Leiden

Leiden is a very Dutch looking city. We were asked to speak at the Mennonite church in town.

The city has many quotes in different languages on the walls of buildings and the first one we saw was in English.

It is a quote from Shakespeare.  The second poem was in Arabic but we were walking too quickly to be able to read it. 

The Dutch appear to like having skinny trees. We've seen these all over the place.

We dragged our luggage through the streets to get to the church. The wheels were very loud running over the cobblestones.

The church is a hidden church and now a historic building protected by the government, so its heritage must be maintained. We spoke to about 24 people about a project we are doing in a recycling village in Cairo.

Notice the lovely old pipe organ. The organist was about 70 years old and had been part of an MCC exchange in the US when he was young so he was happy to connect with us. He played the organ beautifully throughout the service both for hymn singing and also for a musical interlude.  That was a highlight.