Going to America

Going To America

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.  Genesis 12:1 NIV

[A True Story about my daughter as printed in Guidepost magazine, His Mysterious Ways, 2013]

In 1952, Rev. Walter Teeuwissen was kneeling in prayer at his home in the Netherlands. During this time the Lord gave him a vision of a small church with a white steeple rising above the treetops in a village in the USA.  The following morning he told his wife they were leaving their homeland and going to America.  Not yet knowing the purpose of God’s calling, they were obedient and a short time later arrived in New York City.  From there, he called on a minister he knew, who told him of the need of a pastor in a small town in Michigan.  

When he and his wife came to the village limits and looked down the hill, they saw a white steeple rising above the trees and he immediately recognized the place as the one in his vision.  He and his wife were soon accepted as the new ministers of the First Presbyterian Church of Hesperia, Michigan.

            I was brought up in the church and now married and attended it with my husband and two children, Sheryl Ann, age 4 and Debra, 1 ½ years old.  My mother, who lived nearby, was an elder in the church and made sure my eldest daughter attended Sunday School when she was able.

          Sheryl Ann had been ill most of her four years.  At six weeks old she contacted meningitis, which left her in a weakened condition and by age four, had been in the hospital thirty-five times with pneumonia.  At seven months, she was still not able to sit up by herself and after taking her to the University Hospital in Ann Arbor, the doctors there told us she had also had polio.  We never knew for a certainty whether it was the meningitis or polio that crippled her back and left her with severe scoliosis.  She was fitted with a back brace and then began the months of therapy along with her many trips to the hospital.  Most of the time she needed oxygen in order to breathe and this continued year after year.

The summer before her fourth birthday, she became very ill and we took her to a nearby hospital.  In those times parents could not remain overnight with their child as they now do and so we were sent home.  Early the next morning her father left for work about 40 miles away and I was taking care of my younger daughter, when the phone rang.  It was the doctor at the hospital and he told me I should come right away, because Sheryl Ann was failing very quickly.

Family members took my youngest child and I drove to the hospital to find my little girl in an oxygen tent, lying on large ice packs.  She was so still and her skin was so transparent, you could see her veins standing out.  There was a small trickle of blood coming from her nose and blood in both ears.

The doctor came and stood at my side and told me her temperature had been so high for such a long time that I shouldn’t wish for her to live because she would be in a vegetative state.  I was very young myself and my mind couldn’t accept that my little daughter was dying.      Shortly after, my husband arrived and we just stood by her bedside unable to even talk.

Then my father and mother arrived at the hospital and upon seeing Sheryl Ann in such a condition, my mother suffered a heart attack and was immediately hospitalized.  By then I think I was in shock, but what followed will remain as vivid in my memory as the day it happened.

Someone had called Rev. Teeuwissen and he walked into the room behind the doctor and heard the doctor say after examining my little girl, that it was over and how sorry he was.  There was no sound in the room except that of the oxygen going into the tent.  My husband and I stood with our backs to the wall, stunned beyond belief, but Rev. Teeuwissen walked to her bed and reaching under the tent, took my daughters hand and in his broken English lifted his head toward heaven and began to pray.  I looked at this man calling on God to bring life back into my child and I saw a glow around his head and over his tear-soaked face.

Suddenly, he beckoned me to the bedside, “Vanda, Vanda,” he called to me, not able to speak my name clearly.  As though in a dream, I walked over to the bed and looked at my child, who a minute ago was no longer breathing.  As I watched, a rosy, pink color began slowly coming creeping out from under her little gown and moving into her neck and then her face.  Her eyes fluttered and then opened and she looked at me and said, “I want a drink of water, Mama.”  

I shall never forget that moment; Rev. Teeuwissen was praising God and we were all crying and laughing at the same time.  The doctor came running into the room and the first thing he said was, “This could only happen through God.”  My father, who I always thought was an unbeliever, because he never went to church, told everyone he met he had seen a miracle of God.  It wasn’t the end of illness for Sheryl Ann who was to undergo years of braces, corrective shoes and several spinal surgeries and fusions, rods in her back, but the hand of God was upon her and brought her through all of it.  

            Today, Sheryl is married to a minister, Pastor Verne Wright and they have two grown daughters and five grandchildren.  Sheryl has traveled on mission trips to Viet Nam and several trips to the Philippines, sharing the message of Christ’s love.

            Recently, after returning from one of the trips, she was showing pictures to the church and telling of the hurting people she had ministered to.  It was then I came to the realization that an amazing thing had taken place.  God had called a man from the Netherlands all the way to a small town in Michigan to pray life into a dying child who would one day travel the world bringing the hope of Jesus Christ to the lost.

When my mother passed away in 1991, we found a picture of Rev. Teeuwissen on his bicycle. He had returned to the Netherlands a short time after Sheryl was healed and wrote to my mother to tell her that he had Sheryl’s picture on his desk and he rode his bicycle all over the Netherlands telling everyone how God brought this little girl back to life.  

Sheryl Ann, her husband and a team of 17 from their church just returned from a 2-week mission trip in Nakuru and the surrounding area in Kenya, Africa. If Rev. Teeuwissen could see Sheryl today, he would be amazed by this beautiful woman who serves God with her whole heart.  She is the Praise and Worship leader at her church, Shiloh Tabernacle in Muskegon, Michigan. No one hearing her can believe she sings so beautifully and with such volume because she really has but one lung.

            God weaves our lives together in such an amazing way; we can never begin to imagine what far reaching effects it will have.  I only know this; His pattern for each of our lives is beautiful and all things really do work together for the good.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who 

 love God,  to those who are called according to His purpose.  Romans 8:28