From a Farming Village to a Frightening City

My parents were both raised in Christian homes as part of the Dutch Reformed Church, one more strict than the other. As an infant, I was baptized and throughout my childhood, I faithfully attended Sunday School. My family lived in an old house on a dead-end street on the edge of a farming town called Nootdorp. Dutch farms are quite small, whatever a family can manage by themselves, and there were three farms just on our short street. With my two brothers and neighborhood friends, we often played in the fields, fished along the canals during summer, and skated on the ice in wintertime. Even in my small village, we were considered “country bumpkins” compared to the town folk.

During my elementary years, we would visit the historic city of Delft and Holland’s political capital The Hague for shopping. My dad would often argue that “Delft costs money!” He usually was right. When time came for middle school, my brother and I attended a vocational training school in Delft and bicycled the half hour track to the city each day. Two years later, I switched to a vocational school in The Hague to study graphic arts and printing, riding my bicycle one hour each way.

Now I was in the middle of the worst district of the city and part of a class with dropouts from higher education schools. One student was a rockabilly, bragging about his weekly bar fights. Another was a break-dancer and professional graffiti painter, while another sprayed graffiti just to get his name on walls across the city. One was a punk who brought her rat to school. Another was a posh rich kid who flunked his academics. This was the ’80s! What were my parents thinking sending me here!? I would have never sent my child to school there, yet God used this time to call me to serve Him in the city. One of my classmates became a close friend, yet he delved into the punk scene, got a big mohawk, became an anarchist, started using drugs, and eventually dropped out of school. This had broken my heart deeply and I prayed daily that God would use my little light to shine in such dark places where my friend had ended up.

My first sense of calling came when the leaders of my youth group showed the movie, The Cross and the Switchblade. The video told the story of David Wilkerson and the founding of the drug rehab ministry called Teen Challenge in New York City. This exposure to the oppression of drug addiction among teenagers in the USA grabbed my heart. I could not imagine, however, how I could ever be of any help to drug addicts. After all, I was just studying a vocational trade. The group then watched a documentary of a Christian drug rehab called The Hope in Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Suddenly, when I heard the distinctive sound of a Heidelberg printing press, my heart started racing. God could use a skilled graphic technician to help addicts?! I knew at that moment that God had a special plan to use my vocational skills and serve troubled youth.

My second sense of calling came while reading the book Living on the Devil’s Doorstep by Floyd McClung. The book tells the story of the McClung family moving from Afghanistan to Amsterdam in order to rescue drug addicts at the start of what was called “the hippy trail.” In 1973, Floyd and his team had rented a houseboat behind Central Station and called it The Ark. The boat was used to take in lost and troubled young people and to disciple them. The Ark was the founding ministry of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) Amsterdam. The McClung family then decided to move into the Red Light District, a high crime area known for its public display of prostitution. The family’s home and their newly-formed ministry called The Cleft was right next door to the satanic church! Reading this story, I frequently had to stop as the Holy Spirit flooded me with His love, a brokenness for the lost, and an assurance of His calling. I prayed for the Lord to use me in the world’s darkest places like He had used Floyd McClung and David Wilkerson. If Delft and The Hague were bad, Amsterdam was the big bad city, considered the Sodom and Gomorrah of The Netherlands!

Pursuing this strong sense of calling, I completed the Discipleship Training School (DTS) with YWAM Amsterdam in 1989 and joined The Ark, which by then was a building in the city’s center. I also worked with YWAM’s outreach ministry called Steiger 14, which used the old houseboat for the weekly “Rock & Roll Bible Study” and other events. I became the sound technician for the No Longer Music band. We would go out on the streets during the day and into the nightclubs after midnight to strike up conversations, build relationships, and invite youth to our evangelistic events. It was during these two years on staff that the third sense of calling pointed me in a whole new direction.

From Holland to Hanoi

There were several things I had said I never wanted to do: live in the city, become a student, leave Holland to be a missionary, marry an American (or any non-Dutch), and pastor a church. All of these things happened one by one. I now have learned to never say never!

While serving with YWAM in Amsterdam, the concept of the 10/40 Window had just come out was and often promoted during YWAM meetings (see Figure 1). According to the Joshua Project, “The 10/40 Window is the rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia approximately between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude.” This region is “home to the least evangelized countries…four of the world’s dominant religious blocs…the largest unreached peoples over one million…the overwhelming majority of the world’s least evangelized megacities … [and] the majority of the world’s poor.”

My wife Linda had come from the USA in 1990 to work with YWAM in Amsterdam. After completing her DTS, she also moved into The Ark. With a bachelor’s degree in Social Work and Psychology, she had felt called to serve the young men and women who had come out of the Red Light district. Before we met, both Linda and I felt a strong call to the 10/40 Window and serve in the most unreached and undeveloped nations. After we married in Amsterdam in 1992, we moved to Elim Bible Institute & College in upstate New York to prepare for a long-term missionary career.

The call to serve in Hanoi came during my second year at Elim. One Sunday morning in October of 1994, while driving to church, Linda and I talked and prayed about our future after graduation. We still felt strongly about serving in a least-reached nation, using our professional skills as substance abuse counselor (Linda) and in graphics and computers (Jacob) to help drug addicts and orphans. We prayed and committed ourselves to the Lord, trusting that He would show us where to go and who to go with.

That same week, a missionary candidate came to my class and shared how God had opened the doors for professionals to come to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Irvin Rutherford, his director and founder of Asian Ministry Teams (AMT), had struck an agreement with the government to help orphans, drug addicts, and to do vocational training. In 1972, Rutherford had established Teen Challenge in Saigon, South Vietnam, and his reputation had preceded him. All they needed now were missionaries with vocational qualifications willing to go and serve. I literally jumped out of my seat and asked how I could sign up!

Upon graduation in 1996, we joined Rutherford and AMT in Kansas City, MO, to begin our journey to Hanoi. Irvin was amid raising funds for a new children’s home in the city in partnership with the local government. Soon after our arrival, he realized that he also needed to recruit qualified staff to run the program. The agreement with the government specified that AMT would provide an administrator with social work and psychology qualifications. Furthermore, AMT would also provide vocational training for the children. Here we are, Lord, send us!

God quickly honored our desire to serve Him.  One year after I graduated from Elim, Linda and I with our two children landed at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport to work at the Friendship House children’s home in Hanoi’s Dong Da District. As I’ve mentioned, our first week was extremely challenging, but after we settled into our home around the corner from Friendship House, life became more adventurous. During our first term of three years, Linda served as the administrator of the children’s home alongside our teammates and with the government directors. I became the vocational director and taught the teenagers computer skills while training a few older boys in graphic design. Today, one of those boys has a family of his own and works in the printing industry, designing and publishing printed materials for churches citywide.