Soooo much is happening! We have to post a short update here, just to let you know about some major things!
1. We had the opening of our YWAM Aruba base! On the 17th of May we had a beautiful gathering with may brothers and sisters from Aruba and even one from Jamaica and one from the US. We worshipped God together, dedicated the base to God and had good fellowship. We did the official opening act, revealing the name plate on the front wall, with all YWAM-ers. All in all it was a tremendous blessing for everyone there!
2. Soon after this event we were able to buy a new car!! It is a 2019 Toyota Rav4 and we feel soo blessed with this car. God has provided every cent for it! If you were one of the people who was faithful and contributed towards this car, may God bless you abundantly! We are blown away and humbled at the same time and cannot drive this car without a big smile on our faces!
3. It didn’t end after this, because I, Hanneke, left Aruba for a week to go to Nevada, USA! We were invited to the wedding of Matthew and Marley. Matt was in our DTS and he is our ‘son’. It was such a wonderful time with awesome people, a beautiful wedding, great experiences and… Chick-Fil-A! 😉
4. We are now in full preparation before going to the Netherlands. Next Thursday, the 19th of June, we will get on a plane and we will spend some time there. We had some really good reasons for going. My parents are celebrating their 50 year anniversary, our dear, long term friends Christiaan en Tineke are celebrating their 25 year anniversary and Ryan is graduating his study! For his final project he made an 8 minute documentary about what goes on inside the head of a person with autism in social situations. It is awesome!
Next to these celebrations we will have a lot of get-togethers with people. We will also have a Meet&Greet on Sunday the 6th of July. Since we will only be in the Netherlands for 2.5 weeks we cannot possibly connect with everyone personally, so we hope to see our Dutch people then. On the 8th of July we hope to celebrate our 26 year anniversary and on that day we plan on driving to France for a 2 week vacation with our little tribe of four before we fly back to Aruba.
And these were just the highlights, people. We have had visitors, a large donation from the Women’s Club Aruba for the La Sala building we want to buy, beautiful meetings and connections with La Sala and the homeless and addicted people in San Nicolas, staffing the Advance Family Studies, setting up a Dutch foundation and more. God is doing sooo much and it is at times overwhelming to see all this happening around us. We are grateful that we can be here and want to ask you for your continued prayer for all that God is doing here. Thank you so much for being a part of this story! We love you all!
Erik & Hanneke