April 12, 2025

05/08/2024 When the Lord gave me the idea to start interviewing people and sharing their testimonies on this blog, I asked my own mother the same question. She, too, has been walking with the Lord for years, and she too has a special testimony. But, humble as my mother is, she reacted a bit doubtful. Still, she couldn’t say no since she is the biggest fan of this blog, LOL. We start off laughing when I ask her to introduce herself: Well, I’m your mother, LOL Born on July 31, 1956, in Nijkerk. I have two older brothers; I’m the youngest of the three. My middle brother passed away in 2017, my oldest brother is fortunately still alive and lives, together with his wife, nearby. Grandpa and grandma were very religious, and the Lord had an important role in the family, right? How was that for you? Yes, that’s right, grandpa and grandma were very religious. Grandpa was an elder in the church for many years and often visited people who needed a conversation or spiritual support. Grandma cleaned the church for many years. The Lord played a big role in our home, and grandpa and grandma loved the Lord very much. My relationship with grandpa, grandma and my oldest brother has always been very good. With my other brother, however, it was not good. He hurt me terribly in the past, and the relationship had become very disturbed. “The faith was mainly based on religion; you had no relationship with God” We grew up with the faith and went to church every Sunday, until I was about sixteen, and I didn’t really want to go anymore. I had a girlfriend, and her parents were also very religious. Every Sunday, grandpa and grandma and her parents went to church. We, as teenagers, lied and said that we would come to church also. It was a big church; the whole village sat in church each Sunday, so her parents and grandpa and grandma wouldn’t miss us among so many people. We then said that we would go to church on our own on the scooter, but in the end we stayed at my girlfriend’s house and pretended that we were home from church earlier when her parents came home after the service. Not as it should be, I know, but I was a teenager, and grandpa and grandma were quite strict about going to church. It was just part of family-life; you went out of habit; it was part of the upbringing. Eventually, I married your father at a young age. We got married in church; those are also things you just did. For your parents and because that was just the way it was. Faith was mainly based on religion at that time. You had no relationship with God. Once married, we rarely went to church, much to the sorrow of grandpa and grandma. Yet, faith never completely left me. Eventually, I divorced your father. The first few years alone were difficult; I had no help from your father. He was not there for you, and he did not share financially in the care. Grandpa and grandma did what they could and helped with everything. After a few years alone with you and your brother and sister, I met your stepfather; Arie. “Arie saw a lot in the lives of your grandparents; what God meant to them” From the moment I met Arie, everything changed, also in terms of faith. He saw a lot with grandpa and grandma; what God meant to them. Especially when Grandpa came to a nursing home. Of course, we visited there very often, and on Sundays, Sunday services were also held there. The leader of these Sunday services in the nursing home also often came to Grandpa’s bedside, and that is how we initially got to know this man. This leader of the Sunday services in the nursing home was also a member of the church, of which my oldest brother and sister-in-law were also members. In 2007 the enemy struck hard in our family; Arie was diagnosed with asbestos cancer. At that time, he was not yet religious, but all those years he had seen the faith in God up close with your grandparents. After the diagnosis of asbestos cancer, he increasingly felt the need to talk to someone about it. My oldest brother and his wife then contacted the man from their church who was also the pastor in the nursing home, and Arie was able to have a number of conversations with him. Due to circumstances, he had to hand it over to someone else, and that is how Reverend Maasland came into our lives. Based on these conversations, we also decided to register as members of the same church where my oldest brother and his wife were also members, and we started attending Sunday services. But soon after that, Arie’s health deteriorated, and he could no longer physically bring himself to go to church. We still often listened to the sermons of the services via the church radio. Reverend Maasland continued to visit us at home and supported us so well during Arie’s entire illness, which ultimately lasted two years, and after Arie’s death, Reverend Maasland was still there for me. He was a great support. Arie also had many conversations with him. “God has not abandoned me” Arie died on the sixth of June 2009 at the age of fifty-eight. The pastor continued to visit me regularly. I had so many questions, and he was a great support to me. God did not let me go because, about a year after Arie’s death, I started the Alpha course. How did you come to do that all of a sudden? Did it come from yourself, or did someone cross your path? I was called shortly after Arie’s death, by someone from the management of the Alpha course, to ask if I was interested in taking the course with her. I

04/19/2024 It is a rainy evening in the spring of 2024 when we meet again in an Italian restaurant. Due to busy schedules, it took a long time, but finally we meet again! I pull my umbrella and enter the restaurant, where I am immediately warmly welcomed by a restaurant employee. “I have an appointment with my friend, and I think she just came in,” I tell her. “Oh yes, come with me,” she says and accompanies me to the table where I see my dear friend and sister in the Lord sitting with a big grin on her face. I get a big hug from her, and we sit down; she had already ordered a basket of bread and a ginger tea, and I also order a ginger tea right away. First, a quick catch-up, after not seeing each other for so long. Once the starter is finished, I start with my questions: Let’s just start at the beginning; because who exactly do I have in front of me? Well, I’m Priscilla; I’m almost thirty-eight years old and have been together with my husband, Mel (Melvin), for twenty years. We’ve been married for fifteen years and have two beautiful children together: a daughter of ten, Siara and a son of seven, Jaivon. I now work in the hospital, but before that I worked for many years in the notary’s office. That’s right, because that’s where we know each other. I was going through a divorce, seven and a half years ago, when I started working at a notary’s office. My life was in disarray, and I had a lot of questions about faith and Jesus, all of which you answered during lunch breaks. Eventually, we both went to work elsewhere but kept in touch via Facebook. During a conversation via Facebook, you invited me to come to your church with you. I accepted, and during that Sunday service I chose Jesus again and decided there and then to never let Him go. So that’s your part! But where did your journey with Jesus actually begin? I was three and a half years old when I lived with a foster family, and this family went to church every Sunday, an evangelical church. Every Sunday I went to Sunday school and later also to teen and youth services. That is how my walk with the Lord began. Although the foster family offered me love, growing up was hard; because of everything I experienced at a very young age, it was difficult for me to receive love. Because of this, I never felt loved or wanted, and I was very depressed and downhearted at a young age. “Thoughts of suicide went through my head every day” As a teenager, I was an outsider everywhere, and I was alone, at home and at school. At school, I was bullied and had no friends, and at home it was also difficult. I never did anything right, and I didn’t feel good enough or wanted. Thoughts of suicide went through my head every day. I really didn’t care what would happen to me or where I would end up. I even hoped and prayed to God that He would end my life. Not only that, but I thought about the ways in which I would commit suicide; I once went looking for sleeping pills; I once stood with a knife in my hands; and I also regularly thought about going to the train station to jump in front of a train, but I didn’t dare to do any of it. I did hear God’s voice and pray with Him daily, but the feelings and conversations that I expressed to Him were mainly negative about myself and begging for Him to take me home. I really longed for death. In retrospect, I can recall many things in which I see God’s protection. The sleeping pills, for example; we had sleeping pills in the house and on the day that I went to look for the pills in the house, and I really intended to take them, they were nowhere to be found. I searched the entire house, but I “coincidentally” did not find them! Continuously, day in and day out, I was preoccupied with death. The enemy had an easy prey in me at that time.   I visited my father once a month, but by the time I was fifteen, I went to live with him and his then wife. He had married in the meantime, and on those weekends I went to church with them on Sundays; this was a Molucca church. It was a beautiful church where the presence of the Lord was strongly present. This changed me enormously. I grew closer to God, could understand His voice even better, and also started reading the Bible more. God often showed me Bible texts that I could hold on to enormously. Because I was still very damaged, depressed and down, eventually there came a time when I went to live with my father and had to go to school there too. “God showed me that He would always be with me” Had you also made some girlfriends in your father’s circle? Children from the church, perhaps? Well, I was very afraid of being alone. The only thing I mainly knew before that time was being alone, being excluded and feeling unwanted. Because of that, an enormous fear of being alone had arisen. But despite the fear, after moving to my father, I was never alone in anything. In that place of residence, I quickly got some friends who were also religious, and a club of very strong religious teenagers was formed that I was part of. I already saw God’s guidance and protection in this. God gave me many Bible texts during that period in which He showed that I was not alone and that He would always be with me. In the years that followed, I grew enormously in my faith and