The following was written by Herb Boyd, emeritus Netherlands missionary who served actively as a church planter with BMM for 55 years.
In February of 2007 the Evangelical Baptist Church of Eindhoven in the Netherlands celebrated its 40th anniversary. As founding pastor, I was invited to be the guest speaker. It was an enjoyable day to see many friends still faithfully attending and to see the church being blessed with growth and effective ministry. After the service, a woman in her late forties named Tieneka came up to me, introduced herself, and then told me the following story.
The year the church was founded was also the first year we held a Daily Vacation Bible School, an activity previously unknown in Holland. As an eight-year-old girl, Tieneka had attended from the first day. Her mother brought her, along with a few of her friends.
“That very first day,” Tieneka told me, “I wanted to accept Jesus after you told about Him, but there was no chance.” [We were cautious, not wanting to scare the children from coming back!] “Finally, on the last day you said if anyone wanted to become a child of God by accepting Jesus, they should raise their hands. I was the first to raise my hand. Several others did so as well. You talked to us about what it meant and told us how to ask Him to forgive our sins and to come into our lives. I did it and was so happy that I finally could be a child of God.”
She told me that when she went home, she could hardly wait to tell her mother. When she did, her mother was overjoyed. This in itself was a miracle, because most Dutch parents are very skeptical about children getting saved, not to speak of their skepticism about the whole matter of salvation.
Then her mother did something she NEVER did—she called her husband at his job to tell him Tieneka’s news. On his way home from work that day, he stopped at a bakery and bought special pastry cakes. When he got home with these, he said, “There is a celebration in heaven when someone gets saved, but we are going to have our own celebration right here.” Tieneka still remembers the happiness they shared as a family that day.
But … that is not the end. Years later as she grew into a young woman, the DVBS idea was catching on in Holland. Right in Eindhoven was the Christian organization that was stimulating DVBS and providing training and materials for Daily Vacation Bible Schools throughout the whole country—even into a few other European countries. Tieneka has become the person in charge of supervising and expanding this ministry. She told me that the previous year, there were over 400 Daily Vacation Bible Schools in various cities around the Netherlands. Tieneka is also the wife of the assistant pastor of the Eindhoven church, helping out with the Sunday School of the church.
This was a special blessing for me that day. Although I knew most of the facts of the story, I had never made the connection between that eight-year-old who, back in 1967 so eagerly wanted to know Jesus, and the present developments. I am glad I was still around 40 years later to hear the rest of the story.