My Story – Chapter 4
Chapter 4: My first counseling talk
When I was fourteen, I had my first counseling talk. Things were not well between my parents. Father would come home, tired and short-tempered. Mom would then run upstairs to their bedroom, crying. I decided this could not go on and said: “Mom, dad, please sit down, I need to talk with you about something.” They were a bit shocked. They just sat down on the couch and looked with big eyes at me. I said:
“It is not going well between you two. Mom runs time and again upstairs crying and dad you have such a short fuse. You overreact. I know dad that you haven’t had a vacation for nearly 8 years. I have a suggestion: please take two weeks vacation, I can cook, take care of my brothers, do the laundry and clean the house. Mom taught me!”
For a moment they were speechless, then my dad said:
“you are right Téo.”
They went on a two-week vacation, and I took care of my three brothers (2, 17 and 22). After my parents returned the atmosphere in the home lightened up.
After finishing Junior College in 3 years, I was able to get a job as an assistant laboratory worker in a hospital near Utrecht and found a place to live. This was also easier for my evening classes in the “Utrecht Laboratory Technician Evening Course.” Coming home from evening classes at 10.30, I did my homework until past midnight.
My parents bought me a book written by a former Dutch volunteer for the German SS Jan van Gijs, who met Jesus in a Russian concentration camp. “Searching for True Happiness” had short chapters. I was used to reading a little bit in it before falling asleep. That night the story was about a sick man who was carried, bed and all, by four friends to Jesus to have him heal their friend. There were so many people standing in the way that they couldn´t get close to Jesus. They broke open the roof (I could just see the dust coming down on people and Jesus, but they obviously didn´t care, they wanted to see their friend healed). They let him down before the feet of Jesus. Suddenly I realized that four people were praying for me: my parents and my grandparents. I knew I had to make a decision I knelt down and said:
“Thank you, Jesus, that you died for me on the cross…”.
I remember that I was too tired to feel anything. It was close to 01.00 in the morning, and I rolled in bed and slept. The next morning, I realized what I had done, and I started to smile (which was during that period of my life rather unusual). I went home for the weekend and told my parents who were overjoyed.
There was another communion Sunday planned. I had already enrolled in the confirmation class, as I would like to become a church member and be allowed to take part in the Holy Communion. This was usually held once or twice a year on a Sunday. I asked the visiting pastor if I could partake of that Communion. He presented my question to the Church leadership. The answer was a firm NO. My world collapsed. I shouted to my parents:
“They said NO.”
I ran outside, in the rain and roaring winds of the November storm. I reached a stream with willows at each side. The water called me…come…death is waiting…I cried out to God for help. Suddenly it became hushed around me, in spite of the raging storm, the Bible words came into my mind:
“See, I am standing at the door, and I knock. If anyone opens I will come in and have a meal with him and he with me” (Rev.3: 20).
My despair lifted, I had my private communion service with the Lord, without wine and bread… Soaking wet, I had to get all the way back to our home…I went into the church, I climbed up to the organ, pulled out all the registers and played my heart out… As my mother heard the organ play, she came to look for me, with a nose red from crying, she asked me if I was O.K. I reassured her, as I continued to worship.
My parents encouraged me to go to the Biblecenter and Bible school “de Herdershof” in Heerde for a Bible Conference rather than “watching the communion service.” The speaker in the Bible center was an elderly retired lawyer who went for the first time to South Africa as a missionary among South African Jews. In one of his challenges to us young people, he said:
“I am seventy, and I am going as a missionary, you are young, what are you doing with your life?”
I recalled the prayer when I was twelve. God had kept his promise, what would I do? I argued with God that at that time I was only twelve years. He replied in my mind
“…but I hear the prayers of twelve-year-old children.”
That settled it, so I decided to become a missionary.
