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!