone back to work at Olive Tree Counseling Center, and my Cohort Europe volunteers (Dasha, Justė, and Pamela) are all settling to their host locations (Berlin Germany, and Malaga Spain) and they are engaged in intensive language learning for the first month. See below for giving information if you would like to support any or all of these three dynamic young women as they serve in Berlin and Malaga this year.

My university class on the music and poetry of the American Civil Rights movement has begun again, and there are 12 students enrolled. We took a road trip last weekend with Hanis, one of our Cohort volunteers from last year, visiting our friends David and Mary in Berlin last weekend – David and Hanis share a birthday, and we celebrated both during one of David and Mary’s weekly “language café” nights with about a hundred recent arrivals and other German language learners in Berlin. We also got to catch up with Pamela, our newly arrived volunteer there. Driving from Budapest to Berlin and back takes you through Slovakia and Czech Republic on the way, so we also stopped in Prague to spend some time with Sikama, another good friend who left Budapest last winter to begin PhD studies in Prague.

Much of our time this fall will be spent (in addition to our regular ministry commitments) preparing for time away from Budapest between December and May (2026). The bi-lateral agreement between the US and Hungary requires that after five years of residency we must spend six months outside the country, and Resonate has procedures that will allow us to participate in a time of ReConnect with our supporting individuals and churches while we are outside Hungary.

One thing we are working on that you might be able to help with is finding a furnished apartment or small home or condo in Grand Rapids that might be available for all or part of that time (mid-December 2025- end of May 2026). A snowbird perhaps, or some other situation where a place might be available and affordable – we do have budget set aside for this. If you have something, or know of something possible, please let us know.

Also, if you are interested in getting together while we are Stateside, either as an individual or with a group to hear about our work and our plans for the next few years, please let us know. I’ll be sending separate notices to church contacts with more detailed information about our available dates for church visits. We are eager to reconnect with many of you in a way that our brief vacation visits don’t always allow.

Meanwhile, please join us in prayers for wisdom, for creativity, courage, and clarity as we experience these months of transition and moving around. We plan to keep our Budapest apartment, and are working on a creative potential sub-let arrangement, but it feels disconcerting to be leaving “home” once again. We also appreciate your prayers with us and our Grand Rapids church, Neland Avenue Church, as we navigate independence from the denomination we belonged to from 1915 until May of 2025. It is a time of sadness, but also of opportunity and new energy, and we are eager to see where God leads us in faith – your prayers are appreciated. And we ask for prayers in our process of reapplying for residency to be in place by next spring for our return to Hungary – yet another administrative detail taking up our time and energy this fall.

Another highlight for us from our August visit to the US was the opportunity to worship with our friends at Loop Church in Chicago. Pastor Derek gifted us with a sermon on the many greetings offered to friends and fellow Jesus-followers in Romans chapter 16. In the spirit of that sermon, and that passage, we greet each of you in love and in the confidence that the “God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.”

In confident hope,

Jeff and Julie Bouman

Giving information: We are grateful for, and eager to continue your financial partnership that allows to serve in this place. And if your church is looking to add a ministry in Europe to those you support, we would welcome a few more churches as partners as well. Details for supporting us can be found on our Resonate webpage here. After you tap the yellow “donate” button, you will be asked if you would like to donate in USD or Canadian, and then you will land on a page where you choose an amount, and then on the drop-down menu below you will choose “Missionaries-Europe,” and below that a drop-down menu will be a list of names, and you select Jeff and Julie Bouman. Below that are instructions for entering payment information. **(This same set of instructions applies for Justé’s page, Dasha’s page, and Pamela’s page for giving. Each of these new members of Cohort will be challenged to raise $10,000, and we trust God to provide for each of them as they serve.)**

PS And finally, as we sometimes do, I’ll offer the gift of a poem, “Affirmation,” that crossed my path sometime recently from Chicago poet, educator, and activist Eve Ewing:

Affirmation

Speak this to yourself

until you know it is true.

"I believe that I woke up today

and my lungs were working,

miraculously,

my voice can sing and murmur and ask,

miraculously.

My hands may shake, but they can hold

me, or another.

My blood still carries the gifts of the air

from my heart to my brain,

miraculously.

Put a finger to my wrist or my temple

And feel it: I am magic. Life

and all its good and bad and ugly things

scary things which I would like to forget

beautiful things which I would like to remember

—the whole messy lovely true story of myself

pulses within me.

I believe that the sun shines

if not here, then somewhere.

Somewhere it rains,

and things will grow green and wonderful.

Somewhere inside me, too, it rains,

and things will grow green and wonderful.

Sometimes my insides rain from the inside out.

And then I know

I am alive

Boumans and Vroons in Holland, Michigan, August 2025

Awesome concert in downtown Chicago with Bea, Moss, and Bastian.

(Melissa Etheridge, and the Indigo Girls)

Final meal in Budapest with Dasha and Justė before
they flew to Spain to begin their year of service.

Lovely Lake Michigan

Bea with Grandma Weiser.

A weekend road trip to Berlin; coffee and cake with

Pamela and Hanis.

Boumans by the Danube July 2025 - Pamela

Bouman prayer letter July 31 2025

Dear friends,

Today I am writing with a very specific story and a very specific request for your prayers. I would like to introduce you to our friend Pamela Shammas. Pamela is from Aleppo, Syria, and she came to Budapest in the fall of 2022 to study Psychology. Almost immediately upon her arrival in Hungary, Pamela began attending our church here, St. Columba’s Scottish Presbyterian church, which made sense because she was raised in the Presbyterian Church of Aleppo. I admit that before meeting Pamela I had not known that Aleppo had a very well-established Presbyterian church. For three years now Pamela has been a leader and a participant in our weekly gatherings of a young adult Christian fellowship in our apartment. Upon her graduation a few weeks ago, Pamela invited Julie and me to attend the ceremony in place of her own parents, who could not be here. Pamela’s mother Marlen died in 2020 of cancer, and her dad Fares, lives in Aleppo. We were happy to attend the graduation, and we felt like the proud stand-in parents that we were. We also learned at about that same time that Pamela, and her Kosovar roommate Greta did not have a place to stay for the summer, so they have stayed with us in our guest room since late June. Prior to graduating, Pamela had applied and been accepted into an MA program in Budapest and was waiting for news of her financial aid scholarship. In early July she learned that she had not gotten the scholarship, and suddenly her path became quite unclear. A day before the news of the scholarship came, I had felt led by God’s Spirit to suggest that an alternative path for Pamela, in the unlikely event of not getting the scholarship, might be to join the Cohort Europe program, which still had room in it for this coming year. Suddenly only a few days later, this suggestion became a live option, and I quickly gathered some Resonate colleagues together to see what the possibilities might be. To make a long story short, Pamela very quickly went through the process of securing an appointment at the German Embassy in Budapest to be able to join our Berlin colleagues with Cohort, then applied for the Cohort Europe program, sat for an interview, was accepted into Cohort, and is now waiting for her visa application meeting at the German embassy. We believe deeply that this is God’s Spirit leading Pamela forward into ministry.

Our request is that you pray for this visa application meeting at the German Embassy on Wednesday August 6, for a positive outcome so that Pamela can join the ministry of David Kromminga and Mary Buteyn and the Welcoming Church in Berlin. Pamela’s gifts in ministry include musical skills, many years of experience in children’s ministry and teaching, a gift for learning languages, the ability to speak Arabic natively, and many more.

As we have gotten to know Pamela better this summer with her living with us, we have learned a lot about the church in Aleppo. I have watched parts of the church service there on-line, and what I have seen has amazed me in many ways. Watching this Arabic-speaking Presbyterian church feels to me like watching my own church in Grand Rapids, just in a different language. The hymn tunes are familiar, the church pews look familiar, the cadences of the liturgy – it all feels so familiar – much more like our home church Neland Avenue than even our international Presbyterian church here in Budapest, which worships in English. But I have also learned more. In 2012, the church in Aleppo, along with much of the city, was bombed by the ISIS “freedom fighters” as the struggle to overthrow the Assad regime turned into a long civil war. Pamela was sixteen when this fighting broke out, and the church building was destroyed. After this, the church community, with the financial assistance of the Hungarian Reformed church and others, rebuilt their church. They continued to worship God in devastating circumstances. Unbelievably, in 2023 another devastation came, this time an earthquake in neighboring Turkey, which once again destroyed the church building. Pamela was already studying by then in Budapest, and I remember the deep concern she and our other Syrian students were experiencing during that time. And again, the people of this congregation got to work, and they rebuilt their sanctuary, again, and kept worshipping God together week by week. War, pandemic, earthquake, political violence and turmoil, none of these have deterred this community of faith in Aleppo.

And now a daughter of this church, Pamela, is hoping and planning to be a missionary, sent from Aleppo to Berlin, with your help. Will you pray that the meeting on August 6 will result in Pamela being allowed to move at the end of August to Berlin to begin language study, to worship participation, and to many other forms of ministry with newcomers in Berlin?

Finally, we have two other amazing people for you to be aware of, as Pamela is not the only new member of Cohort Europe for the 2025-26 ministry year. We are also looking forward to working with two other new team members. Dasha Smolina, from Ukraine, just graduated in 2025 from LCC International University in Lithuania; and Justé Burneikyté, from Lithuania, also graduated from LCC in 2024 – both Dasha and Justé will serve together in Malaga, Spain this coming year. Spain is a new partner field for the Cohort Europe program, and we are eager to see how Dasha and Justé grow in their understanding of faith, by participating with the work of Resonate partner missionaries Gary and Rachel De León in welcoming refugees on Spain’s southern coast. Justé and Dasha will join Julie, Pamela and me here in Budapest next week for a time of orientation to their coming year of ministry.

We are happy to report that our fiscal year-end resulted in us reaching more than 90% of our goal for the 2024-25 fiscal year – we are so grateful for each of you who support us. We can report that each of our four years here in ministry in Hungary, our financial support has grown.

If you have been pondering a one-time, or a new monthly financial gift, we would eagerly welcome your partnership. And if your church is looking to add a ministry in Europe to those you support, we would welcome a few more churches as partners as well. Details for supporting us can be found on our Resonate webpage here. After you tap the yellow “donate” button, you will be asked if you would like to donate in USD or Canadian, and then you will land on a page where you choose an amount, and then on the drop-down menu below you will choose “Missionaries-Europe,” and below that a drop-down menu will be a list of names, and you select Jeff and Julie Bouman. Below that are instructions for entering payment information. (This same set of instructions applies for Justé’s page, Dasha’s page, and soon we should have a link to Pamela’s page for giving. Each of these new members of Cohort will be challenged to raise $10,000, and we trust God to provide for each of them as they serve.)

In the peace and hope of Christ,

Jeff and Julie Bouman

PS For a lengthier update on recent events for us, you will (soon) find an extended update in the June entry on our blog – Boumans by the Danube with details and stories about our recent bike ride around Lake Balaton, some regional trips with friends, and our upcoming visit to the US in late August.

With Pamela and Greta on our balcony, above, and at their graduation, below.

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

June 2025 Boumans by the Danube

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and cry to her

that her warfare is ended,

that her iniquity is pardoned. (Isaiah 40:1-2).

Dear friends,

Lately I’ve been working to remind myself what it means to hope. I’ve been eagerly listening to the podcast “On Being,” as host Krista Tippett releases new episodes each week this summer in the “Hope portal” she is crafting for her listeners. Poets are her primary resources toward what she is calling a “muscular, reality-based hope.” Alongside these short episodes, I am also re-reading my copy of Walter Brueggeman’s deeply influential book, The Prophetic Imagination, in which Brueggeman offers readers what reviewer and community-builder William J. Barber II called the boldness to “endure and even overcome [our present] troubles, not merely by the tenacity of blues lamentation and the transcendence of gospel communion, but also by prophetic improvisations that jazz the song of Joshua and crumble the walls thrown up by the politics of domination.” Brueggeman’s writing lands right now for me into the midst of a world troubled by hatred, violence, division, unfathomable bombs dropped in God’s name, and a sense of fear and isolation borne primarily by those already oppressed, displaced, grieving, and often on the move. We are tempted to despair, and we are called to grieve.

Addressing hope and grief, Brueggeman, (who died at age 92 in early June) wrote that

“it is likely that the only measure of faithfulness is that hope always comes after grief and that the speaker (in this case the prophet Isaiah) of this public expression must know and be a part of the anguish that permits hope. Hope expressed without knowledge of and participation in grief is likely to be false hope that does not reach despair. Thus,… it is precisely those who know death most painfully who can speak hope most vigorously.”

We are walking alongside, and grieving with, many who know death and deep sadness – due to the death of children, the lessening of opportunity, deep relationship difficulties, vocational and economic uncertainties, and much more. It is a heavy time, and easy to despair.

At the same time, we have so much for which to be grateful, including health, community, family, and myriad opportunities for hospitality and service. We are right where we belong. And the world is not yet as it should be.

Our fiscal year ends next Monday, and we are grateful to be in sight of our annual financial goal.

A few extra gifts will take us over the top. If you have been pondering a one-time, year-end, or a new monthly financial gift, we would eagerly welcome your partnership. And if your church is looking to add a ministry in Europe to those you support, we would welcome a few more churches as partners as well. Details for supporting us can be found on our Resonate webpage here. After you tap the yellow “donate” button, you will be asked if you would like to donate in USD or Canadian, and then you will land on a page where you choose an amount, and then on the drop-down menu below you will choose “Missionaries-Europe,” and below that a drop-down menu will be a list of names, and you select Jeff and Julie Bouman. Below that are instructions for entering payment information.

For a lengthier update on recent events for us, you will find an extended update below with details and stories about: the Cohort Europe finale in Budapest, graduations and year-end celebrations for our Young Adult International Fellowship, a follow-up on our Iranian friends who now live in Vienna, our plans for an upcoming six-month stint away from Hungary, and an upcoming fun bike ride around Lake Balaton.

In radical hope,

Jeff and Julie

i thank You God for most this amazing day

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e e cummings

Source: Complete Poems 1904-1962

Bouman Letter June 2025. Blog extras

The Cohort Europe team met in Budapest the first week of June for their time of closure together. We experienced a blend of joyful celebration, wistful and open reflection, and time for sharing of plans for the future, much of which remains unknown for several in the group. Rebekah will return to Pennsylvania to live with her family, and to grieve belatedly for her beloved Grandma who died just after Rebekah’s arrival in Budapest last August. Hanis will remain in Budapest, and is discerning how to best follow God’s call into ministry going forward. Caroline, who was in Lithuania for the year, will return another year to serve at LCC International University. And from the crew in Berlin, Kevin will return to Nova Scotia and is discerning a path forward in service; Anastasiya is strongly considering remaining in Berlin another year, but remains undecided; and Alisha is also somewhat undecided as she weighs options for graduate school and future service opportunities. We are all grateful for bringing this group together, and on our last night together, we participated in a deeply meaningful time of mutual blessings where each member looked each other member in the eye and offered a verbal blessing to them.

Births and deaths and hope – several younger friends of ours, and children of our friends, are having babies, or trying to have them. We have been walking alongside those near to us who have encountered severe challenges in this journey. When a baby dies, it is an enormous grief; and when a woman miscarries, often very few people know. And when a baby suffers birth defects and endures major surgeries in the first weeks of life, we grieve and rejoice with what is possible. All of these have been part of our year so far, and we continue to hold the light for those walking in despair.

Fellowship finale / graduations

Many in our International Young Adult Fellowship are visitors in Hungary as a result of an academic program; and inevitably they conclude their studies and move on. This year we have said goodbye to several who have been faithful participants, and we wish them well as they move on to Czechia, to Germany, and to other places around the world. We anticipate a very fun graduation on Friday this week that we’ve been invited to attend for two friends from Kosovo and from Syria, as they are awarded bachelor’s degrees in Psychology.

Vienna follow up

I have connected the young Persian couple that was baptized at our church last fall, and who now live in Vienna, with an international church that was planted specifically to serve Farsi speaking Iranians and Afghans; I am hoping that this proves to be a place where they can grow in faith, and worship without fear.

Cohort Europe 2025-25; and Plans for totalization in US

We still have decisions to make, but it is becoming clearer that our mandated six-month absence from Hungary (due to a bi-lateral US/Hungary agreement) will take place from around December 1, 2025 through May 31, 2026. A good portion of this time will likely be spent in Michigan and Pennsylvania, with some travel to stay in touch with the Cohort Europe program that will be in progress. On that note, we are excited to welcome two new Cohort Europe participants starting in August. Both are recent graduates from LCC International University, and you can find more information here for Justé, and here for Dasha. Justè is from Lithuania, and Dasha is from Ukraine. More on their placements in future communication. If you are able, please consider giving to each of them, as they will be challenged to raise the necessary support for their participation, coming from Eastern European contexts where financial support for missions is not as culturally embedded as it is for North American, or Western European Christians. (Please let me know if you have trouble accessing their giving page – we have had some difficulties that the IT department is working on…)

Balaton biking

One fun thing we are looking forward to here in Hungary this summer is a visit from long-time friends Jim and Jennifer Bryson, from Dexter, Michigan. The four of us plan to set out on a four-day bicycle trip around the “Hungarian Sea,” or Lake Balaton, about a 200-kilometer trip along the edge of the lake, in mid-July. Watch for photos!

Cohort Europe team closure excursion to Lake Balaton

On the ferry to the Tihany peninsula

Hanis and Rebekah's year of service in Budapest comes to a close this week.

Grateful for a good and faitbful team in Budapest this year.

All dressed up...

As a Cohort Europe team, we took an excursion to visit a bird sanctuary where one of Jeff's literature professor friends has organized a very successful grassroots effort to preserve several acres of prime bird sanctuary, partly through the discovery of this rare orchid, the European Marsh Orchid.

With friends in early June we visited a thirteenth century church where ruins still stand in Zsámbék, a small town just outside Budapest. Incredible to imagine 800+ years of worship and awe in this space.

Thursday, May 29, 2025

May 2025 Ascension Day - Boumans by the Danube

Boumans by the Danube, May 2025 – Feast of the Ascension

Dear Friends,

Today is Ascension Day in the Christian calendar, and like the disciples on that day so long ago, I too find myself wondering about the mystery that unfolded in this strange event. Jesus blessed his friends, and then left them, and he promised that (at some point soon) they will be clothed with power from on high. And while the disciples were looking up after Jesus, two bright creatures tell them that Jesus will return the same way he left. We are still living in that waiting time, rightly wondering about the timing of the completion of the promise Jesus made.

As we wait, we worship, pray, work, wonder, and rest. Our wonder, and our work here in Budapest and throughout Europe continues to energize us and occupy our time. Today’s note will cover a brief set of talking points related to recent events, and then for those of you eager for a longer-form narrative, below is where I’ll provide more detail.

· Julie continues enjoying her work as the Intake Coordinator at Olive Tree Counseling Center

· We welcomed twenty or so guests for Easter to our place for a potluck brunch.

· The highlight of the subsequent season of Eastertide has been an extended celebration of my 60^th birthday, on May 19.

· The first week of June will once again bring the Cohort Europe participants to Budapest once again for our closing time of reflection and farewells.

· Julie and I anticipate a year of a few changes, some transitions, and probably slightly more travel than has been usual.

· Our Young Adult Fellowship has continued to meet on Thursdays every week this year. In recent weeks we have been watching films together, both for entertainment, but also for meaningful discussion.

· Some news about the coming end to the fiscal year.

As we approach the end of another fiscal year at the end of June, we remain grateful for the many faithful monthly, quarterly, and annual partners who donate on such a regular basis; as well as to those who give once in a while, and to those who pray faithfully and those who keep in touch with us through notes and visits. We would ask that you consider a generous year-end gift if you are able, to help us meet our annual goal. Our current shortfall for the remaining four weeks is about $20,000. And as always, if you have ideas for congregations who are interested in supporting our ministry, please point them our way.

From Fr. Henri Nouwen, on the spirituality of fundraising, a reminder of our posture toward partnership:

‘We have a vision that is amazing and exciting. We are inviting you to invest yourself through the resources that God has given you—your energy, your prayers, and your money—in this work to which God has called us.’ Our invitation is clear and confident because we trust that our vision and mission are like ‘trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither’ (Ps. 1:3).” (The Spirituality of Fundraising, 2010)

Peace to you, friends,

Jeff and Julie Bouman

Julie continues enjoying her work as the Intake Coordinator at Olive Tree Counseling Center, going in to the office most days of the week, and managing the correspondence and the placement process for clients coming to Budapest for care and counseling. Her daily routine is vastly different from previously, and she has had to give up some of the volunteering she was doing in a Hungarian high school. Overall, though, the Olive Tree staff community has been a welcome new source of encouragement and social engagement for both of us.

We welcomed twenty or so guests for Easter to our place for a potluck brunch. On Holy Saturday we spent a few hours at the Fine Arts museum here in Budapest, mostly taking in the work of Mihály Munkácsy, one of Hungary’s most famous painters. Many of his most famous works are large-scale paintings of Biblical scenes, most famous among them scenes of the trial and crucifixion of Christ. Seeing these well-known works helped keep us in pre-resurrection grief mystery on that last day of Lent. And then right on time, Easter arrived on Sunday, and we were able to celebrate the mystery and wonder of the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

The highlight of the subsequent season of Eastertide has been an extended celebration of my 60^th birthday. Julie pulled a rare set of surprises on me, beginning with the surprise arrival of Bastian on May 8, and followed by a big celebratory birthday brunch on May 10, more than a week before my actual birthday. It was very fun to have people over for a blended American/Hungarian sampling of breakfast foods; and also to watch the video that had been put together with cameos from many of you who had sent in birthday greetings by video. Thank you. The actual birthday was also special, celebrated with our regular birthday club, friends Daniel and Elise, a Dutch-Hungarian couple we are very close to and with whom we typically celebrate birthdays with a shared breakfast. Being sixty has so far been uneventful – I am grateful for health, and for beloved friends all over the world.

The first week of June will once again bring the Cohort Europe participants to Budapest once again for our closing time of reflection and farewells. It is hard to believe that another entire ministry year has already passed since these six remarkable individuals met for the first time in August last year. Since then we thank God for the opportunities for ministry and learning for Kevin, Anastasiya, and Alisha in Berlin; for Hanis and Rebekah in Budapest; and for Caroline in Klaipeda. Please join us in praying for a meaningful time of thoughtful and grateful closure to this year. At this point, we are still working on filling out our third Cohort Europe team – so far we have two participants, and there are others we are still finalizing – stay tuned for an update before the end of June on how this team takes shape.

Julie and I anticipate a year of a few changes, some transitions, and probably slightly more travel than has been usual. The reasons for this are complex and many. Many of you already know that the denomination to which we have belonged since we got married thirty-six years ago (and Jeff his whole life) is experiencing some division. Our sending congregation, and where we are long-time members, Neland Avenue Church, recently completed a long process of disaffiliation from the CRC, and this means that we are no longer members of the denomination for which I am employed with Resonate. For the time being, my employment is not in jeopardy, but the landscape for this in future remains under review, and depends in part on the decisions made by future synods of this denomination. So we are grateful for each of you who continue to support us financially through gifts to Resonate, and we remain grateful to Resonate for their administrative support for our ministry as well. A second upcoming complication has to do with our residency in Hungary. The bi-lateral international trade agreement between the US and Hungary allows us to be here as foreigners not paid by a Hungarian employer for a period of five years. After this period ends (for us in March 2026), we have a choice – to either begin paying into the Hungarian retirement system, or to leave the country for a period of six months, in order to restart another five-year period. Sometime in November or December we will be leaving, and will not be able to return until May or June. Much of our time outside the country will likely be spent in West Michigan, and a portion will probably be spent in places where Cohort Europe partnerships exist in order to strengthen those partnerships. More on the details of this in future letters, but in the meanwhile please pray for clarity and for places to land in order to recharge, communicate well, and continue our ministry from a distance.

Our Young Adult Fellowship has continued to meet on Thursdays every week this year. In recent weeks we have been watching films together, both for entertainment, but also for meaningful discussion. We have watched Sister Act (1992); Hacksaw Ridge (2016); and Babette’s Feast (1987). We have also been able to have three meetings in the lounge at a relatively newly built residence hall, which has been a pleasant change of venue for us. Other themes have included: “how to think about the resurrection of the body?” What does meaningful service look like? and a game called the “thirty-circle challenge.”

Finally, I also had the chance last week to attend two very interesting lunch gatherings. The first was to host a lunch bringing together a former student from Calvin who is now a professor at Western Seminary – Travis West: with a young pastor from one of the more prominent Reformed Church pulpits in Budapest; and Hanis Kakaba, one of the two Cohort Europe volunteers this year, from Nigeria. We had a very rich discussion about post-Christian Hungary, church planting and evangelism – as well as some time comparing seminary training in the US and Hungary. And I was also happy to reunite with the Iranian couple that were baptized at St. Columba’s last October. They have recently moved to Vienna, Austria for a work opportunity, but they returned over a recent weekend, in part because while they have found a new church in Vienna, they still consider St. Columba’s their church “home.”

From Fr. Henri Nouwen, on the spirituality of fundraising, a reminder of our approach

If you have been pondering a one-time or a monthly financial gift, we would welcome your partnership, and if your church is looking to add a ministry in Europe to those you support, we would welcome a few more churches as partners as well. Details for supporting us can be found on our Resonate webpage here. After you tap the yellow “donate” button, you will be asked if you would like to donate in USD or Canadian, and then you will land on a page where you choose an amount, and then on the drop-down menu below you will choose “Missionaries-Europe,” and below that a drop-down menu will be a list of names, and you select Jeff and Julie Bouman. Below that are instructions for entering payment information.

Photos: