In 1980 I was able to start my preparatory education in theology after several highschools and two years of Greek and Latin at the Academy Building at the Domplein opposite the Dom Tower in Utrecht.
I interrupted my studies in the spring of 1983 – to do a DTS – and resumed in the course of 1985, when I had come to live in Houten immediately after my marriage. After my propaedeutic year and first doctoral phase, I was able to start my main subject in missiology. In addition, I was able to use my major minor in Religious Education and obtain my qualification as a teacher of religious studies and philosophy. My major led to me on a study trip to China in 1988 to visit places for my doctoral thesis on Dutch Protestantism in China that I later published at http://npic.jimdo.com/
An offshoot of that study trip was a side trip to Quezon City and Manila in the Philippines, where I became very excited about the possibility of obtaining a Master of Divinity in one year at the Asian Theological Seminary (July 1989 – March 1990).
Once I was back in the Netherlands, all I had to do was to take an exam for my minor to get my diploma in August 1990 and then immediately start my first job as a teacher of religion at the Royal Wilhelmina College in Culemborg.
Later I ran into the leader of a School of Frontier Mission at YwaM in Amsterdam, who told me about a school that would start in the Spring of 1991 that would prepare for long term mission in a country in Central Asia. That was my dream come true. We were able to stay there only for three years. After a long re-entry process, many courses a masterclass, I was finally able to make a career shift as an ICT-teacher in Utrecht and later pursue an IT-career as a software engineer at several companies. After three migrations at a row I was challenged to become a teacher again. This time as a teacher of my own language to newcomers or migrants in our country. Last year I finished a post-hbo course for NT2 at Hogeschool Utrecht.
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