Belgium, Pt 2 of 4: Bring out the Ghent

...Continued from

Belgium, Pt. 1: Australian Surfboard Upset (link)

Not to belabor an already archaic 90's reference with a GIF, but...

via GIPHY

21 month old Levi pilots his very first Boeing 767 to Europe!  More adorable cockpit photos are below.

Previously, on Pt. 1:  Last month’s Australian surfing weekend was a bust for me, though my parents (and Mike and Summer, this month) enjoyed their visits Down Under.  After hanging out with my good buddy Joseph in Hollywood, I flew home to gather my family for another overseas trip.  Sadly, caring for our sick four-year-old daughter delayed that trip an additional week.

Once Lena’s fever broke, the Hamiltons flew standby from Portland to Atlanta to shop for some open international flights.

En route to Atlanta: “Hey Mommy, let’s watch ‘Frozen’ for the third time this week!”

Our late evening touchdown at the Atlanta airport dashed any hope of same-day overseas connections.

We checked into the Atlanta Sleep Inn, which conveniently had a Ruby Tuesday restaurant 75 feet away from the hotel lobby.  Weirdly, that Tuesday’s location was somehow out of every single menu item that poor lil’ Lena ordered.  After several unsuccessful return trips to the kitchen, the friendly waitress predicted that the manager would comp us a Tuesday's appetizer or drink for Lena's disappointment.

Nada.  Thanks, Ruby Tuesday.

This Ruby Tuesday location has a skimpier kid’s meal selection than a small town diner's during the zombie apocalypse.

Lena and Levi tag team Daddy in the Sleep Inn lobby

The next morning, Kathy and I debated the merits of various international destinations.  We finally settled on Belize for its exotic outdoor adventure potential:  hiking, volcano climbing, surfing, cave diving… But then I discovered the return flights to the States looked too full.

The Wi-Fi network crashed at the Sleep Inn, so we shuttled back to the Atlanta airport to continue the trip planning on our phones’ internet browsers.

ATL curbside check-in

Overseas flights from Atlanta with open seats were limited that day.  I boiled it down to two final choices:  Germany’s Cannstatter Volksfest (the world-famous family fair near Stuttgart) versus western Belgium.  After estimating a whopping savings of 250 Euros for passing on the Volksfest, the inexpensive hostels in Belgium won out.

I’d already visited Brussels a few times and was obviously looking to branch out (check out this link to my previous father-son Belgiumtravelogue).  I tweeted my Twitter friend Sofie from the Belgian-based Wonderful Wanderings travel blog, asking her #1 pick for Belgium.  We didn’t expect Sofie to have a chance to reply before our departure, so we checked in and hustled to the gate.

Levi and Lena requested multiple do-overs on the ATL people mover

Levi boards his first international flight, with veteran traveler Lena

Learning that this would be Levi’s first overseas trip, the Delta flight crew lets both L’s in on the cockpit action before takeoff.

A pilot group stole..., er, "regrammed," my Instagram photo below, and Levi's adorable photo got 4,700+ likes!!

Levi took his first international flight to Europe last week, and @delta gave him a front row seat!

A photo posted by Garth Hamilton (@garth_hamilton) on Oct 12, 2015 at 5:59pm PDT

15 hours later...

Though we got split up between Business Elite and Coach Cabin seats during our flight overseas, all of us landed safely together in Brussels.

A tweet from Sofie came through as we cleared Belgian Customs., She had a few ideas and an enthusiastic recommendation for our next stop.

Ghent it would be!

Coming up on Garth’s Blog…

Belgium, Pt. 3 of 4:  Going Medieval on Ghent

Just Read: I Saw the Church

Written during this week's overseas family vacation in Ghent, Belgium, this book review will also be featured on my Goodreads page soon.

Disclosure:  This book is on my required reading list for the ordination process in the Church of God.  I submitted a more in depth book report to my Credentials Advisory Committee.

Several books have been written about the history of the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) reformation movement.  “I Saw the Church,” however, is the first book to organize our church’s history with an emphasis on development of theology and practice, rather than merely document a timeline of events and church leaders.  In other words, it’s not a chronological history.  The non-chronological layout was disorienting at times (flashing back and forward to various decades/centuries, church leaders dying or bowing out of the scene and then reappearing in the narrative later, etc.), but upon my second reading it made sense why author Merle Strege made this stylistic choice.

Regarding the content itself, I was impressed at how candid and thorough Strege was with researching this book.  Church history is placed within the context of then-current developments of the universal Christian church and society as a whole.  Before reaching the more love-oriented modern era depicted at the end of the book, I learned much about the earlier eras of my own church movement.

Many parts were inspiring, though I occasionally found myself scribbling exclamation points in the margins at some of the primitive ideas that somehow went unchallenged for so long.  I would’ve counted myself among the dissenters who revolted against the original tendencies towards legalism, exclusivism, and anti-intellectualism.  Strege offers an unflinching look at how the Church of God has wrestled through issues of doctrine (though we don’t officially have a creed other than the Bible), theology, practice, organization, and social issues.

Throughout my life, I’ve found myself taking pride in our church movement’s relatively liberal stance towards women in ministry, racial equality, government, and other issues.  This book helped me to understand that our movement’s earlier leaders had some rather eccentric views,  mistakes were made along the way, major disagreements occurred (as well as silly minor disputes), and that it’s unrealistic to expect a completely smooth evolution of thought and practice from a church that is comprised of imperfect people.  Regardless of the peripheral troubling spots in our church’s earlier history, it was inspiring to read an account of the men and women who have followed the call to pursue the vision of holiness and Christian unity.

“I Saw the Church” is written for anyone interested in a balanced, thoughtfully laid out examination of how the Church of God’s grass roots beginnings evolved into to our present era.  The non-chronological structure takes some getting used to, but in retrospect, it was well worth the effort.  This book is a wealth of information and insight into the heritage of our holiness movement.