Our start in God's Kingdom
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ecause we were married very young, John twenty and I just eighteen years old, we still belonged to the youth group of our church. Together we had confession and were therefore allowed to baptize our son Richard.In that year we were asked to open up our house to join others youth to start a Bible group under the direction of an elder of the church. This is how we actually rolled into the work of God's kingdom.
One day when I hung up laundry in the little backyard of our house, my eyes went up involuntarily and the Lord show me something for the first time. I saw half of a large ship towering high above a quay. When I mentioned that to John that evening, we wondered if this might be meant serving the Lord abroad. John had long had a desire to serve the Lord full time to go to work and saw a piece of guidance in this.
Because we lived in a small house, we wanted to after a few years to a bigger house, because I had become pregnant again. In Kreekhuizen-IJsselmonde we were able to move into a beautiful large flat. There too we visited the Reformed Church. It was the little church in which we were also married.
We hoped to join a youth group there, but that was not easy. In the 'Youth Cafe' as it was then called, people preferred to talk about politics than about the Bible. But our hearts went out more to tell others the gospel. And so we fell a bit between shore and ship too grown up to go to the youth cafe, which was intended until the age of twenty-five, but again too young to join an older group. Our hearts were on fire for the Lord, but how and where should we let this burn?
