Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings and blessings to you all!
What a news to hear in the Netherlands we are going to have a King! I must say I’m a bit sad I won’t be able to be there for the historic occasion as these changes don’t happen very often. To do my own little celebration here, was grateful I recently received a special delivery from the Netherlands including dark chocolate spread, dropjes and stroopwafels! Yes besides family and friends it is the Dutch food I miss the most and these little things make a huge difference!

Here things are going really well, though busy.
I was responsible for coordinating 3 big and 2 small meetings that happened back to back in the past 10 days. These meetings happen once or twice a year. Some of the +/- 100 guests that came are friends and advisers of Loren & Darlene, representatives from other mission organizations and other YWAM leaders. I had never organized them by myself before and I learnt so much in doing so. First of all the preparation time was the busiest one, trying to get all the logistics planned out and all the materials organized. Then trying to get the manpower to actually run the events. I was blessed there was a hospitality team that took care of all the food as those kind of tasks are not possible for me to do while taking care of Hope. So I was mostly making lists, updating itineraries, schedules and so forth. It was a lot of fun though and Hope enjoyed meeting a lot of new people. Now I’m trying to catch up on regular office activities like e-mails as I didn’t do any of that during the meetings.

Jackson has been progressing so rapidly in memorizing the Gospel of Mark. He has already done several presentations of this where he will present a portion of the Gospel. At the end of this month his final assignment is to present the Gospel in a one hour presentation. All of this is verbatim (word by word literally). They don’t add anything and don’t use their own language, but they make it sound like it is their own words as they have mastered the text over the past weeks. As it probably won’t be hard to imagine, Jackson is really good at this as he is such an animated story teller with such a captivating voice. When we go for a walk to the supermarket (half an hour) he will practice on the way there and back. One time he was brushing his shoulders so I thought he had walked under something dirty. He said, that “no, it’s part of the roof that came down when the four friends lowered the paralyzed man in front of Jesus”. All I can say is I hope you will get an opportunity to hear him present this. Personally I took the seminar his school runs and I was amazed at how quickly you learn the memorization technique on a passage of scripture. I still haven’t forgotten what I memorized in the seminar and I have also tried to apply it to a different portion of scripture and it works! It comes down to experiencing the event in front of your eyes and then telling what you saw.

Hope Shekinah is already 17 months old and talking a lot now. She not only is able to communicate in Ngie, Dutch and English, but she also responds to the Korean children on campus in Korean. She loves her friends and knows many of their names now also. She has started praying before meals and will talk a lot of words in baby language and then say “Amen”. She enjoys this so much we often end up praying at least 2-3 times before we eat .

The pregnancy is going well, 25 weeks already! I had a little bit of a scare last week when I had a persistent cramp/pain in my calf muscle for several days. The doctor ended up sending me for an ultrasound to make sure it wasn’t a blood clot and thankfully it wasn’t! Now I don’t feel that pain anymore and am taking some magnesium supplements and bananas to keep the cramping down.

Thank you so much for all your love and support!

Blessings,

Jackson, Anneke, Hope and …

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Dear Family & Friends,

2013 has started and what a season we have here in Kona. We just received more than 600 students, so there are now about 1200 people including staff involved here. Students are here from all over the world and we have already gotten to know a few of the newcomers.
Jackson has started his studies this year with a very unique school called “Word by Heart”. By the end of this school he will be able to present a live drama of the Gospel of Mark word for word as it is written in the Bible. So they take the “script” and literally use it in a dramatic way that is just mind blowing. His teacher Bruce Kuhn a former Broadway actor actually lives in the Netherlands as his wife is Dutch! He is here with his family 3 months to lead this school for the first time in Youth With A Mission. Jackson is so excited to use his passion and love for the Word, in such a new and dynamic way. Imagine the impact this will have in Nigeria, a culture that loves drama and the arts and in which there is a challenge of illiteracy, so many have not been able to read the Bible. And even in cultures where the Bible is well known, seeing it come to life just gives you such a new perspective.

We are both so in love with our princess Hope Shekinah who continues to develop so amazingly. She is able to understand instructions very well, such as “throw this in the trash” or “bring mummy your shoes”. The other day she had taken her cup and put it somewhere I could not see it. I looked for it about 10 minutes then I decided to ask her, not sure if she would understand, but I tried “Where is your cup?”, she looked around then walked straight to her tricycle and opened the storage box on the back in which she had put the cup. AMAZING. I was so proud of her and it taught me that she probably knows so much more than I think. The other day she did something incredibly funny. She had been able to open the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers and was taking out about 5 pieces of clothing. She gathered all of them in a bundle and started walking with them, so I followed her to see what she would do. She headed straight for the trash bin and started throwing the first piece in the trash, for which of course I had to stop her, but it was sooo funny. She is so precious. Last month she started a true appreciation of affection and she now LOVES to hug and cuddle with us and also with other little children. She will hug other children in the play ground and she particularly loves babies with whom she is very gentle. It’s so sweet as of course we as parents LOVE to hug her too!

I’m doing well and feeling so much stronger than last quarter when I had morning sickness and a lot of tiredness. It also helps a lot that Jackson is not as busy as the last three months so we are really enjoying our family and couple times as well. On January 3d 2013 we celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary! He took me out to the movie Les Miserables which was wonderful! That same morning we had the opportunity to speak to a Christian Camp about “what is my calling?” and Jackson taught as I translated. It was such a precious time with those young adults to be able to share some of our testimonies and encourage them.

For the next updates I would like to know if you have any questions for us, or if there are any areas you would like us to write about? All ideas/suggestions are welcome!

Lots of love and blessings,

The Ndechecks

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