Author: Erik de Kievit

I^[1] work in a ministry with prostitutes. We organize afternoons for them with a fun activity and create a place for them where they are seen for who they are. One day, a young woman came in. She came with others that we had seen before, but she seemed very closed off. She had her arms crossed in front of her the whole time, was leaning back in a protective angle and was looking at us with caution in her eyes. She didn’t speak, and when the activity was over, she left quietly. I prayed that she would come back the next week, but I wasn’t sure that she would. Thankfully she did, and the second time was already different from the first time. She laughed a little and joined in with the activity with a more open attitude, it even showed physically that she was more at ease. When she left this time I got the ‘mandatory’ kiss on the cheek. It made me smile. After that she came every Tuesday. She opened up, told us about her struggles in the work that she does, told us about her family and her kids and about her dreams for the future. She relaxed more and more, opened up, became vulnerable. She mentioned that she was to leave in 2 weeks. (The women are only here for three months, then they have to go back due to work permits) We wanted to say goodbye to her the last meeting she would join, but there was no electricity in the city that day, so we had to cancel that meeting.

A few days after that, I saw a text in the WhatsApp group that we have with the women. She had sent us a picture with the phrase ‘I am home’ The picture was of her, with her young son. They were smiling.

I believe she has seen the love of God during a very difficult time in her life. And I believe that something changed for her because of that. This gives me hope! For her, for the other women I get to meet and for everyone in general. God can and will make a change in people’s lives for the better!! They just need to meet Him.

^[1] This blog is written by Hanneke.
Ana is a fictitious name.
Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

We have built quite a few relationships in San Nicolas. We have really invested in them. We always took the time to talk, asked specific questions about people’s situations, and took advantage of every opportunity to help. We prayed with everyone, brought their needs before God, and asked Him to guide and bless them. We brought birthday cakes and presents to birthdays. We promised little, delivered much, and had clear boundaries about what we could and could not do for people, and we stuck to those. We communicated these boundaries regularly when we were asked if we could help in specific ways. In everything we did, we focused on the relationships themselves and made every effort to really see people.

When we changed our food distribution from weekly hot meals to a monthly addition to groceries earlier this year, it meant that we would not be visiting the families as often as before. To make this transition go smoothly, we took the time to show people that we were just as faithful as before. We did not go from weekly to monthly visits all at once. In between, I visited the families extra, so that they knew that I was still thinking of them. I still make regular extra visits to San Nicolas, just to connect with people and pray. I am always welcomed with open arms, especially by the children. From the beginning of our ministry, I have worked really hard to connect with them in particular. Knowing their names, their ages, their likes and dislikes, and always taking the time to greet them and look them in the eyes, even when I am in the middle of a conversation with an adult. It is amazing to see the children smile again when we are there. 

Last Friday, I delivered the monthly food packages again. When we arrived at the home of a family with children, one of the little girls ran up to our bus, happily calling out to me, “Saturday, Saturday!” I was surprised that she called me Saturday, especially since I had told her my name before. But then I realized that I used to come over on Saturdays and that she had linked me to the day I always came to her house. What an honor to be given this beautiful nickname. I am Saturday!

Photo by Michael Mims on Unsplash.

In the past months we were gradually working towards making the switch from weekly hot meals for families to a monthly addition to the groceries. For over a year we had been in San Nicolas every Saturday to deliver food and build relationships. What an intense, but also wonderful time it had been. Now it was almost time! But something was still nagging. Although all the lights seemed to be green for this change, I still hadn’t received the confirmation I was waiting for.

Until that first delivery time. On Friday 27 January all the monthly food packages were prepared. We were allowed to deliver those packages to more than twenty families. The intention was actually to go on Saturday, but because we also had frozen chicken we decided on the spot to drive the route on Friday.

Margret^[1] lived at the very first address. This single woman has had to endure a lot in her life. She is often out and about helping others and that was also the reason why I did not expect her to be home. I got out of the bus to deliver the package to her front door and suddenly she was standing in front of me. She had come to the sound of the bus and wondered what was going on. I told her that we were delivering the monthly food package for the first time. When I said this, she almost started to cry; “I have no money left and am waiting for my pension,” she said: “I have no food left in the house at all and I did not know what to do anymore. Normally you would come on Saturday and now you are suddenly here today and with so much food. You were sent by God, thank you very much!”

There it was! There was suddenly that confirmation! For her that God sees her, looks after her and for us that we are still on the path that God has for us.

So now we continue with good courage. We get to deliver the packages monthly and that also creates more time to develop new things. Step by step!

^[1] Fictitious name.

On January 30, 2018, I was having a quiet time. After a hectic few weeks at the beginning of our Discipleship Training School (DTS), I had found time to drive to the back of the YWAM Orlando campus in our Toyota Camry. The Camry was a beat-up, but it ran and we could get around as a family, so that was enough.

As I sat there, I asked God to make it clear to me whether He had a calling for me. He did. Out of nowhere the thoughts came to me that He wanted us to go to Aruba and pioneer a YWAM base there. He also wanted us to work with families. He gave me the explicit instruction that I was not to talk about it with Hanneke. Although I found that assignment very strange, I chose to obey. I wrote everything down for myself and kept quiet about it with Hanneke. At the end of that week I asked God if I could talk about it with Hanneke. I was allowed to. Reluctantly I went to Hanneke and told her that I wanted to talk about something crazy with her. When I told her the story, it turned out that one day after me she had received the word ‘Aruba’ from God. So she was not surprised at all and I was.

A few weeks later we were on outreach in Barbados. There we had a conversation with two leaders, one of whom was also involved in the leadership of YWAM Caribbean. We told them our story and asked them if they could confirm our calling. It turned out that they could. They told us that they had been praying for ten years for a Dutch couple to come to Aruba to work with families there. 

About that same time, I asked God when I would be in Aruba. As soon as I asked that question I got the thought: “Orange above! When the king is there, you are there too.” Now, you have to know that “Orange above” (in Dutch: Oranje boven) is a saying that we use to honor the king and the kingdom of the Netherlands. So, I wrote it down and I have thought about it a lot in the past years. When we came to Aruba, the king was not there. And in the following years there was no sign that He would come to Aruba. Until the end of last year the announcement came that he would come this way. At that moment I did not really know what to do with this fact. I decided to let it go. If God wanted to make something clear to me, it would come naturally.

On January 30, 2023, exactly five years to the day after God had given me the calling to go to Aruba, the king landed in Aruba. When I told this to various pastors, they said separately: “Five is the number of God’s grace. God confirms your stay here.” It was as if God said to me: “Now you have actually landed in Aruba. You are here, this is where you need to be, and I am with you.” What a blessing and what a grace that we are allowed to be here and to help build His kingdom. To top it all off, on the same afternoon I also received the message that the application for my fifth residence permit had been approved.

With the arrival of the king, our stay here was further confirmed. Orange above, the king came. But before the king came, He had already been here for a long time. Long live the King!

Image by Marjan via Pixabay

In our primary school (I’m talking about 55 years ago^[1]), we children collected bottle caps (an aluminum-like, thin lid on milk bottles and such), mirrors and beads for the mission. The caps had value for reuse, the mirrors and beads were shipped to the mission field to be given away as gifts. And soon the image emerged of a man in a khaki suit and a pith helmet on his head, who all day long, year after year, handed out the bead necklaces and mirrors to the barely dressed dark people from a large chest, a kind of treasure chest.

What we, certainly as children, did not think about was that the missionary, and also his wife and any children, also had to live, cook, sleep, dust and eat somewhere.

What came through in a missionary magazine of that time, or at the mission evenings when a missionary on leave gave a speech, was not that he had repaired his roof, or that his wife had done the laundry. These reports were much more about traveling to unknown tribes in the interior, where the aforementioned mirrors and bead necklaces had to prevent the headhunters from being unfriendly to them. 

Working in Aruba, to care for the less fortunate and to introduce them to the gospel, is completely different. There are no native tribes with spears and other scary things. There are no dangerous routes to almost inaccessible places. And mirrors? Aruba has plenty of those. However, much worse than those dangerous routes and the spears is the poverty, the prostitution, the addiction, mainly in the southern part of the island.

Aruba: ‘One happy island’ is the promotional slogan.

But ‘one’ it is not. And happy? Well, at least not in the poorer South. And if we take a look at the emptiness of the entertainment of the millions of tourists in the – dare I say it? – decadent North, where often times two or three cruise ships dock every day and the thousands of passengers stroll along the luxury shops in Oranjestad, then there is probably no real happiness in the North either. There are dozens of beautiful hotels there and very luxurious resorts, and the number of beautiful homes of the rich of the world is countless. But two or three streets behind that there is also a lot of misery.

On Saturdays, Erik went in a van to San Nicolas and the surrounding area for over a year. To bring food to an addicted man who barely gets out of bed. Or to an old grandmother who takes care of four children in her small house, because her daughter has to work very hard in the luxury hotels in the North. (Very hard, because once a month a day off is more or less the standard.) Or to bring something to eat to almost twenty addresses where people live in miserable conditions. At each address, Erik asks if he can pray with the people. And almost everyone agrees. The affirmative ‘Amens’ are then pleasant and warm events.

And that brings me to what I am very grateful for. The miserable circumstances that Erik and Hanneke experience would almost make that snow under, although there is no snow on Aruba (with an average of at least 28 degrees Celsius).

I am grateful because they do their work in prayer, and are attentive to where their heavenly Father sends them. Whether that is bringing food, organizing marriage courses, Bible studies or counseling sessions, or the many meetings with different churches to expand and coordinate the work. Their prayer and with that their apparent dependence on God is a central part of their lives, in addition to intensive Bible studies and quiet times.

Experiencing their life, work, and prayer on Aruba for a month also multiplies our own prayer, both for Erik and Hanneke and for their sons Ryan and Kai. And that is why I want to end this guest blog with 2 things:
1. I want to call on everyone who reads this to think about sponsoring Erik and Hanneke and 2. I sincerely wish these beautiful children of God much strength, wisdom and insight to shape this important work in Aruba. And blessing, of course!

^[1] This guest blog was written by the father of Hanneke, Heerco Walinga – Thank you so much!

Sometimes reality seems different than it is. For over a year now, I have been visiting families in San Nicolas every Saturday to bring food. We call it a food distribution program, but it is not really about the food at all. In fact, everything we do is about building relationships and seeing people. Connecting with people and being able to better focus on what they really need. It is not an easy job. Every Saturday, I am warmly welcomed by different people, but every Saturday I also see very distressing situations. And sometimes, sometimes it grabs me by the throat. It sometimes grabs me by the throat when I enter the house of the elderly man who is lying in bed “out” from drugs for the umpteenth Saturday and when I, like every time, find a huge, dirty, smelly mess in his house. It sometimes grabs me when I enter the house of the 81-year-old grandmother who can no longer take care of herself and bossily orders the few volunteers around, who come by to wash her every day, because she is losing control even more because of their consistent expressions of love. It sometimes affects me when I think that I can only do this work for a few people due to a lack of capacity. My arms are sometimes too short to do what is necessary. Sometimes I don’t know what I will encounter this time. Every dire situation is one too many, but they still keep popping up again and again.

And all of a sudden, there is the radiant smile of that single woman who is so proud that she painted her own house. Suddenly, I receive a photo of a tidy and scrubbed room where that family can now celebrate Christmas. Suddenly, someone shows up who comes by day in, day out to provide clean clothes and food for that grandma, who despite being ordered around continues to give practical love. Suddenly, there is Jesus himself, who extends his arms despite our shortcomings, continues to serve and has already won the victory. It gives me courage to keep going, even if it sometimes seems too much.

Photo by pixls.am on Unsplash.

From the start of our food distribution ministry, we had been visiting them. Two sisters, both bedridden, cared for by the husband of one of them. Although their physical condition was anything but stable, both sisters were talkative every time we came. For them, our arrival meant a moment in which the routine of everyday life was broken, for us it meant we had the opportunity to encourage them and pray with them. What a privilege, and how it affected me at the same time that we could do so little for these people.

The next-door neighbor didn’t like the fact that I visited them, but not her. She also wanted to receive food from us every Saturday and thought the need in her situation was just as bad. It was difficult to explain to her why we made these choices. Unfortunately, week after week, no kind word could be said to us.

A few weeks ago I parked the van in the street again. Before I even got out, the same neighbor came towards us with a lot of commotion. One of the sisters had died the day before and the house was in mourning. When we entered we found the husband in the bedroom, sitting there on a chair, silent and shaken. He told us that his wife had ended up in the hospital. After being able to visit her on Tuesday, He had not seen her since. She had died on Friday. Because his wife was always silent when they were in an argument, he wondered desperately what he had done wrong. He didn’t even have had the chance to say goodbye. Well, what do you say in such a situation? We just stayed with him for a while, told him that God has the answers, that He knows what He is doing, that He will make everything right. Before we left we prayed together; for him, for his sister-in-law, for the whole family.

The following week condolences and a cremation followed. In the meantime I visited them a few times and last week I came back again to bring food. This time two portions instead of three. When I walked in and greeted him, he looked at me with a beaming smile. “I want to go to church again,” he said, “we’re going to plan it. I’ve had time to think about everything that has happened and I’m good to go. I have your WhatsApp number. I’ll let you know when I can go and we will sort it out.” Completely surprised, I said: “Fine, just let me know, you are very welcome to come along.” It continues to surprise me how God answers prayers every time. After praying for him, I got back in the van happy. As I drove down the street, this time I received a friendly wave from the neighbor. Of course I waved back. Apparently it’s not just him who has changed!

People can make such a deep impression on you. During our visit to Aruba I^[1] had the opportunity to visit Bethel Foundation. A simple complex, set up and run by Irene, a woman of about my age. She herself had been addicted for years in the Netherlands, but God had saved her in a miraculous way. Her liberation led to an unconditional love for people on the hopeless side of life; addicts in the poorest part of Aruba; San Nicolas.

Irene offers them shelter, food and addiction recovery. Everyone understands that this is difficult. But no matter how strict she is, her love is there every day. She starts the day at 3 am to seek God and ask for strength, and then she is ready for all her residents from very early on. She tries to make a home for them with the little they have.

If there is someone who is not addicted, but cannot get help anywhere (for example someone with a serious illness), she also offers help and a home. She told me she was praying for extra hands; After years, the work becomes too heavy for her to be able to do it seven days a week. If I would like to pray with her for this. I did. But because I was still in Aruba for a week, I couldn’t resist making a toiletry bag by hand to give her something for herself. 

Something personal from woman to woman. This toiletry bag was accepted with emotion. She said she could wear it between her clothes so she could put her daily allowance in it. Because even though her residents are grateful to her, stealing just happens. 

I still pray for her because she is so brave. She takes risks and points all the people who come under her roof to God who gives grace and asks for faithful listening. May God bless her and her people.

^[1] This guest blog is written by Erik’s mother, Elizabeth de Kievit. Thank you so much!

“Here you see the Frangipane, that is a mango tree next door, and this tree… is the cashew nut tree.” I look at her in surprise. “Do cashews grow in a tree?” My sister-in-law laughs. “Yes,” she says, “and even with just one nut per fruit.” She searches the ground for a moment and then picks up a freshly fallen fruit that looks a bit like a small green and yellow pepper, but sure enough… on top of the fruit there is a crescent-shaped nutshell through which I can recognize the cashew nut. Unbelievable… now I understand why those nuts are always so expensive. How many fruits would they need to fill one bag? 

My sister and I^[1] flew across the world the previous day and are now guests of my brother, sister-in-law and cousin in Aruba. It is over 86 degrees Fahrenheit outside and we are shown around the garden where all kinds of things grow and for which there are all kinds of plans. We see all kinds of things that we are not familiar with at home. We often know something about it, but I, for example, had never even seen those large cacti that grow everywhere here. It seems like a different world. 

That Aruba is a different world also becomes more apparent later in the week. We get a tour of the island and see the big difference between the wealth of the small strip of tourism area and the poverty of many other neighborhoods. It makes me feel torn. As a rich Western woman, I am used to luxury. Although not the luxury of the cruise ships, but it is the luxury of walking into a supermarket without any worries to do some shopping or eat out. And then I meet people who have lived on the island for generations, in poverty, and who depend on others for their meals. Who work multiple jobs to care for loved ones, who have few choices and are certainly not carefree. 

It feels crooked… that Aruban people benefit little from tourism while the island would probably be even poorer without tourism. However, tourism is mainly profitable for the rich, and only the nice pictures are distributed. 

In the Netherlands we complain easily about how expensive a bag of cashew nuts is, but in reality we do not realize that so much fruit is needed for one bag of cashew nuts and how much work it is to fill that bag. Wouldn’t that be the same with tourism? Do we actually realize what our luxurious life really costs?

^[1] Guest blog by Christine Bondt – Thank you Christine!

After half a year of getting to know each other, Gabriela^[1], a mother of seven, agreed for us to come over and paint a wall in her living room. How happy we were. The house had only two bedrooms and a living room / kitchen. When the children weren’t at home, there was no chance to even start, too much noise and stress. But now, Gabriela agreed upon choosing a suitable moment for the walls to be painted. We eventually settled on painting the week before her birthday. Then everything would be neat when it was her birthday, and she could enjoy the party with a festive feeling. For us, her consent felt like breakthrough. We wanted to help, and we were very happy she trusted us enough to let us help her.

She canceled at the last minute. She had some really bad experiences, and she didn’t want to paint anymore. Everything was pointless in her eyes.

The following Saturday we brought food. Although she still had an angry look, she seemed to have calmed down a bit. “What was that all about?” I asked, “Why did you drop out?” She said that Social Services suddenly deducted a large amount from her benefit. A few months ago, she had debts to the water and electricity company, but while those debts had been fully paid off, Social Services felt that, for the next year, they should make the payments directly from her benefits. Of course, there would be a margin, so that there would no longer be a shortage. She became furious again; “I barely make ends meet and do everything I can to pay the bills. Now Social Services uses that margin to make it even more difficult for me to pay the bills.” I understood her completely. The thoughts of some authorities in Aruba are inscrutable. But going against it wouldn’t help.

I was afraid that her confidence towards us had also been dented by this incident. Whatever we said, painting the wall was no longer an option for now. I understood, but I was also disappointed. I once again explained to her that we did not like the intervention of Social Services either and that we did not do our work based on rules, but out of love. But of course, that didn’t help. She couldn’t buy a cake for her birthday and enjoy it with the children. So, everything else felt a bit pointless as well.

Sunday was her birthday. I kept thinking about her and told my wife that I actually wanted to bring her a cake or something. My wife told me she had a pack of brownie mix. An hour later, I brought them to her, I had made them myself. How surprised and happy she was. Even though things went wrong, she still had cake on her birthday. Despite everything, she enjoyed a little bit of a good start of her new year!

^[1] Fictitious name
Photo by iMattSmart on Unsplash