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The treasure of a good ending.

So many impressions and so much love in my heart as I sit here writing. My final evening in Amsterdam for this season. A strange and unreal sensation, but nevertheless the reality: tomorrow evening I fly home to Norway and finish the chapter of Amsterdam.

It’s been an adventure and this past week has been such a good ending. Today I cycled across the city to have lunch with some dear friends. Friends I’ve met through ministry, one going out with me, the other on the receiving end. It was such a joy to enter into the home of one and meet as friends. Friends who have walked part of each other’s journeys. Friendship I hope lasts.

On Friday we I went to my last outreach in the smaller Red Light District. It was good yet also hard. Hard to explain that “no, I am not coming back” to the questions of “yes, you go to Norway, but really, when will you be back.” Feeling so loved and yet having to accept the fact that I won’t be around next time... or the time after that. Finding so much life in walking alongside other volunteers and sharing truth and life with the women; sat in their brothels praying and talking to them. Hoping that they would grab onto the faith in a God who is more than willing and able to reach into their desperate situations and transform.

Drinking coffee and eating meals with many different friends I’ve been so blessed with along this journey... revisiting favourite cafes and getting to know new ones. All intertwined with trying to cycle through the craziness of the city and trying to be present when it’s a challenge to not think about the “has been” and the “ahead” in the midst of it all.

I will miss this city and I will miss the people.

And yet here I sit so aware of God’s goodness and feeling so thankful. On Friday as we were walking in the Red Light District we passed by some flowers outside one of the houses. At first I didn’t see them, but a waft of their fragrance hit me as I walked by and I stopped to go back. Finding beauty in a place where everything is so dark and distorted. Being reminded of life and fragrance, and of God, who didn’t just create the beautiful, fragrant flower, but also every girl I’ve ever met behind the windows. And to Him they are all beautiful with infinite value. Like each one of us.

Ending well. It feels like a good ending to this journey. A good ending to a couple of years of sowing in tears and yet reaping in joy and rejoicing at lives changed.

Ending... which means the beginning of something. I am curious where this journey will take me.

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