The Warm Friend

First trip into Holland today which is a lovely little town further south down the west coast of Lake Michigan. We are here partly because it is a small town that is dominated by churches. There are loads of them and it has a very high proportion of people professing faith. Their roots are in Netherlands, hence the name, which has a long tradition of Christian social action through the Dutch Republic.
At first glance it’s really lovely, the street architecture is designed for sitting and talking. They put tables in their small parks at which local youths sit and discuss… why don’t we have tables in small parks? The streets were tree lined and peppered with American artwork and benches which are used to slow everyone down.
The jewel in the crown for us was the Resthaven Old People’s Home at “The Warm Friend.” The building, an ex bank and ex hotel it was right in the middle of the high street. The old people hung about on the street outside talking to passers-by. Teenagers were chatting about their day at school, babies in buggies were cooed at and proudly shown off.
We were invited in by one of the residents who proudly showed us her grown floor apartment, which was sizeable and had room for her collection of pieces of carved wood, made by her recently deceased husband. She loved it in the place and talked of it with real affection. I have visited many homes in Britain as part of my work, many of them have been really excellent, but I have never seen one that was so central to the community, never seen one that was so supportive of faith. The religious basis of the place was explicit but not excudng. It was clear that faith was the added value of the place. If you want to have look, see their web site www.resthaven.org . When we looked at their fees they weren’t too bad so it does make one wonder why we can’t do the same with our old people in our communities. At least we might build our old people’s homes in the middle of our communities.
I wonder if we could do something with our land in the middle of Mytholmroyd to start to address this. Something to pray and think about when I get home.
It was good to be in Holland, tomorrow we visit the house being built by Mars Hill and then in the evening to Holland for their street market.


Before we left we asked if they would consider taking our names for when we retire!