Marc's Short Messages

This weekend we enjoyed a two-day cycling trip along the IJssel river and paid a visit to Peter Freeke of Ellel Ministies. We stayed over at Baak House, their new Dutch training base. Unfortunately we managed to finish the school holidays in the same way as we started it - with a car break-down. Thought this kind of stuff only happens to Andrew Jones.

I'm back in the office this week and catching up with e-mail, Joel News and project planning and reports.

Simon Turner and his team are ready to start their prayer trip along Iceland's Ring Road. You can follow their journey here.

Peter turned 7 today and he thoroughly enjoyed his birthday.

Most of this week went into car searching with our techie friend Mark. Today we finally accomplished our mission - a spacy Renault - which can be picked up from the garage early next week.

David and Peter created a 'mobile fire station' out of Lego and are competing in the Venz competition with their design. David also created a new weblog.

Based on a EU sponsored review of the State of European Cities, Utrecht has the fastest growing economy in the Netherlands, and ranks 13th in a list of 258 European cities. The top-4 is dominated by cities in former Eastern Europe: Moscow, Warsaw, Prague and Dresden.

I added my Switzerland pictures to Flickr. Nine small sets labelled with CH08. Check it out.

The garage called that our dear Ford Mondeo station is beyond repair, so we need to find ourselves a new second-hand car that can serve us in the next years. Because this is a high priority for which we need time, we decided to skip our planned trip to Austria and continue our family break in the Netherlands.

When we crossed the Sustenpass at 2224 meter, we made a walk up to the impressive Stein glacier. Switzerland at its best.

On the first of August the Swiss commemmorate that in 1291 they became an independent Federation. It's being celebrated with parties and fires in the villages and on the mountain tops. In the morning I paid a visit to Reinhold and in the evening we had a wonderful barbecue and fireworks with the Frey families. And of course this is the time to blow the alphorn.