|
Tribute
to 21
May 2000 On
May 20 2000 our father, George Verwer, Sr, peacefully passed A
couple of weeks ago when we realized he was failing, I felt led to write the
following Tribute that I want to share. Seven
powerful words come to mind as I look back over the life of my father, George
Verwer Sr. Faithfulness
Dad,
without question, was a model of faithfulness, firstly, to God and His Word and
then to his family and friends. Dad
was born in Stadskanaal, in northeastern Netherlands and came to the US at about
5 years of age. As
a boy I noticed his faithfulness toward his parents in the regular visits we
made to them. He had four brothers,
and a younger sister who died as a baby. Only his younger brother Joe is alive
and is a committed follower of Christ. I
don't have the words to express his faithfulness to my sister Barbara, myself
and our families. He often went out
of the way to help us. He
was one of the first board members of STL, which became Operation Mobilization,
and served actively for about 40 years. His
faithfulness toward the church was also so evident and only eternity will show
the results. When the Lord took Mom
in September 1988, he and Mom were about to celebrate 56 years of marriage -
what a great model in our present day society! Servant He
was a true servant and helping people in so many ways but never took credit for
himself. He did not easily say
"I love you" except to Mom, he showed his love by helping and serving
others. Airport pick-ups and
numbers of people staying in their home are countless. (As he got older, he
learned to say 'I love you' to others). When
he retired from the electrical trade in 1970, he and mom went to serve Love The
great chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13, was being worked out in the life of my
father. He had his struggles and
failures, but the reality of Christ's love was demonstrated in a powerful and
practical way. My
earliest memories were of Dad loving me and helping me.
He would take me with him to different places, he helped me get involved
in Sunday school, Scouts (I remember going on scout trips together), and all
kinds of sports. He helped start
the Small Fry Basketball League just so that I could play. I
left for college when I was 18 and never really returned home except for brief
visits. Drena and I have been
overseas for 40 years and we sensed only his love and affirmation in connection
with the call of God upon our lives. After
mom's death in 1988, he came to be with us in England for a month or so almost
every year and we had some great times traveling together, including a quick
trip to Doulos in South Africa. Faith It's
a little hard to know when my Dad came to full faith in the Lord.
He greatly loved and respected Mom who was a church-goer from her early
years and in turn introduced him to the church and some of the basics.
After my own conversion in 1955 at a Billy Graham meeting in New York
City, more began to happen in Dad's life. Later
when I preached, in the now famous meeting, at Ramsey High School in January
1957 Dad stood up together with 125 other students when I gave the invitation
for salvation. The
next summer at a Billy Graham Crusade, he went forward in a further act His
active faith led him to be very involved in the early days of Send The Light. The first tiny STL office operated from our home in Wyckoff
for about ten years. Mom and Dad impacted many lives during that time.
Weekly prayer nights that started in their home went on for years.
In private prayer and in those meetings Dad would again and again
exercise real faith for what God was doing around the globe and also learned to
use the shield of faith to stop the fiery darts of Satan.
Only later I found out that he was more shy than we thought, and some of
his involvement took real faith and discipline. Partnership After
one of the first trips to Mexico that Dad helped to support, he asked if I would
like a larger gift to get a better vehicle.
I shared with him that I didn't want a better car but would prefer if the
money could go into the work, especially for literature or to support national
Mexicans. He agreed.
He and mom were major financial partners with us and OM for the rest of
their lives. They had worked very
hard for their money and were never wealthy, but considering their investment
and partnership over 40 years, I believe in heaven they are spiritual
millionaires. How can we measure
the importance of the original, small financial gifts to the ministry?
Industrious People
today would say dad was the old-fashioned, hard-working man.
He and mom had a great love for America and at the same time a concern
and vision for the rest of the world. He
had to leave school in the Great Depression and took up a milk route.
He sold vacuum cleaners and worked for a dry cleaning business before
taking up the trade of an electrician, and ended up a talented, hard-working
Journeymen Electrician and occasionally was in charge of very large jobs.
(I remember him once taking me along on a job where they were putting
electric wiring in a special pipe under a river! We have a great photo of him at
that job!) He was also a committed
volunteer fireman and, for a while, an extra volunteer policeman.
I discovered over the years how many people liked and appreciated him. He
was very careful with money and taught my sister and I to save money in the
right way. Because of him I learned
how to work and earn money at a very young age.
He was especially diligent in working around the house,he built our first
house at 243 Van Houten Ave. in Wyckoff, NJ, with some of his friends. Generosity If
all believers practiced generosity like my Dad, then the whole world would have
had the gospel a long time ago. Small,
steady, regular giving for over 45 years to his church, OM and others has been a
great investment producing one hundred-fold interest in glory.
One of the hardest things he found when he moved from my sister's home to
the Holland Christian Home four years ago was that he would no longer be able to
support the ministry and certain people. He was generous with his time, so often thinking of others
rather than just himself. This
involved many hard decisions that were not always understood by others. Yes,
Dad had his weaknesses and struggled at times with the unkindness and rejection
he felt from some people. He was
not unforgiving, but he did not always know how to relate to people after they
hurt him. When he was a volunteer
umpire for a baseball league someone, angry at his call, spiked him in the leg
in a terrible way.I don't remember the rest of what happened. Dad
enjoyed life and knew how to have fun. He
was a great bowler and golfer which gave him many friends in that world. As he became fervent for Christ some pulled back but others
came into his life as brothers and sisters in the faith. In my early day when I arrived to preach, people would think
my Dad was the speaker and asked me when he would arrive.
You should have seen their faces when I explained that I was all there
was; my dad was at home with mom. Some
classified him as stubborn which, of course, is pretty basic to being Dutch,
even Dutch American. Mother seemed They
loved their vacations and almost every summer we went to Wildwood and the New
Jersey beaches for wonderful times. Later,
after we left home, they went regularly to Florida and found a new church and
good friends there. He and mom are
now united in heaven, and I know that the world is a little better off because
of their lives and how God used them.
|
