Hup Holland Hup!

The European Cup (EK) is a big deal for soccer fans. It's the second biggest tournament after the World Cup. It is held every four years; in 2000 it was in Holland and the Dutch people went absolutely crazy. There was soccer stuff in every window, every street had Dutch flags and people even painted their houses orange. I'm not kidding. There were entire streets of orange houses!

Since I was living in Holland in 2000, I had the chance to see the "oranje gekte" (the orange craziness) first hand. Missionary work, much like everything in Europe, has to be put on hold when soccer is happening. We watched a lot of the games and pretty soon I had my face painted orange and RB was wearing his Snickers Lucky Pants underwear over his proselyting clothes. We had the fever.

Here we are four years later and it’s time for Euro 2004 in Portugal. Because RB loves soccer, he decided to shell out the money so we could watch the tournament on pay-per-view. (Americans don’t like soccer so the EK is not on free TV.) We figured that since we were probably the only two Dutch soccer fans on this continent it was important that we showed our support.

This was going to require a lot of trickery--like me sneaking away from my job at the Community College or RB talking his lab boss into watching the game with us instead of saving the human race through the genetic mumbo-jumbo that they do there.

None of this would have been very noteworthy, however, if it wasn’t for the timing. Right in the middle of the tournament RB’s wife was to bear him a son—very sweet of her. I quickly got the impression, however, that RB was going to make sure that not even a new baby was going to interfere with us watching soccer.

Little Calvin Benjamin Jones was born on Friday, June 25. That worked out perfectly. Carolee was able to watch Holland beat Latvia with us on the 23rd, she was still in the hospital on Saturday the 26th and allowed RB to take his “dinner break” at 7 p.m. so we could watch Holland beat Sweden on penalty kicks, and she was back home with the newest member of the family for the semifinal match against Portugal on the 30th.

Portugal ended up beating Holland. We were a little upset, but were not forced to lose our testimonies of Dutch soccer like the millions of supporters in Holland. It was good times. I got to enjoy the games with the ever-revolving cast of those that frequent the Jones’ residence: Tim, Stew, RB’s boss, Carolee’s family, some kid from Missouri, etc. I got to have the heartfelt, soul searching conversations that I love to have with RB, all fit in amongst cell phone calls, emails, visitors and free kicks. Heel gezellig.

It is important to get the good times in while they’re still to be had. Jones will be moving back to Missouri in a few months, which makes me sad. But, who knows where life will lead us in the four years between now and Euro 2008.