With Bobbie Mc Gonegal
His Story Lived Through Me
by Dora Van Assen
KNOW THYSELF, O MAN!
Dost thou discern, O Man, why I care so much for thee?
Or dost thou understand for what purpose thou wast made?
Or that I, even I, brought thee forth from my own seed?
Before ever the foundations of the earth were laid?
Thy substance was not hid when thou wast made in secret,
Curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Mine eyes did see thy members being yet imperfect,
And in my book were written before I gave thee birth.
Before the mountains settled, or the rivers ran,
Or before the mighty sea divided from the land,
And beat it's roaring billows upon the shifting san,
When as yet ther were no depths, I brought thee forth, O Man!
Where wert thou when the earth was laid by my appointment,
When the Morning Stars chorused in glorious refrain?
When to the Sons of God there was no disappointment,
And before All fell under the thrall of sin's domain?
Wast thou not with ME then, being daily my delight,
Exulting in MY desire, reflecting all MY Light,
Living in MY presence, a fountain of ageless youth?
Did I not send thee down from the womb of the Morning,
Down into this world, fallen in sin and vanity?
Partaking thus of flesh and blood until the Dawning?
Of Man's deliverance and ascension into Me!
Why art thou cast down, O Man, and why dost thou despair?
Can thou not understand my own purpose for thee?
Even though passing through this route, thou art my treasure rare!
Thy face etched on my hand is MY LIKENESS THAT I SEE!!
Dedication
I want to didicate this book to my fataher, Klaas Kooy, and mother, Elizabeth Gortzak Kooy, who had the vision, courage, and determination to leave their native Holland and travel third class by boat with nine children to come to America, the land of opportunity, where every man is considered equal and has the right to rise to a higher way of life.
I also wish to honor my five brothers and six sisters who where so patient with me when I was a shy and awkward child, living in a dream world. I am blessed to be their sister.
Finally, I would like to remember all my friends and helpers in the gospel. Without these dear, precious people, this story could never have been written. We truly are all members one of another, all workers and laborers together in God, and as one, we all share alike in the glorious reward.
Acknowledgements
My life has been made up of bits and pieces of peoples and nations and tongues. I have ministered in every state in the union, except Alaska, Maryland, and Maine; and in eleven foreign countries. Although some only touched my life for a few minutes and no words were even exchanged, each one has played a special part in my life.
I want to express my love, appreciation and thanks to all my friends, scattered like salt, throughout America. You opened up your homes and your churches and you small gathering places in halls and basements. Wherever I was, you opened your hearts gladly to hear this wonderful message of God's reconciliation for all mankind.
Everywhere I laid my head was home, and it still it. I always had a place provided for me, from the slums of America to the jungles of Africa. God watched over me through these precious, wonderful people.
Some of your names are mentioned in various places throughout the book. Only lack of space prohibits the naming of everyone dear to my heart. However, I would like to honor David Hulse and Judy and Peter Demetris whose ministries and messages have had an enormous effect on me, changing me inwardly and awakening me to my true identity as Christ. I also appreciate Rhoda and Will Geeson, and Dale and Dorothy Davis, fellow workers in the gospel, who opened their hearts and homes to be during my years in California. I am blessed to have ministered with Dennis and Irene Johnson from Colorado, and I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Flo Haidt. In addition, I want to give special thanks to Edna Bass and the people of Faith Chapel, and to Bobbi McGonegal for all their help in getting this book into print.
Above all, I wish to acknowledge and praise my Heavenly Father, Creator of the universe to which I am related!
FOREWARD
For eight years, I was blessed to have shared my home with Dora Van Assen. As with many others whose lives she has touched, she has had a tremendous effect on me. Like all of us, she has her short-comings, but we know that the Lord God has accepted man as His equal. When Dora goes forth in the mighty anointing of God, I see her represent Him as truly Man and truly God. Dora has, most surely, been as John the Baptist to many during her world-wide ministry.
You will delighted and blessed, as I am, with the dealings of Christ in her life. If ever a person was called and anointed to preach and teach, it is Dora Van Assen.
Flora Belle Haidt
12-1-90
Monday, February 28, 2011
The Autobiography of Dora Van Assen- Chap. 1 & 2
Chapter 1 - A DREAM COME TRUE
The Answer To The Dream
"Mother"! Children! Come here! Come here! I have wonderful news!" shouted my father, his deep blue eyes twinkling with excitement. "The Lord had done a wonderful thing for us. There is a Dutch company advertising that they will pay half our passage to America if we sign an agreement to work out the rest of the fare by plowing on some prairie land they own over there," Thus began God's answer to my father's boyhood dream.
Dad had come from a very poor people, and when he was only eight years old, his father had died. He only had about a year-and-a-half of schooling, and he then had to go to work in a stable. When the owner of the stable would go to town, my dad had to go with him, and it was his job to hold the horse while the farmer was conducting his business. As he waited, he was required to remove his hat and keep it under his arm as a show of respect to the farmer. He just hated the fact that he always had to take off his hat for that rich man, so he longed for the day when he would be his own boss.
During those years his mother began to have seizures while going through the change of life. Sometimes, when my dad would come home, he would find his mother in one of those spells, and she wouldn't have made anything to eat. Then, occasionally, the neighbor lady would knock on the wall and say, "Come on over here, Klaas. We have some food for you." And she would give him some bread with cooked potatoes that she had made into a sandwich. If he was still hungry, he would ask her for more, but she would say, "There are a lot of sacks that are only half full that are tied up, so just pull in your belt another notch and go on to bed and go to sleep" Many nights he would cry himself to sleep, still hungry. My father began to dream of coming to America.
I often heard him say that America was the land of opportunity for man, the "promised land" for today. And I can see that my father was right, for even on our dollar bill it says, "The New Order of the Ages," and "In God We Trust." This country was built upon a new order, a new way, the order of democracy.
SHARING THE PREPARATIONS
So, my family began to save all the money they could. There were nine of us children at the time, ranging in age from one to about seventeen, and everyone who could contribute did. (There had actually been ten children, but one little girl died very young.) I was next to the youngest, and didn't really understand what was going on.
Even though she had all of us to care for, my mother began sewing for the neighbors and saving that money for the trip. She had had one year extra in school to learn to be a seamtress, and by the time she was twelve, she carried a little hand sewing machine from door to door to get work. Now her talent was again earning money.
My three older brothers, Nick, Pete, and Bill, all about a year apart, were also working. They graduated from grammer school at about twelve years of age, and then they went to work. That money was put with my mother's sewing money and the money by father got when he could contract extra jobs.
When they had saved enough for one fare, they sent my seventeen year old brother, Nick, on to America with some other people so he might go before us and scout out the land.
OFF TO AMERICA
Finally, the glorious day arrived when there was money for the rest of us to book a third class passage. With trembling and excitement, wonder and expectation, we packed our meager belongings and boarded the ship to America.
I really don't remember the trip, but I do know that my baby brother, Jan William, cried endlessly, struggling against the fever and sickness that had begun to rage in his tiny body.
At long last, the Statue of Liberty came into view, and the people on the ship cried and cheered and waved their arms and hugged one another in an outpouring of exhaustion, joy, and relief. For all of us, the Statue of Liberty was the symbol of a new life.
We landed at Ellis Island, and I know that must have been a humiliating experience for everyone, because we all had to strip and be hosed off and deloused. Eventually, all of were processed through, and we were permitted to go on our way, which for our family meant boarding a train for North Dakota.
By this time, the baby seemed worse, and the group we were traveling with tried to persuade my mother to stay in New York until he was better. But, not knowing the language, my mother was unable to communicate with anyone and didn't want to leave her husband and children. So she traveled on with the rest of us, doing her best to make the baby comfortable as we headed for the train station.
ALL ABOARD FOR NORTH DAKOTA
We must have been quite a spectacle, all ten us carrying bundles, trying to stick together in the enormous crowd being herded toward the train station.
My older sister, Tilly, was holding my hand, but I was scarcely able to keep up, being only three-and-a-half. Suddenly, a huge, black porter scooped me up in his arms and began to carry me.
My brother, Pete, screamed, "Watch her! Watch her! Watch him! Watch him, he's going to steal her." Pete managed to get hold of one of my arms and Tilly got hold of the other arm, trying to hold me, but the man just kept walking with me. All the while, I was screaming bloody murder!
When we got to the depot, the porter set me down on my feet and he held out his hand to my father. My father had a big, long coin purse, and he was going to give the porter a dime, but the man reached into my father's purse and grabbed a dollar, and off he went.
My brothers and sisters were still talking about this black man after they got on the train. Since they had never seen a black man, they assumed he was an Indian, badly burned by the sun.
THE VIVID MEMORY
Although my life in Holland and the trip to America are a blur in my mind, the train ride left a lasting impression.. Perhaps it was because I had never been on a train before. In Holland there are a lot of canals, and our modes of transportation were skating or sled sailing.
Here we were, all of us with our name and address or our destination pinned on our back, huddled together, traveling into unknown territory. But God's hand was upon us, and He supplied grace and strength for our journey.
My mother had made a huge basket of food for the trip, but since we were traveling three nights and three days from New York to North Dakota, that basket soon became empty. We smaller children began to get hungry, and we were whining and crying and giving my mother a hard time. Between us carrying on and the baby still being so sick, I don't know how she stood it.
None of us would get off the train to try to get food, because we didn't know how to speak English. Finally, when the train stopped, an American lady got off and when she came back, she had a huge bag of shiny red apples, and she passed these out to us children. That was the first time I ever had a whole apple all to myself, because in Holland we were peasants, and each apple was cut in four pieces and shared among us. When I looked at that American lady, I thought to myself, "All the women in America must be angels."
THE VIEW OF THE PRAIRIE
The view outside the window was dry and bleak with dwarfed, scrubby plants and dust blowing everwhere. The whole time the train was crossing the country my father sat gazing out the window saying, "What are we going to do? What are we going to do? There isn't any water." All those miles and miles going across that dry prairie, all he could worry about was the water. "How in the world are we going to raise anything? How are we going to grow anything if there isn't any water.?"
So, you see, it was a daring adventure. It took courage and it took faith in God and himself for him and my mother to come to America, but it was something that changed all of our lives. God is so wonderful, He never failed to provide for us. I can see, looking back, that God was directing us the entire time. We lived the reality of the scripture that says God directs the steps of a man.
Chapter 2 - LIFE ON THE NORTH DAKOTA PRAIRIE
It was March 1911 when we arrived in Delfield, North Dakota. It was extremely cold, and there was snow on the ground. Jan William's condition had grown worse by the day, and by the time we arrived at our diestination he was gravely ill.
We had a trunk with us, and my mother had made a little cradle in the trunk for him. He wailed incessantly. Finally, though, he stopped crying, but then my mother and father and brothers and sisters all began to cry. I remember thinking, "This is really strange. When he was crying, nobody else cried. But now that he has stopped crying everybody else is crying." I didn't realize that he had died and they were all grieving for him.
In this rural town they had no facilities for funerals, so they kept the baby for three or four days waiting for a mortuary to come. Finally my mother lined an apple crate, and they placed the baby in it. Then my father put the apple box on a sled and took it out to the prairie where he buried the youngest member of our family.
UNDERSTANDING GOD'S PLAN
Many times I have wondered why that innocent little baby died at a year-and-a-half and I was allowed to grow into my mature adulthood and have such a glorious life in the gospel and I questioned, "Why, Lord?"
And the Lord made it know to me that I would see Jan William again, and that he was maturing in the invisible realm and he wasn't just going to be a baby or a little cherub. There is no age in spirit. There's no space in the spirit realm. There's no time in spirit; we're all equal. He is going to know as much as I know, and his life is just as fruitful in spirit as it is on this side.
Now, at one time, I believed in a literal resurrection. I thought that graves were going to topple over, and people were going to rise out of the cemeteries. Then, I began to think that if he was only a year-and-a-half he would need a mother to take care of him.
As I matured in God, I realized that there is no waste in Him; nothing is lost and everything is moving onward according to His own plan, purpose and blueprint that He had in His heart before He ever brought forth creation.
THE FRIGHTENING TIMES
Having been peasants in Holland, we were used to hard times, but life on the North Dakota prairie was harder than we had imagined and we encountered other great difficulties.
One day my father and brother, Bill, the third oldest, were out plowing a large section of land with a team of horses. There was also an American man plowing a field nearby. It was still early in the day, but this American came over to my dad and motioned for him to unhitch the horses and go home. But my father wouldn't do that because he wanted to put in his hours so he could pay off his debt. However, this man pointed insistingly to a little black cloud in the sky.
Well, my father looked at that cloud and he didn't think it looked serious enough to scare anybody. he just thought the man was crazy. The American unhitched his team and went home as fast as he could, but my father just wouldn't budge. He stayed and plowed another lap around the section, which took quite a little while. But, something told him to look at the sky again, and when he did he saw that the little cloud had swelled enormously and the wind was becoming wild. My father decided that they had better do what the American man had done and head for home as fast as they could.
Before they reached the safety of the house, the storm exploded. Thnder crashed like firing cannons, and lightning ripped the sky apart. Razor-sharp rain and hail bombarded the earth. By the time they got to the dry wash by our house, it had become a raging torrent and they were unable to cross. The only shelter my father and brother had were the horses, so they huddled beneath them until they were able to get home.
Hail the size of eggs blasted through the kitchen window and the thunder and lightning were so terrifying that I tore up three flights of stairs to the attic and hid under my brother's bed. It was a storm none of us forgot.
THE FUNNY TIMES
Although there were many hardships on the prairie, there were delightful times as well; like the morning my sister Tilly and her future husband, Tom Hendriks, went with a group of young people to a small cafe for something to eat. They were still struggling with English, so when the waitress asked for their order, Tom blurted out, "Paan-ka-kes and ecgs."
The waitress' face rearranged into a bewildered expression.
Tom thought for a minute, stood up, flipped his arms like a chicken and crowed, "Cocka-doodle-doo."
Everyone roared with laughter. "Oh", the waitress concluded, "You want pancakes and eggs."
FOLLOWING THE DREAM
We had come to America with dreams for a better life and, certainly, the opportunities were available. Some from our group remained in North Dakota and eventually bought land even became wealthy. But my father and mother just couldn't stand the harsh weather and began to consider moving to a warmer climate.
My father, older brothers, and two oldest sisters all worked for the company who helped pay our passage and they were able to pay off the debt in seven months. Then we were free to leave!
My oldest brother, Nick, who had been sent on ahead before we left Holland was in California. He wrote us describing the mild climate and said there was a Dutch settlement and even a Dutch Reform Church there. It didn't take my parents long to decide that California was the place we should settle. So, we left our ice skates and red, long underwear in a corner of the attic and packed up what remained of our family and headed west.
The Answer To The Dream
"Mother"! Children! Come here! Come here! I have wonderful news!" shouted my father, his deep blue eyes twinkling with excitement. "The Lord had done a wonderful thing for us. There is a Dutch company advertising that they will pay half our passage to America if we sign an agreement to work out the rest of the fare by plowing on some prairie land they own over there," Thus began God's answer to my father's boyhood dream.
Dad had come from a very poor people, and when he was only eight years old, his father had died. He only had about a year-and-a-half of schooling, and he then had to go to work in a stable. When the owner of the stable would go to town, my dad had to go with him, and it was his job to hold the horse while the farmer was conducting his business. As he waited, he was required to remove his hat and keep it under his arm as a show of respect to the farmer. He just hated the fact that he always had to take off his hat for that rich man, so he longed for the day when he would be his own boss.
During those years his mother began to have seizures while going through the change of life. Sometimes, when my dad would come home, he would find his mother in one of those spells, and she wouldn't have made anything to eat. Then, occasionally, the neighbor lady would knock on the wall and say, "Come on over here, Klaas. We have some food for you." And she would give him some bread with cooked potatoes that she had made into a sandwich. If he was still hungry, he would ask her for more, but she would say, "There are a lot of sacks that are only half full that are tied up, so just pull in your belt another notch and go on to bed and go to sleep" Many nights he would cry himself to sleep, still hungry. My father began to dream of coming to America.
I often heard him say that America was the land of opportunity for man, the "promised land" for today. And I can see that my father was right, for even on our dollar bill it says, "The New Order of the Ages," and "In God We Trust." This country was built upon a new order, a new way, the order of democracy.
SHARING THE PREPARATIONS
So, my family began to save all the money they could. There were nine of us children at the time, ranging in age from one to about seventeen, and everyone who could contribute did. (There had actually been ten children, but one little girl died very young.) I was next to the youngest, and didn't really understand what was going on.
Even though she had all of us to care for, my mother began sewing for the neighbors and saving that money for the trip. She had had one year extra in school to learn to be a seamtress, and by the time she was twelve, she carried a little hand sewing machine from door to door to get work. Now her talent was again earning money.
My three older brothers, Nick, Pete, and Bill, all about a year apart, were also working. They graduated from grammer school at about twelve years of age, and then they went to work. That money was put with my mother's sewing money and the money by father got when he could contract extra jobs.
When they had saved enough for one fare, they sent my seventeen year old brother, Nick, on to America with some other people so he might go before us and scout out the land.
OFF TO AMERICA
Finally, the glorious day arrived when there was money for the rest of us to book a third class passage. With trembling and excitement, wonder and expectation, we packed our meager belongings and boarded the ship to America.
I really don't remember the trip, but I do know that my baby brother, Jan William, cried endlessly, struggling against the fever and sickness that had begun to rage in his tiny body.
At long last, the Statue of Liberty came into view, and the people on the ship cried and cheered and waved their arms and hugged one another in an outpouring of exhaustion, joy, and relief. For all of us, the Statue of Liberty was the symbol of a new life.
We landed at Ellis Island, and I know that must have been a humiliating experience for everyone, because we all had to strip and be hosed off and deloused. Eventually, all of were processed through, and we were permitted to go on our way, which for our family meant boarding a train for North Dakota.
By this time, the baby seemed worse, and the group we were traveling with tried to persuade my mother to stay in New York until he was better. But, not knowing the language, my mother was unable to communicate with anyone and didn't want to leave her husband and children. So she traveled on with the rest of us, doing her best to make the baby comfortable as we headed for the train station.
ALL ABOARD FOR NORTH DAKOTA
We must have been quite a spectacle, all ten us carrying bundles, trying to stick together in the enormous crowd being herded toward the train station.
My older sister, Tilly, was holding my hand, but I was scarcely able to keep up, being only three-and-a-half. Suddenly, a huge, black porter scooped me up in his arms and began to carry me.
My brother, Pete, screamed, "Watch her! Watch her! Watch him! Watch him, he's going to steal her." Pete managed to get hold of one of my arms and Tilly got hold of the other arm, trying to hold me, but the man just kept walking with me. All the while, I was screaming bloody murder!
When we got to the depot, the porter set me down on my feet and he held out his hand to my father. My father had a big, long coin purse, and he was going to give the porter a dime, but the man reached into my father's purse and grabbed a dollar, and off he went.
My brothers and sisters were still talking about this black man after they got on the train. Since they had never seen a black man, they assumed he was an Indian, badly burned by the sun.
THE VIVID MEMORY
Although my life in Holland and the trip to America are a blur in my mind, the train ride left a lasting impression.. Perhaps it was because I had never been on a train before. In Holland there are a lot of canals, and our modes of transportation were skating or sled sailing.
Here we were, all of us with our name and address or our destination pinned on our back, huddled together, traveling into unknown territory. But God's hand was upon us, and He supplied grace and strength for our journey.
My mother had made a huge basket of food for the trip, but since we were traveling three nights and three days from New York to North Dakota, that basket soon became empty. We smaller children began to get hungry, and we were whining and crying and giving my mother a hard time. Between us carrying on and the baby still being so sick, I don't know how she stood it.
None of us would get off the train to try to get food, because we didn't know how to speak English. Finally, when the train stopped, an American lady got off and when she came back, she had a huge bag of shiny red apples, and she passed these out to us children. That was the first time I ever had a whole apple all to myself, because in Holland we were peasants, and each apple was cut in four pieces and shared among us. When I looked at that American lady, I thought to myself, "All the women in America must be angels."
THE VIEW OF THE PRAIRIE
The view outside the window was dry and bleak with dwarfed, scrubby plants and dust blowing everwhere. The whole time the train was crossing the country my father sat gazing out the window saying, "What are we going to do? What are we going to do? There isn't any water." All those miles and miles going across that dry prairie, all he could worry about was the water. "How in the world are we going to raise anything? How are we going to grow anything if there isn't any water.?"
So, you see, it was a daring adventure. It took courage and it took faith in God and himself for him and my mother to come to America, but it was something that changed all of our lives. God is so wonderful, He never failed to provide for us. I can see, looking back, that God was directing us the entire time. We lived the reality of the scripture that says God directs the steps of a man.
Chapter 2 - LIFE ON THE NORTH DAKOTA PRAIRIE
It was March 1911 when we arrived in Delfield, North Dakota. It was extremely cold, and there was snow on the ground. Jan William's condition had grown worse by the day, and by the time we arrived at our diestination he was gravely ill.
We had a trunk with us, and my mother had made a little cradle in the trunk for him. He wailed incessantly. Finally, though, he stopped crying, but then my mother and father and brothers and sisters all began to cry. I remember thinking, "This is really strange. When he was crying, nobody else cried. But now that he has stopped crying everybody else is crying." I didn't realize that he had died and they were all grieving for him.
In this rural town they had no facilities for funerals, so they kept the baby for three or four days waiting for a mortuary to come. Finally my mother lined an apple crate, and they placed the baby in it. Then my father put the apple box on a sled and took it out to the prairie where he buried the youngest member of our family.
UNDERSTANDING GOD'S PLAN
Many times I have wondered why that innocent little baby died at a year-and-a-half and I was allowed to grow into my mature adulthood and have such a glorious life in the gospel and I questioned, "Why, Lord?"
And the Lord made it know to me that I would see Jan William again, and that he was maturing in the invisible realm and he wasn't just going to be a baby or a little cherub. There is no age in spirit. There's no space in the spirit realm. There's no time in spirit; we're all equal. He is going to know as much as I know, and his life is just as fruitful in spirit as it is on this side.
Now, at one time, I believed in a literal resurrection. I thought that graves were going to topple over, and people were going to rise out of the cemeteries. Then, I began to think that if he was only a year-and-a-half he would need a mother to take care of him.
As I matured in God, I realized that there is no waste in Him; nothing is lost and everything is moving onward according to His own plan, purpose and blueprint that He had in His heart before He ever brought forth creation.
THE FRIGHTENING TIMES
Having been peasants in Holland, we were used to hard times, but life on the North Dakota prairie was harder than we had imagined and we encountered other great difficulties.
One day my father and brother, Bill, the third oldest, were out plowing a large section of land with a team of horses. There was also an American man plowing a field nearby. It was still early in the day, but this American came over to my dad and motioned for him to unhitch the horses and go home. But my father wouldn't do that because he wanted to put in his hours so he could pay off his debt. However, this man pointed insistingly to a little black cloud in the sky.
Well, my father looked at that cloud and he didn't think it looked serious enough to scare anybody. he just thought the man was crazy. The American unhitched his team and went home as fast as he could, but my father just wouldn't budge. He stayed and plowed another lap around the section, which took quite a little while. But, something told him to look at the sky again, and when he did he saw that the little cloud had swelled enormously and the wind was becoming wild. My father decided that they had better do what the American man had done and head for home as fast as they could.
Before they reached the safety of the house, the storm exploded. Thnder crashed like firing cannons, and lightning ripped the sky apart. Razor-sharp rain and hail bombarded the earth. By the time they got to the dry wash by our house, it had become a raging torrent and they were unable to cross. The only shelter my father and brother had were the horses, so they huddled beneath them until they were able to get home.
Hail the size of eggs blasted through the kitchen window and the thunder and lightning were so terrifying that I tore up three flights of stairs to the attic and hid under my brother's bed. It was a storm none of us forgot.
THE FUNNY TIMES
Although there were many hardships on the prairie, there were delightful times as well; like the morning my sister Tilly and her future husband, Tom Hendriks, went with a group of young people to a small cafe for something to eat. They were still struggling with English, so when the waitress asked for their order, Tom blurted out, "Paan-ka-kes and ecgs."
The waitress' face rearranged into a bewildered expression.
Tom thought for a minute, stood up, flipped his arms like a chicken and crowed, "Cocka-doodle-doo."
Everyone roared with laughter. "Oh", the waitress concluded, "You want pancakes and eggs."
FOLLOWING THE DREAM
We had come to America with dreams for a better life and, certainly, the opportunities were available. Some from our group remained in North Dakota and eventually bought land even became wealthy. But my father and mother just couldn't stand the harsh weather and began to consider moving to a warmer climate.
My father, older brothers, and two oldest sisters all worked for the company who helped pay our passage and they were able to pay off the debt in seven months. Then we were free to leave!
My oldest brother, Nick, who had been sent on ahead before we left Holland was in California. He wrote us describing the mild climate and said there was a Dutch settlement and even a Dutch Reform Church there. It didn't take my parents long to decide that California was the place we should settle. So, we left our ice skates and red, long underwear in a corner of the attic and packed up what remained of our family and headed west.
The Autobiography of Dora Van Assen - Chap 3 & 4
Chapter 3 - CALIFORNIA, HERE WE COME!
In the later part of 1911 we left North Dakota and moved to Corcoran, California. There my father began doing farm work for a man by the name of Dougherty. Mr. Dougherty had been a carpenter in the city and decided to leave that and try his hand at farming. I guess that's why he didn't seem to know much about running a farm. In those days if you had a horse and a plow you could prosper. My father had to milk twenty cows in the morning and work all day long for eighteen dollars a month, a free house, and a gallon of milk a day. But Dad enjoyed working for Mr. Dougherty because he was a wonderful man. He did his best to help my father learn English while Dad tried to teach him Dutch. Mr. Dougherty would oftern invite my father home for lunch so they could practice their language phrases while they ate.
Life in California seemed a lot brighter than in North Dakota and I think we all thought it felt like home. Here the weather was milder and I had neighbor children to play with. There was even a Free Methodist Church close by where my sisters and I would attend Sunday School and young people's meetings. The Dutch Reform Church was eight miles away in Hanford so we couldn't go there all the time.
My sister Lena was able to play an old fashioned pump organ and my three sisters would sing in a trio together at the Methodist Church. Then one time Lena, Tilly, and Betsy were kneeling at the front of the church by the altar, and some of the workers were gathered around them and they were all silently praying together. My sister Marie and I didn't go up and I was too young to understand what was going on, but I knew something serious was happening. It was only after I had my own encounter with the Lord that I really understood they were praying for Christ to take over their lives.
After I began to preach the gospel, that picture flashed before me one time when I was talking with Tilly about the Lord and I said to her, "Oh, Tilly, you know what I'm talking about. You remember that day in the little Free Methodist Church in Corcoran when you and Lena and Betsy were up front kneeling. That's when Jesus was coming into you heart and life."
She said, "Oh, Dora, you don't remember that."
I said, "Yes, I do. I remember that; I can see it so clearly. And whatever was happening to you then is still real now, because God never changes! Praise His wonderful name. All the glory belongs to Him because He is ever faithful."
MY WONDERFUL CHRISTIAN FAMILY
One of the reasons I believe God has been so faithful to all of us children is that we have come from faithful parents who raised us up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
I appreciate that my father and mother were good, stauch Christian people, member of the Dutch Reform Church. They were faithful to the revelation that God gave then and taught us the real, true standards of life. I believe that a child's life is formed in those early years, and things they are taught when they are young have a tendency to direct them later in life. I am very grateful for those early years of my life and my father and mother being that example to me.
My father had had a wonderful conversion experience when he was twenty-seven years old. He was driving a wagon and suddenly lost the reigns. The horses went wild! He had no control. The team and the wagon were headed for a deep canal and my father couldn't swim. So, Dad got down on his knees in that runaway wagon and cried out to God to save his life and, in turn, he promised to serve Him with his whole heart. That experience changed his life.
My mother always stood by my father and she was the one who taught him how to read. He would read the Bible at night while she would be knitting socks for us children, and when there would be a word that he couldn't pronounce she would take one of her knitting needles and spell it out and pronounce it for him. So, my father learned to read and even to write by reading the Bible.
When all of us would be around the the table, before we ate, my father would ask the Lord to bless the food and to strengthen our boodies and give us the necessary nourishment. And, after we ate we would pray again and thank the Lord and praise Him for what he had given us. First we asked Him to bless it; then we thanked Him for it. And after every meal my father would read a portion out of the Bible. In the morning we would read from the Psalms; in the afternoon he would read a short chapter in the New Testament; and then in the evening he would read a chapter out of the Old Testament. My Dad was very smart. He knew that children would often not pay attention, so he would stop at any time and call on one of us and ask, "What was the last word?"
Of course, he read from the Dutch Bible, and that's how I retained my use of the Dutch language. I can still speak and read Dutch because of that constant teaching.
MY FATHER'S FAITH
My father was a man of strong faith. He believed that God would give him his boyhood dream of coming to America and he proudly became an American citizen in 1917. That faith carried over to all things in my father's life - especially to his family during the wars. He had three sons in WW1; my brother Pete was in France for seven months and my father believed God to bring all three of my brothers home safely. The only child lost during that war was my sister, Lena, who died during the flu epidemic. During the Second World War my father had several grandsons, one son-in-law and one son in the war. He had all their names written in a book and he wrote to every one of them and prayed for each of them to return safely. Nick, Tilly, and Tom Hendrik's oldest son, was in the service in Hawaii when it was bombed. Then was in Ansio Beach during the invasion of Italy. Later he was sent to England and in the invasion of Europe on "D" Day; the Battle of the Bulge. After that, he met the Russian Army at the Elba River in Germany. When peace was declared he came home without a scratch! All of the men in our family returned except one grandson, Evert Coy, a Marine, who was killed in the battle of Iwo Jima. He was the only son of my brother Pete and his wife Minnie. No one else from the family was even hurt.
LIKE JACOB'S FAMILY
I have heard by Dad say many times that he was like Jacob who crossed the brook by himself, but when he returned and crossed that same brook, he had grown into seventy. My mother and father had two more children in America who were named Nellie and Johnny. So, they had twelve children in twenty-four years. There were twenty-four years between my oldest brother, Nick and my baby brother Johnny.
Well, my father prospered and all of his childrren prospered and we helped populate the United States! Every one of my brothers and sisters were healthy, hard-working, saving people who had good jobs and finally owned their own businesses and their own homes. My nephews and nieces have become doctors and lawyers and movie stars and nurses and business workers, active in the the affairs of the community and church.
My brother Johnny and wife Dot had the Baptist Women's Missionary Society meet in their home each week for over thirty-five years. In fact, about thirty women became missionaries through their ministry. There has even been a book published about this work.
My sister Marie and her husband Dean Smith were members of the Second United Presbyterian Church for over fifty years. Their whole family was very musically gifted and they all used their talents for God.
Elizabeth (my sister Betsy) Van Donk has a grandson, Richard John Van Donk who is the author of the book called Creating Your Own Life and is the founder/president of Uni-Dynamics.
My sisiter Nell Richardson loves people and is kept busy taking care of shut-ins and the handicapped. She bakes for them, picks up their mail, gives them rides, and helps in any way she can.
One nephew, Robert O'Neal and his wife Dine, have had a Christian group in their home for many years. Their daughter Linda Friedricks and her husband David were missionaries in South Africa. David Junior was born there. He is now grown and studying for the ministry.
My daughter Tillora Jackson loves the Lord and knows Him in a very personal way. She is a blessing to many and all who really know her love her.
Herman Floyd, my son, carried a New Testament in his shirt pocket the entirre twenty-six years he was in the Air Force. He and his wife Myrla had services in their home many times during those years.
My grandson, William (Billy) Van Assen and his wife Jean, both have a call to be missionaries to Algeria and are preparing to go when God opens the way.
So many times I heard my father quote the scripture from Acts 16:21, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house." And my Dad just simply believed that, and God confirmed that word.
I just wanted to honor my father and mother and all my sister and brothers for the great influence they had upon my life. And I just rejoice in the Lord at the wonderful family I came from.
Chapter 4 - GROWING AND CHANGING
MY GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
God is so faithful, for the day came when my father's boyhood dream to be his own boss was finally fulfilled. He had leased some land as a share cropper and was able to save enough money to buy a farm of his own. At last he was going to be his own boss. However, owning our own land required us to move to Hanford, California. This move turned out to be a golden opportunity for me!
I was a different kind of child. Even my father told me that I had been unlike the others from the very beginning. I never felt as though I fit in. I seemed slow in comparison to the others and I lived in a dream world. I can remember my brothers and sisters saying, "Look at Dora standing there dreaming." To make matters worse, I had earned the nickname "Dumb Dora" because there was a popular card game by that name. I absolutely hated being called "Dumb Dora", and I longed for the time I could change my name.
Well, the perfect opportunity came when we moved to Hanford and I had to change schools. I had to go to shcool in a town called Hardwick and the first day I told the teacher that my name was Dorothy. Well, everyone began to call me Dot. Even my parents and brothers and sisters started calling me Dot. That change made me feel like a whole new person.
But now, after all these years, I have come to really like my name Dora, and I believe that name was ordained of God. Dora means 'gift of love'. I was the ninth child to be born into the family and biblically the numer nine is connected with gifts. (nine gifts of the Spirit, nine fruits of the Spirit) That's all I really want to be - God's gift of love to all creation.
God is love. He loves everyone equally. There is no difference in the love of God for His creation. In fact, he proved that at the cross when everyone of us became equal, because we were all bought with the same price, the precious blood of Jesus.
THE SPARK IS KINDLED
Hanford was where our Dutch Reform Church was located and our whole family atended services together. My father would lead the procession into the sanctuary, followed by all the children, then my mother. We children sat quietly through every meeting, three times on Sunday. Besides church, we went to Sunday School and in addition there was the catechism class.
That class stands out in my mind because there were a lot of questions and answers that were discussed. What's more, all of this went on in Dutch. At my age, I wasn't able to read the material, so I had to depend on one of my older sisters to help me.
The smaller children were taken to the catechism class on Saturday but at a certain age, you went in the evening rather than in the afternoon. When I was eleven I was still too young for the evening class, but my sister, Marie, was thirteen, and she was assigned to go at night. However, my father didn't want her to go by herself, so I went along with her.
Anyway, one evening on our way to the catechism class, we noticed a big tent pitched on the property of the Free Methodist Church. Well, we just had to know what was going on in that tent, so we talked it over and decided we would sneak into this tent and see what the people were doing and then go on to our class.
We discovered that it was a revival meeting. I began to listen to what the minister was saying, and as he began to make his appeal for us to open our hearts to Jesus and live for Him, I began to feel a longing in my heart to answer that call. I wanted to go up to the front of the tent, as some other people were doing, to make a public stand, but I was afraid, because I didn't want anyone to see me and tell my folks that we were playing hookie from the catechism class. So I just sat there in misery and prayed in my heart that I wanted Jesus to forgive me and I made a silent promise that I would live for him.
Well, that promise only lasted a few days. It just faded away, because I didn't speak it out publicly - I didn't let anybody know it. I was trying to be a secret Christian. So the things of the world and the cares of life just caused it to fade away. But I know now that was the beginning of God letting me know that He is within me. Of course, He has been there all the time, but I thought that He had left.
CONFUSED BY THE DOCTINES OF MEN
Then, a few months later something else happened in my life that stands out. In the catechism class the question of infant baptism arose. I was being taught that should a little baby die without being baptized it would be lost, it wouldn't come under the blessings of the church. It wouldn't be able to inherit that protective covering.
Well, I began to question that in my heart - I just couldn't accept it. I just couldn't believe that. But I kept the matter to myself.
Eventually, the question of infant baptism came up again. and I raised my hand and asked the minister,
"Why would that little baby be punished for not being baptized? The little baby can't say to the mother or father, "I need to be baptized. Take me to church and baptize me so if anything should happen to me and I should die, I won't be lost." It would have to be the fault of the father and mother and if anybody should be punished, it should be the parents instead of the baby."
Well, the minister got quite upset about this and he took me by the hand and put me in another room. I didn't hear any more about it and I tried to accept it, but it was always grinding away at me deep down in my mind.
Then, something else occurred which brought the whole question of infant baptism to the forefront again. We had a little neighbor boy whose father and mother never went to church. They were not believers. It came about that this little boy had an accident with his bicycle and died. However, through the death of this little boy, his whole family began coming to church. When they became members of the church they all had to be baptized. So, one Sunday they all came in and sat on the front row and the minister and the elder came with the baptismal bowl and sprinkled all of them. So now, according to the teaching I had received they were saved and were all going to heaven when they died.
Subsequently, this baptism was discussed again in catechism class and I put my hand up and said to the minister, "I just want to ask you something. This whole family that was recently baptized; they are all saved and will go to heaven?
And the minster said, "Yes".
So, then, I said, "Well, what about their little brother? That little boy who died wasn't baptized, what about him?"
And the minster said, "He's lost; he's dying for Adam's sin."
Then something came over me and I said, "I don't believe that! I just don't accept that. I don't believe God would be that cruel."
So the minister had me put in another room and he notified my father in a letter.
The day that my father got the letter, he was waiting for me when I got home from school. My father told me that he had this letter, and it said that I had disobeyed and I had been very rude. And he told me that I was to apologize. He didn't give me any opportunity to explain he just said, "I want you to apologize."
"I won't apologize. I can't", I said.
Then my dad said, "Well then I'm going to have to give you a licking." So, he began to spank me.
Just then my mother stepped in and stopped him because I didn't really know what I had done. I was just saying, "No, no! I won't, I won't!"
After I was in bed my father came in and was kneeling by the bed and he was asking me to forgive him.
Of course I forgave my father. And I didn't even hold it against the minister. I just got mixed up some way and blamed God for it. Somehow I saw that the minister was teaching what he thought he had to teach, and my father was correcting me because I was his child and he thought I had done wrong and disobeyed. And so it all came back to God. From that point on, I decided that I could never love or serve such a cruel God. In fact, I tried to hate Him and I got to the point that I began to hate all Christians. That's the way I lived through my teenage years, blaming God for being cruel and hating those who believed in Him.
SWEET SIXTEEN
During those years some thing else significant occurred in my life. A young man by the name of Herman Van Assen came to work for my father. Herman and his mother, oldest sister, brother John, and younger sister Gertrude had come to California in 1921 to join Herman's two other brothers Gerald and Garret. Herman was the baby.
Herman had wonderful dark, wavy hair and deep, dark blue eyes and beautiful fair skin. I had always been painfully shy but his quick wit and open friendly manner drew me out in no time. It wasn't long befor we were sweet on one another. I was only sixteen at the time and our relationship went on until my father found out about it. Then he called Herman in and said, "Herman, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but since you're sweet on my daughter, and she is way too young, I'm going to have to fire you. It isn't good for both of you to be living in the same house together."
Well, Herman stormed in and packed his things. He said to me, "It's as though your father never kissed a girl when she was sixteen."
So, Herman left the area and disappeared from my life, but not altogether from my thoughts.
In the later part of 1911 we left North Dakota and moved to Corcoran, California. There my father began doing farm work for a man by the name of Dougherty. Mr. Dougherty had been a carpenter in the city and decided to leave that and try his hand at farming. I guess that's why he didn't seem to know much about running a farm. In those days if you had a horse and a plow you could prosper. My father had to milk twenty cows in the morning and work all day long for eighteen dollars a month, a free house, and a gallon of milk a day. But Dad enjoyed working for Mr. Dougherty because he was a wonderful man. He did his best to help my father learn English while Dad tried to teach him Dutch. Mr. Dougherty would oftern invite my father home for lunch so they could practice their language phrases while they ate.
Life in California seemed a lot brighter than in North Dakota and I think we all thought it felt like home. Here the weather was milder and I had neighbor children to play with. There was even a Free Methodist Church close by where my sisters and I would attend Sunday School and young people's meetings. The Dutch Reform Church was eight miles away in Hanford so we couldn't go there all the time.
My sister Lena was able to play an old fashioned pump organ and my three sisters would sing in a trio together at the Methodist Church. Then one time Lena, Tilly, and Betsy were kneeling at the front of the church by the altar, and some of the workers were gathered around them and they were all silently praying together. My sister Marie and I didn't go up and I was too young to understand what was going on, but I knew something serious was happening. It was only after I had my own encounter with the Lord that I really understood they were praying for Christ to take over their lives.
After I began to preach the gospel, that picture flashed before me one time when I was talking with Tilly about the Lord and I said to her, "Oh, Tilly, you know what I'm talking about. You remember that day in the little Free Methodist Church in Corcoran when you and Lena and Betsy were up front kneeling. That's when Jesus was coming into you heart and life."
She said, "Oh, Dora, you don't remember that."
I said, "Yes, I do. I remember that; I can see it so clearly. And whatever was happening to you then is still real now, because God never changes! Praise His wonderful name. All the glory belongs to Him because He is ever faithful."
MY WONDERFUL CHRISTIAN FAMILY
One of the reasons I believe God has been so faithful to all of us children is that we have come from faithful parents who raised us up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
I appreciate that my father and mother were good, stauch Christian people, member of the Dutch Reform Church. They were faithful to the revelation that God gave then and taught us the real, true standards of life. I believe that a child's life is formed in those early years, and things they are taught when they are young have a tendency to direct them later in life. I am very grateful for those early years of my life and my father and mother being that example to me.
My father had had a wonderful conversion experience when he was twenty-seven years old. He was driving a wagon and suddenly lost the reigns. The horses went wild! He had no control. The team and the wagon were headed for a deep canal and my father couldn't swim. So, Dad got down on his knees in that runaway wagon and cried out to God to save his life and, in turn, he promised to serve Him with his whole heart. That experience changed his life.
My mother always stood by my father and she was the one who taught him how to read. He would read the Bible at night while she would be knitting socks for us children, and when there would be a word that he couldn't pronounce she would take one of her knitting needles and spell it out and pronounce it for him. So, my father learned to read and even to write by reading the Bible.
When all of us would be around the the table, before we ate, my father would ask the Lord to bless the food and to strengthen our boodies and give us the necessary nourishment. And, after we ate we would pray again and thank the Lord and praise Him for what he had given us. First we asked Him to bless it; then we thanked Him for it. And after every meal my father would read a portion out of the Bible. In the morning we would read from the Psalms; in the afternoon he would read a short chapter in the New Testament; and then in the evening he would read a chapter out of the Old Testament. My Dad was very smart. He knew that children would often not pay attention, so he would stop at any time and call on one of us and ask, "What was the last word?"
Of course, he read from the Dutch Bible, and that's how I retained my use of the Dutch language. I can still speak and read Dutch because of that constant teaching.
MY FATHER'S FAITH
My father was a man of strong faith. He believed that God would give him his boyhood dream of coming to America and he proudly became an American citizen in 1917. That faith carried over to all things in my father's life - especially to his family during the wars. He had three sons in WW1; my brother Pete was in France for seven months and my father believed God to bring all three of my brothers home safely. The only child lost during that war was my sister, Lena, who died during the flu epidemic. During the Second World War my father had several grandsons, one son-in-law and one son in the war. He had all their names written in a book and he wrote to every one of them and prayed for each of them to return safely. Nick, Tilly, and Tom Hendrik's oldest son, was in the service in Hawaii when it was bombed. Then was in Ansio Beach during the invasion of Italy. Later he was sent to England and in the invasion of Europe on "D" Day; the Battle of the Bulge. After that, he met the Russian Army at the Elba River in Germany. When peace was declared he came home without a scratch! All of the men in our family returned except one grandson, Evert Coy, a Marine, who was killed in the battle of Iwo Jima. He was the only son of my brother Pete and his wife Minnie. No one else from the family was even hurt.
LIKE JACOB'S FAMILY
I have heard by Dad say many times that he was like Jacob who crossed the brook by himself, but when he returned and crossed that same brook, he had grown into seventy. My mother and father had two more children in America who were named Nellie and Johnny. So, they had twelve children in twenty-four years. There were twenty-four years between my oldest brother, Nick and my baby brother Johnny.
Well, my father prospered and all of his childrren prospered and we helped populate the United States! Every one of my brothers and sisters were healthy, hard-working, saving people who had good jobs and finally owned their own businesses and their own homes. My nephews and nieces have become doctors and lawyers and movie stars and nurses and business workers, active in the the affairs of the community and church.
My brother Johnny and wife Dot had the Baptist Women's Missionary Society meet in their home each week for over thirty-five years. In fact, about thirty women became missionaries through their ministry. There has even been a book published about this work.
My sister Marie and her husband Dean Smith were members of the Second United Presbyterian Church for over fifty years. Their whole family was very musically gifted and they all used their talents for God.
Elizabeth (my sister Betsy) Van Donk has a grandson, Richard John Van Donk who is the author of the book called Creating Your Own Life and is the founder/president of Uni-Dynamics.
My sisiter Nell Richardson loves people and is kept busy taking care of shut-ins and the handicapped. She bakes for them, picks up their mail, gives them rides, and helps in any way she can.
One nephew, Robert O'Neal and his wife Dine, have had a Christian group in their home for many years. Their daughter Linda Friedricks and her husband David were missionaries in South Africa. David Junior was born there. He is now grown and studying for the ministry.
My daughter Tillora Jackson loves the Lord and knows Him in a very personal way. She is a blessing to many and all who really know her love her.
Herman Floyd, my son, carried a New Testament in his shirt pocket the entirre twenty-six years he was in the Air Force. He and his wife Myrla had services in their home many times during those years.
My grandson, William (Billy) Van Assen and his wife Jean, both have a call to be missionaries to Algeria and are preparing to go when God opens the way.
So many times I heard my father quote the scripture from Acts 16:21, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house." And my Dad just simply believed that, and God confirmed that word.
I just wanted to honor my father and mother and all my sister and brothers for the great influence they had upon my life. And I just rejoice in the Lord at the wonderful family I came from.
Chapter 4 - GROWING AND CHANGING
MY GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
God is so faithful, for the day came when my father's boyhood dream to be his own boss was finally fulfilled. He had leased some land as a share cropper and was able to save enough money to buy a farm of his own. At last he was going to be his own boss. However, owning our own land required us to move to Hanford, California. This move turned out to be a golden opportunity for me!
I was a different kind of child. Even my father told me that I had been unlike the others from the very beginning. I never felt as though I fit in. I seemed slow in comparison to the others and I lived in a dream world. I can remember my brothers and sisters saying, "Look at Dora standing there dreaming." To make matters worse, I had earned the nickname "Dumb Dora" because there was a popular card game by that name. I absolutely hated being called "Dumb Dora", and I longed for the time I could change my name.
Well, the perfect opportunity came when we moved to Hanford and I had to change schools. I had to go to shcool in a town called Hardwick and the first day I told the teacher that my name was Dorothy. Well, everyone began to call me Dot. Even my parents and brothers and sisters started calling me Dot. That change made me feel like a whole new person.
But now, after all these years, I have come to really like my name Dora, and I believe that name was ordained of God. Dora means 'gift of love'. I was the ninth child to be born into the family and biblically the numer nine is connected with gifts. (nine gifts of the Spirit, nine fruits of the Spirit) That's all I really want to be - God's gift of love to all creation.
God is love. He loves everyone equally. There is no difference in the love of God for His creation. In fact, he proved that at the cross when everyone of us became equal, because we were all bought with the same price, the precious blood of Jesus.
THE SPARK IS KINDLED
Hanford was where our Dutch Reform Church was located and our whole family atended services together. My father would lead the procession into the sanctuary, followed by all the children, then my mother. We children sat quietly through every meeting, three times on Sunday. Besides church, we went to Sunday School and in addition there was the catechism class.
That class stands out in my mind because there were a lot of questions and answers that were discussed. What's more, all of this went on in Dutch. At my age, I wasn't able to read the material, so I had to depend on one of my older sisters to help me.
The smaller children were taken to the catechism class on Saturday but at a certain age, you went in the evening rather than in the afternoon. When I was eleven I was still too young for the evening class, but my sister, Marie, was thirteen, and she was assigned to go at night. However, my father didn't want her to go by herself, so I went along with her.
Anyway, one evening on our way to the catechism class, we noticed a big tent pitched on the property of the Free Methodist Church. Well, we just had to know what was going on in that tent, so we talked it over and decided we would sneak into this tent and see what the people were doing and then go on to our class.
We discovered that it was a revival meeting. I began to listen to what the minister was saying, and as he began to make his appeal for us to open our hearts to Jesus and live for Him, I began to feel a longing in my heart to answer that call. I wanted to go up to the front of the tent, as some other people were doing, to make a public stand, but I was afraid, because I didn't want anyone to see me and tell my folks that we were playing hookie from the catechism class. So I just sat there in misery and prayed in my heart that I wanted Jesus to forgive me and I made a silent promise that I would live for him.
Well, that promise only lasted a few days. It just faded away, because I didn't speak it out publicly - I didn't let anybody know it. I was trying to be a secret Christian. So the things of the world and the cares of life just caused it to fade away. But I know now that was the beginning of God letting me know that He is within me. Of course, He has been there all the time, but I thought that He had left.
CONFUSED BY THE DOCTINES OF MEN
Then, a few months later something else happened in my life that stands out. In the catechism class the question of infant baptism arose. I was being taught that should a little baby die without being baptized it would be lost, it wouldn't come under the blessings of the church. It wouldn't be able to inherit that protective covering.
Well, I began to question that in my heart - I just couldn't accept it. I just couldn't believe that. But I kept the matter to myself.
Eventually, the question of infant baptism came up again. and I raised my hand and asked the minister,
"Why would that little baby be punished for not being baptized? The little baby can't say to the mother or father, "I need to be baptized. Take me to church and baptize me so if anything should happen to me and I should die, I won't be lost." It would have to be the fault of the father and mother and if anybody should be punished, it should be the parents instead of the baby."
Well, the minister got quite upset about this and he took me by the hand and put me in another room. I didn't hear any more about it and I tried to accept it, but it was always grinding away at me deep down in my mind.
Then, something else occurred which brought the whole question of infant baptism to the forefront again. We had a little neighbor boy whose father and mother never went to church. They were not believers. It came about that this little boy had an accident with his bicycle and died. However, through the death of this little boy, his whole family began coming to church. When they became members of the church they all had to be baptized. So, one Sunday they all came in and sat on the front row and the minister and the elder came with the baptismal bowl and sprinkled all of them. So now, according to the teaching I had received they were saved and were all going to heaven when they died.
Subsequently, this baptism was discussed again in catechism class and I put my hand up and said to the minister, "I just want to ask you something. This whole family that was recently baptized; they are all saved and will go to heaven?
And the minster said, "Yes".
So, then, I said, "Well, what about their little brother? That little boy who died wasn't baptized, what about him?"
And the minster said, "He's lost; he's dying for Adam's sin."
Then something came over me and I said, "I don't believe that! I just don't accept that. I don't believe God would be that cruel."
So the minister had me put in another room and he notified my father in a letter.
The day that my father got the letter, he was waiting for me when I got home from school. My father told me that he had this letter, and it said that I had disobeyed and I had been very rude. And he told me that I was to apologize. He didn't give me any opportunity to explain he just said, "I want you to apologize."
"I won't apologize. I can't", I said.
Then my dad said, "Well then I'm going to have to give you a licking." So, he began to spank me.
Just then my mother stepped in and stopped him because I didn't really know what I had done. I was just saying, "No, no! I won't, I won't!"
After I was in bed my father came in and was kneeling by the bed and he was asking me to forgive him.
Of course I forgave my father. And I didn't even hold it against the minister. I just got mixed up some way and blamed God for it. Somehow I saw that the minister was teaching what he thought he had to teach, and my father was correcting me because I was his child and he thought I had done wrong and disobeyed. And so it all came back to God. From that point on, I decided that I could never love or serve such a cruel God. In fact, I tried to hate Him and I got to the point that I began to hate all Christians. That's the way I lived through my teenage years, blaming God for being cruel and hating those who believed in Him.
SWEET SIXTEEN
During those years some thing else significant occurred in my life. A young man by the name of Herman Van Assen came to work for my father. Herman and his mother, oldest sister, brother John, and younger sister Gertrude had come to California in 1921 to join Herman's two other brothers Gerald and Garret. Herman was the baby.
Herman had wonderful dark, wavy hair and deep, dark blue eyes and beautiful fair skin. I had always been painfully shy but his quick wit and open friendly manner drew me out in no time. It wasn't long befor we were sweet on one another. I was only sixteen at the time and our relationship went on until my father found out about it. Then he called Herman in and said, "Herman, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but since you're sweet on my daughter, and she is way too young, I'm going to have to fire you. It isn't good for both of you to be living in the same house together."
Well, Herman stormed in and packed his things. He said to me, "It's as though your father never kissed a girl when she was sixteen."
So, Herman left the area and disappeared from my life, but not altogether from my thoughts.
The Autobiography of Dora Van Assen - Chap 5 & 6
When I turned eighteen I moved to Sana Francisco to live with my sister, Marie, and take a position with the Great Western Electric Company. Life went along uneventfully until I was twenty-one when my sister and her husband moved back home to be near my parents. That left me alone in the city.
At that time I was doing a lot of things that would have been ashamed for my father and mother to know. When I look back, what I was doing wasn't all that bad, but the fact was that I wasn't following the teaching and training of my childhood and teenage years.
Every week a group of Salvation Army officers would hold street meting at 22nd and Mission Streets and sometimes I would hear music from the meeting. Well, this particular night the windows were open and I heard the sound of the Army drum drifting through the window. Something came over me to go and listen to these people. I thought that they seemed to really believe what they were saying - at least they dared to stand outside and tell people about it. So, I put on my hat and coat and walked down there.
When I got to the meeting, I noticed one young girl with beautiful blue eyes who had on a hat tied under her chin with a bow. She was just radiant. A lot of people were walking by, but nobody was stopping to listen.
GOD LOVES YOU !
I didn't want to just stand out and look like I was paying attention to what they were saying, so I turned around and pretended that I was window shopping. All the time, I was straining to listen. Well, I turned around again to look and the girl I had noticed earlier stepped out and said very loudly, "God loves you."
And I thought, "No! God doesn't love me. I don't love Him, and I know He doesn't love me. I'm doing too many things that are wrong."
Then I heard her begin to recite John 3:16, "For God so loved the world..."
And that's all I heard. My attention was caught by the word "world". And I said, "That's right, God loves the world. I'm the world. So, God loves ME." With that, something just came over me. I didn't hear any more that I could remember, but when the meeting closed, I followed them. And, as I was walking behind them, I suddenly thought, "Well, I'm not that bad. I didn't rob a bank or steal anybody's husband." So I walked up boldly and took this girl's arm and said, "Is it all right if I go to you meeting.?"
Well, she was so glad and excited about me that she turned around and put her arm around me and wasn't going to let me go.
That service was the first time I ever heard anyone testify and say they were glad they were saved. Every time someone would testify, I would turn completely around and look right at their face, and I would think, "How could you possibly be glad?" I thought when you became a Christian everything became sad. It seemed like everyone became stiff and formal and they didn't have any fun at all. But everyone of these people said they were glad, and their faces just shone. Then at the end of the service some of them came up to the front and knelt down and the officers in uniform would kneel beside them.
I wondered what they were doing. Were they confessing their sins? Were these uniformed people like priests? You see, I'd never been in that kind of service and I didn't know what was going on. But I knew these people were very serious and in my heart I knew that I wanted to come back again, because I wanted to hear more.
MY HEART YEARNS FOR MORE
The next morning at work, I called my girlfriend and I asked her if she would like to go to the Salvation Arm Headquarters on 13th and Valencia Street for a meeting. It had been announced that there was going to be a special service with the cadets from the trainging college. We both found the idea of seeing these cadets very attractive.
So she said, "Sure, I'll go with you. We'll have a good time."
Well, I was a very serious person; it wasn't easy for me to have fun. And I suddenly realized that my purpose of attending that meeting was not for fun but to find out what it was these people had in their lives that I seemed to lack.
ARE YOU SAVED?
When we arrived at the meeting I looked around, and could just sense the sincerity and dedication of those young cadets and knew that something of real meaning was in their lives.
A nice gray-haired lady, who seemed to be the officer in charge, kept looking at us from the platform. I guess my friend and I stood out like two sore thumbs. Our hair was cut short, which was unusual during the days of Prohibition and we both wore coats with fur collars. While one officer was preaching, I felt that this woman was going to come over and talk to me. Sure enough, as the message was drawing to a close, this lady started to get up. So, I began moving over so the lady would have room to sit down, because I didn't want to draw attention to us by having her stand there beside us. I made up my mind that I would ask her some questions designed to cut the conversation short. When this lady sat down beside me, she put her arm around me and asked, "Honey, are you saved?"
I answered, "No, I'm not saved. Are you?"
And she said, "Yes."
JUST ASK JESUS
Well, that startled me, becasue I expected her to say, "I hope to be", or "I'm doing the best I can." And then I was going to say, "I hope to be saved, too, and I'm doing the best I can." But when she said "Yes", by mouth fell open and I asked her, "How do you know that you're saved? You haven't died yet. The books haven't been opened. You haven't gone through the judgment. You may have more things written against you than for you. Instead of going up, you may find yourself going down. So, how could you know if you're saved?"
And she said, "God's Spirit witnesses with my spirit that I am born of God."
Well, I knew that was in the Bible, so I asked, "What did you do?"
Then she answered, "Nothing, Honey. I just asked Jesus to come into my heart, and I asked Him to forgive me. And He did!"
I said, "Do you mean to tell me that we can know, that we can be sure we are saved before we die?"
She answered, "Oh, yes!"
I said, "Well, that's what I want. I want to be saved. I want to know that I am saved."
"Well, just let Jesus come into your heart," she encouraged.
Just then I heard another officer calling out to the people , "Jesus is here. He's calling for you. He wants you to come. He wants to enter your life. He wants to change you."
I said to her, "Do you mean to tell me that Jesus is here right now? Right here? And if I go to the front I'll meet Him and He'll speak to me, and I'll know that I'm saved?"
And she answered, "Yes."
So, I said to my girlfriend, "You can do what you want to, but I'm going to get saved."
In spite of my shyness, I rose to my feet in that huge auditorium with its balcony full of people. As I got up I began to cry and my hands went up over my head. I was crying and shouting as I headed down the aisle. I wan't even aware that my friend had gotten up and was following me. When I got to the altar I cried what seemed to be a bucket full of tears. I wan't crying because of my sins or my guilt or anything that I had done; I was crying because I knew Jesus had died for me and taken my sins and I was forgiven, and I was saved!
When I got up they were all rejoicing and hugging and kissing me and accepting me as one of them. They were doing the same thing with my girlfriend.
Finally, an officer came and said, "Now that you're saved, I want to give you these little books." And he gave each one of us a book titled THE RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE SALVATION ARMY. Then the man said, "In order to grow and mature and become good Christians, you need to read these rules and regulations. You ought to go home tonight and read it through and begin to obey these rules."
THE REALITY OF SALVATION
When we were on the street car heading for home, my friend said to me, "You sure put on quite a show."
I said, "What do you mean, "Put on a show?"
She said, "Well, you know, the way you were acting. It wasn't real."
I said, "Oh, yes it is real. I wasn't acting. I really and truly got saved." I said, "Didn't you get saved?"
She said, Oh, no. I was just having fun." When she began to realize that I was serious, she said, "Well, I'll give you about two weeks and you'll be coming out of it."
But you know, I never came out of it. Not to this very day. I was twenty-one years old, and now I'm eighty-three and I never did come out of it, because I became a new person. Old things passed away, and all things became new. Oh, there were still things in my life tht weren't right, and I had to grow and mature in the Lord, but I was definitely born of the Spirit that night.
As soon as I got home, I began to read THE RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE SALVATION ARMY. And at the end of the little book, there was a pledge that went something like this: "I pledge to read three chapters of the Bible and pray fifteen minutes every day. I will pay my tithes and obey the rules of the Salvation Army in order to become a member."
I thought, "That doesn't sound very hard to do." So, I signed the pledge.
The very next morning, I got up early in time to read a chapter out of the book of John where they had advised me to start. After that I began to pray. Well, I prayed for my father and my mother and all my brothers and sisters and my friends and the for the Salvation Army and for my girlfriend and I prayed that I would be a real testimony during the day.
However, when I looked at the clock, not even three minutes had gone by. I just didn't have anything more to pray. I didn't know what else to do.l I didn't know how to meditatie or anything, so I just got up and went to work.
Here, I had been so wonderfully saved by grace and I thought I was going to keep myself saved by obeying a human pledge, human regulations. That has been our error. We have been saved by grace; we're kept by grace; and we grow by grace because it is His seed of life within us that is growing and maturing. He lives His life through us.
But one thing I was admonished to do was to testify to others about my salvation. So, when I got to work that morning, the first thing I said to the other three girls in the office was, "I went to the Salvation Army last night and I got saved. And now I'm a Christian; I'm a different person."
Well, the news travelled like wild fire through my department. I worked in the section where the meters and transformers were brought in for repair, so there were quite a few men working in the shop. The next thing I knew, I was being called "Lassie", and they were all teasing me. But I survived, I was able to take it, because I now stood in a new strength. Bless the Lord!
Chapter 6 - MY YEARS WITH THE SALVATION ARMY
CALLED TO PREACH
I can clearly remember my first meeting out on the street. I was saved on Friday and the next night the Salvation Army was to conduct their street ministry. They told me one of the things I should do was to go and stand with them as a witness of the salvation of Jesus Christ in my heart. So I went. During that meeting I heard Captain Cox announce tht they had a new convert who was going to testify. I looke around for this new convert not realizing she meant me until she took hold of my arm and said, "That's you!"
I said, "I can't say anything! I don't know what to say!"
She asked me, "Are you glad your're still saved."
And I answered, "Yes."
So, she said, "Well just stand right out there and tell the people that you are glad you are saved."
The thought came to me that if I was going to tell the people walking down the street that I was glad I was saved I was going to say it just as loudly as I could. So I yelled at the top of my voice, over all the noise of the traffic, "I am glad that I am saved."
That instant something came down on me and I forgt where I was. By the time I realized what I was doing, I was crying and laughing and jumping up and down, and I was almost beside myself. Then I realized that a great number of people had stopped and were gathered around on both corners.
On the way home, Lieuutenanat White (the girl with the blue eyes and boind hair, who had caught my attention the night before when she said, "God loves you") said to me, "We didn't realize you were a preacher."
And I said, "I'm not a preacher."
She said, "Oh, yes you are. You were preaching."
I asked, "What was I preaching?"
She answered, "You were quoting a lot of scriptures."
And I said, "Well, I don't know any scriptures. The only scriptures I know were the ones I learned as a child in the Dutch Reform Church."
Then she said, "Oh, but you were speaking in English, and you quoting all these scriptures in English."
That was the anointing of God, but I didn't realize it. You see, I had the call of God the very first time I had to open my mouth and tell what Jesus had done for me.
SALVATION ARMY COLLEGE
I began attending the Salvation Army services and growing in the Lord. I learned how to really study the Word of God and to meditate and wait upon Him. I knew in my heart that I wanted to go through the Salvation Army training college and become an officer. And that's what I did. I was trained to cooperate and be in harmony with other cadets and to obey the rules and regulations. I also learned how to study the word of God systematically.
We held meeting in the women's county jail, and we visited people in the old folks home and in hospitals. Another one of our duties was to have street meetings and I was trained in how to speak extemporaneously, as the Lord directed.
MY COMMISSION
Finally I was commissioned as a Probationary Lieutenant and stationed on Third and Howard Street in San Francisco. That is like the skid row street of forgotten men, like the bowery in New York. All this was good experience and I thank God for the training I received in the Salvation Army.
A WITNESS TO MY FAMILY
I had written to my family about the change in my life, and I had been home to witness to them. So during the time I was in training my parents came to visit me. My father just had to come and find out if those things were really true, so they stayed with me for a week. They went with me to all the Salvation Army meetings and they went home satisfied that my experience was real.
I was with the Salvation Army for about five years when my mother died. Since I was the only girl who wasn't married at the time, my brothers and sisters all felt that I should be the one to come home and stay with my father for a while, because he was taking it very, very hard.
So, I got a three month furlough from the Salvation Army to be with him.
At that time I was doing a lot of things that would have been ashamed for my father and mother to know. When I look back, what I was doing wasn't all that bad, but the fact was that I wasn't following the teaching and training of my childhood and teenage years.
Every week a group of Salvation Army officers would hold street meting at 22nd and Mission Streets and sometimes I would hear music from the meeting. Well, this particular night the windows were open and I heard the sound of the Army drum drifting through the window. Something came over me to go and listen to these people. I thought that they seemed to really believe what they were saying - at least they dared to stand outside and tell people about it. So, I put on my hat and coat and walked down there.
When I got to the meeting, I noticed one young girl with beautiful blue eyes who had on a hat tied under her chin with a bow. She was just radiant. A lot of people were walking by, but nobody was stopping to listen.
GOD LOVES YOU !
I didn't want to just stand out and look like I was paying attention to what they were saying, so I turned around and pretended that I was window shopping. All the time, I was straining to listen. Well, I turned around again to look and the girl I had noticed earlier stepped out and said very loudly, "God loves you."
And I thought, "No! God doesn't love me. I don't love Him, and I know He doesn't love me. I'm doing too many things that are wrong."
Then I heard her begin to recite John 3:16, "For God so loved the world..."
And that's all I heard. My attention was caught by the word "world". And I said, "That's right, God loves the world. I'm the world. So, God loves ME." With that, something just came over me. I didn't hear any more that I could remember, but when the meeting closed, I followed them. And, as I was walking behind them, I suddenly thought, "Well, I'm not that bad. I didn't rob a bank or steal anybody's husband." So I walked up boldly and took this girl's arm and said, "Is it all right if I go to you meeting.?"
Well, she was so glad and excited about me that she turned around and put her arm around me and wasn't going to let me go.
That service was the first time I ever heard anyone testify and say they were glad they were saved. Every time someone would testify, I would turn completely around and look right at their face, and I would think, "How could you possibly be glad?" I thought when you became a Christian everything became sad. It seemed like everyone became stiff and formal and they didn't have any fun at all. But everyone of these people said they were glad, and their faces just shone. Then at the end of the service some of them came up to the front and knelt down and the officers in uniform would kneel beside them.
I wondered what they were doing. Were they confessing their sins? Were these uniformed people like priests? You see, I'd never been in that kind of service and I didn't know what was going on. But I knew these people were very serious and in my heart I knew that I wanted to come back again, because I wanted to hear more.
MY HEART YEARNS FOR MORE
The next morning at work, I called my girlfriend and I asked her if she would like to go to the Salvation Arm Headquarters on 13th and Valencia Street for a meeting. It had been announced that there was going to be a special service with the cadets from the trainging college. We both found the idea of seeing these cadets very attractive.
So she said, "Sure, I'll go with you. We'll have a good time."
Well, I was a very serious person; it wasn't easy for me to have fun. And I suddenly realized that my purpose of attending that meeting was not for fun but to find out what it was these people had in their lives that I seemed to lack.
ARE YOU SAVED?
When we arrived at the meeting I looked around, and could just sense the sincerity and dedication of those young cadets and knew that something of real meaning was in their lives.
A nice gray-haired lady, who seemed to be the officer in charge, kept looking at us from the platform. I guess my friend and I stood out like two sore thumbs. Our hair was cut short, which was unusual during the days of Prohibition and we both wore coats with fur collars. While one officer was preaching, I felt that this woman was going to come over and talk to me. Sure enough, as the message was drawing to a close, this lady started to get up. So, I began moving over so the lady would have room to sit down, because I didn't want to draw attention to us by having her stand there beside us. I made up my mind that I would ask her some questions designed to cut the conversation short. When this lady sat down beside me, she put her arm around me and asked, "Honey, are you saved?"
I answered, "No, I'm not saved. Are you?"
And she said, "Yes."
JUST ASK JESUS
Well, that startled me, becasue I expected her to say, "I hope to be", or "I'm doing the best I can." And then I was going to say, "I hope to be saved, too, and I'm doing the best I can." But when she said "Yes", by mouth fell open and I asked her, "How do you know that you're saved? You haven't died yet. The books haven't been opened. You haven't gone through the judgment. You may have more things written against you than for you. Instead of going up, you may find yourself going down. So, how could you know if you're saved?"
And she said, "God's Spirit witnesses with my spirit that I am born of God."
Well, I knew that was in the Bible, so I asked, "What did you do?"
Then she answered, "Nothing, Honey. I just asked Jesus to come into my heart, and I asked Him to forgive me. And He did!"
I said, "Do you mean to tell me that we can know, that we can be sure we are saved before we die?"
She answered, "Oh, yes!"
I said, "Well, that's what I want. I want to be saved. I want to know that I am saved."
"Well, just let Jesus come into your heart," she encouraged.
Just then I heard another officer calling out to the people , "Jesus is here. He's calling for you. He wants you to come. He wants to enter your life. He wants to change you."
I said to her, "Do you mean to tell me that Jesus is here right now? Right here? And if I go to the front I'll meet Him and He'll speak to me, and I'll know that I'm saved?"
And she answered, "Yes."
So, I said to my girlfriend, "You can do what you want to, but I'm going to get saved."
In spite of my shyness, I rose to my feet in that huge auditorium with its balcony full of people. As I got up I began to cry and my hands went up over my head. I was crying and shouting as I headed down the aisle. I wan't even aware that my friend had gotten up and was following me. When I got to the altar I cried what seemed to be a bucket full of tears. I wan't crying because of my sins or my guilt or anything that I had done; I was crying because I knew Jesus had died for me and taken my sins and I was forgiven, and I was saved!
When I got up they were all rejoicing and hugging and kissing me and accepting me as one of them. They were doing the same thing with my girlfriend.
Finally, an officer came and said, "Now that you're saved, I want to give you these little books." And he gave each one of us a book titled THE RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE SALVATION ARMY. Then the man said, "In order to grow and mature and become good Christians, you need to read these rules and regulations. You ought to go home tonight and read it through and begin to obey these rules."
THE REALITY OF SALVATION
When we were on the street car heading for home, my friend said to me, "You sure put on quite a show."
I said, "What do you mean, "Put on a show?"
She said, "Well, you know, the way you were acting. It wasn't real."
I said, "Oh, yes it is real. I wasn't acting. I really and truly got saved." I said, "Didn't you get saved?"
She said, Oh, no. I was just having fun." When she began to realize that I was serious, she said, "Well, I'll give you about two weeks and you'll be coming out of it."
But you know, I never came out of it. Not to this very day. I was twenty-one years old, and now I'm eighty-three and I never did come out of it, because I became a new person. Old things passed away, and all things became new. Oh, there were still things in my life tht weren't right, and I had to grow and mature in the Lord, but I was definitely born of the Spirit that night.
As soon as I got home, I began to read THE RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE SALVATION ARMY. And at the end of the little book, there was a pledge that went something like this: "I pledge to read three chapters of the Bible and pray fifteen minutes every day. I will pay my tithes and obey the rules of the Salvation Army in order to become a member."
I thought, "That doesn't sound very hard to do." So, I signed the pledge.
The very next morning, I got up early in time to read a chapter out of the book of John where they had advised me to start. After that I began to pray. Well, I prayed for my father and my mother and all my brothers and sisters and my friends and the for the Salvation Army and for my girlfriend and I prayed that I would be a real testimony during the day.
However, when I looked at the clock, not even three minutes had gone by. I just didn't have anything more to pray. I didn't know what else to do.l I didn't know how to meditatie or anything, so I just got up and went to work.
Here, I had been so wonderfully saved by grace and I thought I was going to keep myself saved by obeying a human pledge, human regulations. That has been our error. We have been saved by grace; we're kept by grace; and we grow by grace because it is His seed of life within us that is growing and maturing. He lives His life through us.
But one thing I was admonished to do was to testify to others about my salvation. So, when I got to work that morning, the first thing I said to the other three girls in the office was, "I went to the Salvation Army last night and I got saved. And now I'm a Christian; I'm a different person."
Well, the news travelled like wild fire through my department. I worked in the section where the meters and transformers were brought in for repair, so there were quite a few men working in the shop. The next thing I knew, I was being called "Lassie", and they were all teasing me. But I survived, I was able to take it, because I now stood in a new strength. Bless the Lord!
Chapter 6 - MY YEARS WITH THE SALVATION ARMY
CALLED TO PREACH
I can clearly remember my first meeting out on the street. I was saved on Friday and the next night the Salvation Army was to conduct their street ministry. They told me one of the things I should do was to go and stand with them as a witness of the salvation of Jesus Christ in my heart. So I went. During that meeting I heard Captain Cox announce tht they had a new convert who was going to testify. I looke around for this new convert not realizing she meant me until she took hold of my arm and said, "That's you!"
I said, "I can't say anything! I don't know what to say!"
She asked me, "Are you glad your're still saved."
And I answered, "Yes."
So, she said, "Well just stand right out there and tell the people that you are glad you are saved."
The thought came to me that if I was going to tell the people walking down the street that I was glad I was saved I was going to say it just as loudly as I could. So I yelled at the top of my voice, over all the noise of the traffic, "I am glad that I am saved."
That instant something came down on me and I forgt where I was. By the time I realized what I was doing, I was crying and laughing and jumping up and down, and I was almost beside myself. Then I realized that a great number of people had stopped and were gathered around on both corners.
On the way home, Lieuutenanat White (the girl with the blue eyes and boind hair, who had caught my attention the night before when she said, "God loves you") said to me, "We didn't realize you were a preacher."
And I said, "I'm not a preacher."
She said, "Oh, yes you are. You were preaching."
I asked, "What was I preaching?"
She answered, "You were quoting a lot of scriptures."
And I said, "Well, I don't know any scriptures. The only scriptures I know were the ones I learned as a child in the Dutch Reform Church."
Then she said, "Oh, but you were speaking in English, and you quoting all these scriptures in English."
That was the anointing of God, but I didn't realize it. You see, I had the call of God the very first time I had to open my mouth and tell what Jesus had done for me.
SALVATION ARMY COLLEGE
I began attending the Salvation Army services and growing in the Lord. I learned how to really study the Word of God and to meditate and wait upon Him. I knew in my heart that I wanted to go through the Salvation Army training college and become an officer. And that's what I did. I was trained to cooperate and be in harmony with other cadets and to obey the rules and regulations. I also learned how to study the word of God systematically.
We held meeting in the women's county jail, and we visited people in the old folks home and in hospitals. Another one of our duties was to have street meetings and I was trained in how to speak extemporaneously, as the Lord directed.
MY COMMISSION
Finally I was commissioned as a Probationary Lieutenant and stationed on Third and Howard Street in San Francisco. That is like the skid row street of forgotten men, like the bowery in New York. All this was good experience and I thank God for the training I received in the Salvation Army.
A WITNESS TO MY FAMILY
I had written to my family about the change in my life, and I had been home to witness to them. So during the time I was in training my parents came to visit me. My father just had to come and find out if those things were really true, so they stayed with me for a week. They went with me to all the Salvation Army meetings and they went home satisfied that my experience was real.
I was with the Salvation Army for about five years when my mother died. Since I was the only girl who wasn't married at the time, my brothers and sisters all felt that I should be the one to come home and stay with my father for a while, because he was taking it very, very hard.
So, I got a three month furlough from the Salvation Army to be with him.
The Autobiography of Dora Van Assen - Chap 7 & 8
Chapter 7 - LEARNING GOD'S GRACE
A TURN IN MY LIFE
During the time that I was caring for my father I quite unexpectedly came in contact with my old sweetheart, Herman Van Assen, the young man my father had banished from our property some ten years earlier. Now, here we were together again, and that old attraction sprang up between us.
To make a long story short, I left the Salvation Army in 1934 and married Herman, but since Herman wasn't a member of the Salvation Army, I lost my rank.
About this time, everyone, including me, began to think I had backslidden. But I still loved the Lord, and as it turned out, I was walking out the plan and purpose that was destined for me.
The next five years of my married life I couldn't get away from that call of God. Many times Herman would wake me up in the night and say, "Dora, Dora, you're preaching again." So, I would even preach in my sleep.
Here I thought I was lost, yet, all the time, it was actually God dealing with me. Of course, I thought it was the devil, and I was being tormented before my time. But, all along, it was God speaking to my heart and causing me to realize that I wasn't in His perfect will. I was learning the grace of God.
I had come into the thought that I was the one who had heard the Salvation Army drum beat. I had said to myself, "I'm going to listen to them." I am the one who followed them to the hall. I am the one who knelt at the altar. I'm the one who prayed through, and I was the one who got saved.
I had to learan that it wasn't I at all, but it was the Spirit of God who caused me to hear those drums beat. It was the Spirit of God who put the desire in my heart to cause me to listen to them. It was the Spirit of God who caused me to hear those words, "God loves you." It was the Sprit of God who caused me to kneel at the altar and open my heart unto Him and thank Him for His great and wonderful salvation.
During those five years, I learned that it was the grace of God that teaches us to live righteously and soberly and godly in this present world. Paul said, "I am what I am by the grace of God." So, I thank God that He led me out of the Salvation Army into the deeper truths of His wonderful grace. And it was also by marrying Herman that God united us together to work in the gospel.
It wasn't long after we were married that I discovered my husband really was not a believer. All the time he was courting me, he just consented to go with me to church and to the young people's meetings. He said that he couldn't be in church on Sunday all day. I could go in the morning but he wanted to have his meal at twelve o'clock like he did any other time during the week. So this little friction was between us, though we did love one another. And, in a measure, we were happy and compatible. But deep down inside, there was something lacking. Eventually, I began to realize that he didn't even believe in God or the Bible, and he called himself an atheist.
In those first six years, we had two children, Herman Floyd, our oldest, and our daughter, Tillora.
HERMAN'S CRISIS
At that time, we were living in Banning, California and Herman became very sick with asthma. It grew so bad that it was diagnosed as bronchiectasis, which today might be called emphysema. He would get these very bad diaphragm spasms and would have to be hospitalized. He spent the greater part of four years in the hospital. Finally he said that he didn't want to go the hospital anymore, because they really weren't able to do anything for him. He said he would rather stay home. So I learned to take care of him at home; to give his shots of adrenaline, amytol pills and morphine shot so he could sleep a few hours. Eventually, he was totally beridden.
My sister, Tilly Hendricks, came to help me, and the first night she was with me, she said, "Now, Dora, you need to go to sleep and get some rest. I'll take care of him."
In the morning, Tilly handed me a letter and said, "I dont' know how he did it, I don't know how he got the strength, but he wrote this letter." The letter was to his friend, Henry Boertje, who had come to America with him, and who had married his sister Gertrude.
The letter said, "Henry, I wish I was dead. If I were dead, Dora would be a widow and she would get a widow's pension, and she wouldn't have to pay out all the money for medicine for me. She's still young, and she could get married again, and a stepfather would take better care of my children than I can."
Well, this just stabbed me in the heart. So, I said, "Herman, I'm not going to mail this letter."
He countered, "Oh, yes you are."
I said, "No, I'm not going to mail it."
And this made him very angry, and he began to curse.
GOD'S GRACE MADE REAL
I realized then that he didn't know what he was doing, and I said, "All right, all right." And I put the letter down. Then I walked into the kitchen thinking, "You don't have to mail it, just don't do anything more about it. He'll just forget about it." But while I was putting the coffee pot on, which was only a few seconds later, I heard my husband crying, really crying hard.
I rushed out of the kitchen into the parlor where he was. My sister, Tilly, got there at the same time, and we were both leaning over him and trying to get him to talk to us. I kept saying, "Talk to me, Daddy. Talk to me Daddy", thinking he was dying right before us.
When he could talk, he said, "God spoke to me."
And my sister said, "Oh, you must be dreaming."
But I thought, "How could he be dreaming; he was just cursing a moment ago."
Then he said, "I did not want to pray; God made me pray."
And, I began to realize that something was taking place.
Then, he said, "God reached His hand down and touched my side, and I'm healed, and I'm going to get up."
I kept saying, "No, Daddy! You've been in bed too long. You've been sick too long; you're too weak to get up." And I tried to hold him in bed.
But he pushed me out of the way, and he walked to the dresser in the bedroom. He wasn't able to find his underwear, so he took a blue shirt and blue overalls and put them right over his pajamas.
The whole time, I thought he was going to fall over.
My sister kept saying to me, "Humor him! Humor him! Don't you realize that he is out of his mind? People get superhuman strength when they're like this. Humor him."
So, I didn't touch him or do anything.
Then he looked out the window and saw the garden, and he said, "Oh, look at the weeds in the garden. Weren't you able to keep the weeds out of the garden? Look at that puncture vine." Then he went outside to the garage and got a hoe and he began to chop the weeds.
Tilly and I were riveted to the window just watching him.
All of a sudden, he began to shout at the top of his voice, and he threw the hoe down and jumped up and down, shouting like the Dutch people do "Yay, yay, yay! (Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!) And, then he began to run, stopping every once in a while to shout. I thought, "Oh, my, my sister is right. He has lost his mind."
Then he came into the house and threw his arms around me and said, "Oh, Mama, I'm saved! Aren't you glad I'm saved?"
I said, "Yes, Herman, of course I'm glad. But you mustn't get this excited."
Then he walked into the bathroom with me trailing close on his heels. You see, I didn't quite trust him, because he had already tried to commit suicide twice by taking overdoses of medicine that the doctor had prescribed for his pain. But, here he was standing, looking in the mirror.
I said, "Herman, what are you trying to see?"
And, he said, "I'm trying to see Jesus in me."
Herman realized that Christ had entered into his heart. Then he told me what had taken place outside. He said, "Jesus appeared to me. I saw his light form." And he waved his hand from side to side saying, "I could not feel anything. And then he walked right inside of me." In that instant, Herman had come into the revelation of Christ in you, the hope of glory. He had such a tremendous experience that he actually expected to see the face of Jesus reflected in his own face as he looked in the mirror.
Then, he said to me, "I have to know God's will. I must read the Bible. I'm thiry-eight years old, and I don't know God's will; I must read the Bible. I'll read it on my knees, so I'll know His will for my life."
So, I went and got the Bible and opened it up, while he was on his knees beside the bed. It fell open to Ezekiel, chapter thirty-eight, so that's where he began to read.
I thought to myself, "That's the wrong place to read the Bible. He should be reading the New Testament about Jesus. You see, he had never been brought up in church or Bible school, and I know that's where he ought to begin in order to learn about Jesus and not those prophets in the Old Testament who were so mysterious that we hardly know their meaning even to this day.
Well, he read that chapter out loud, and he got up and said, "Mama, that's talking about Russia, this army of the North and Gog and Magog." He said, "That's actually Russia. Germany is not our real enemy, our enemy is Russia." Then, his eyes looked far off and got real sharp, and out of his mouth came the words, "Look unto the hills from whence cometh thy strength."
I recognized that as a verse from the Psalms, and I wondered how he could know that verse.
Then he said, "I see a road, it is a military road; it is a road coming down from Alaska into America, and America is financing this road." I know now that he was seeing the pipeline extending from Alaska to America. At that time, Alaska wasn't even a state. Herman was actually having a vision.
He announced, "I have to pray." So, he went outside on the porch and knelt down and began to pray out loud with his hands up, and he began to speak in a strange language which, I know now, was tongues.
When he came in the house, he carried a stern look, and he said, "A miracle has happened to me. This miracle can happen to you too."
Tilly and I were both frightened, and we didn't know what to do. But, she said to me, "I'm going to pack up my clothes and go home. You don't need me here any more. Besides, too many strange things are happening here for me." So Tilly packed her suitcase and left.
Then, Herman said to me, "I don't want to overdo it; I'm going to lie down." So he went into the bedroom and lay down and went to sleep.
The next day Herman walked down town to the drug store where we got all his medicine. He went in and told the druggist that the Lord had saved him and healed him and he wouldn't be coming in very much any more.
There was a scale in the store, so Herman stepped on the scale, and he weighed a hundred and thirteen pounds. His regular weight had been about a hundred and sixty-five pounds. He had lost all that weight because of his illness.
So, here we was, up walking around, witnessing to everyone, telling them about the change that had come into his life. He was testifying of the saving grace of God and his healing power.
Herman was a man of one book, and that was the Bible. He would read the Bible, word for word, from Genesis to Revelation, even the begets. I would usually skip those, but he would read every word, and he would put a mark in his Bible every time he would go through it. When I was going through his Bible after the Lord had taken him home, I saw that there were eleven marks. He had read that Bible through eleven times! Of course, his favorite scriptures he had read hundreds of times. He really loved God's word.
It wasn't long until he found work in the army hospital in Palm Springs washing pot and pans. I remember the first time he stood up in church and testified how God had saved him and given him work. He was so thankful to be able to work after being sick for six years. He was crying and everybody else was crying too.
However, Herman didn't stay on the kitchen crew for very long. One day he told the sergeant that he would like to have a job outside as a plumber's helper.
But the sergeant said, "We can't transfer someone from the kitchen into the plumbing shop."
So, Herman and I just prayed, and soon the Lord answered, and he began working as a plumber's helper. He worked in that Army hospital for three years.
It wasn't hard to see God's nature shining forth in Herman. He always looked on the bright side of things and had a quick humor. Children just adored him and called him the "The Candy Man", because he used to carry lemon drops in his pocket for them.
During those early years, we each learned the miracle of God's grace in our own way.
CHAPTER 8 - GOD'S PLAN REVEALED
RETURN TO THE MINISTRY
I, too, came into the experience of being filled with the Holy Ghost, and we began attending the Assembly of God Church in Banning. It was during that time that my husband got the call of God upon his life to go into the ministry.
It told him, "Herman, you'll have to go to a Bible School and get credentials."
But, he answered, "No, I'm going to go out by faith and just trust God."
And I said, "But you have to have some license."
Then he responded, "Who gave Paul license? Who licensed Peter, John, and James? They just went out and preached. Nobody gave them a license. Why do we have to do it today?"
I even said to him, "Would you like to go to the Salvation Army and go through their school. Then I would get my credentials back and be an officer, and we could go out together."
But, Herman didn't want to do that either. So, he began to pray for me. One night I woke up, and he wasn't in bed, so I went to look for him. There he was out in the garage praying, and he was crying out to God. I knew he was praying for me, because he said, "Wake her up, Lord. Don't let her just sleep there. You know that You've called her. You know that the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. You know, Father, it was my fault. I enticed her, and she married me and that 's why she's not preaching today."
Well, I got under such conviction that I just couldn't stand it. I walked back into the living room and I knelt down by the davenpost, and I prayed, "Father, I'll go back into the ministry, if you'll just make the way. I'll go back, even if I have to live on bread and water."
By this time, we had two children, and I didn't see how we were going to have very much just going out by faith. But the Lord opened up the way for us to start our first mission, called the Door of Hope, in Stockton, California.
The only work that I had been trained for was to minister out on the street. So, we obtained a permit, and we would minister out on the corner of El Dorado and Center Street; then we would go into the building and have our little service. And God began to bless us. I know we were a blessing to those who heard us, because many people came in and gave their hearts to the Lord.
Eventualy, Herman began to fall sick again, and because of that, he felt that we were not in the center of God's will. So we thought that it would be better to go into the desert. The Lord led us to Lancaster, California and we found a place to live about two miles outside of town. It was there God led me to open a little Sunday School where I taught a few children and some of their parents.
Herman soon began to realize that he didn't exactly believe what I was preaching. He came to me one day and said, "Mama, you not preaching salvation, you're preaching probation. You're putting people on probation. You're saying that after they're saved they have to do certain things in order to remain saved. They're not really saved; just on probation. If they do right and live right and endure until the end they'll be saved. But that's not what the Bible says. It says, "Believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house." I know that I have salvation, and I got it freely, and I don't have to work for it in order to keep it. It's the gift of God."
QUESTIONING THE ALMIGHTY
Well, after hearing him say that, I realized that I just had to have some answers. So I began going through a period of great questioning. With my mouth I was saying, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" But deep down in my heart, I was asking, "Father, I don't understand how you can love everyone and not be a respecter of persons, yet, I see so much difference in life. I see little children born in poor familes whose father and mother, themselves, are really almost retarded. They're born in ignorance, and they're born in want. Many of them never have enough to eat, while other children are born into rich families and have every opportunity. Some are born healthy and strong, while others are sickly and deformed.
Then, I see the difference in the way people hear the gospel. We live in America, can hear the good news of salvation thousands of times, yet there are places in the world where people have never had the opportunity to hear the name of Jesus. It doesn't seem that everyone has been given an equal opportunity."
It was because of this pressure on me that I and my friend, Rhoda Geeson, who lived in Poplar Grove with her husband and family, decided that we would fast and pray. So, after we saw our husbands off to work and the children off to school, we walked down a wash in the desert and came to a juniper tree where we spread out a blanket and sat down to pray and worship God.
In spite of all these questions in my heart, I began to feel the moving of the Spirit deep down within my being. And it began to rise into my throat and into my mouth. I couldn't say, "Hallelujah", any more, and it seemed as though two voices were coming out of me, my own voice saying "Hallelujah" and another voice deep inside me saying "Hallelujah", like an echo.
"Hallelujah!"
"Hallelujah!"
It was so wonderful that I didn't want to stop. I felt something crawling over my feet, and a fly was bothering me, and I thought that I might swallow the fly. So, I said, "Lord, please take me out of the realm of the flesh. I want to continue on in Your Spirit." And that was the last I knew.
THE GLORIOUS VISION
Sister Geeson said that I just flopped down on my back and broke out in unknown tongues. Then I got real quiet, and she knew I was was having a vision.
Finally, it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon and Rhoda had to leave me there, so she would be home when the children came in from school. She knew that nothing could harm me, because I was caught away in the Spirit.
The first thing I remember was a radiant, dazzling, vibrating, white light, and I know it was the Shekinah Glory of God. In the light, I saw a small cross. It looked like it was standing deep down in a funnel. Through the years I have come to understand that the cross I saw was deep down inside of me. And that's where God begins - in the heart of every man. This cross became larger and larger until it filled my whole vision. It pulsated and throbbed and pulsated , and I heard the words, "You are seeing my heart." Through that I realized that the greatest manifestation of God's love was demonstrated at the cross.
In my vision, I noticed that the rays of light radiated from the cross in all directions, and these rays were the very Spirit of God. It was actually the Spirit of God's love reaching out everywhere and drawing everything back unto itself. That's what love does; it reaches out and draws everything back to itself. It's just like when one of our children falls in the mud. We run out and pick them up and draw them to our bosom and begin to soothe them. It's not till afterwards that we see how dirty he is and that the dirt has even come off on us. Then we go into the house and wash him. There is a scripture that says God loves us and washes us and makes us to be kings and priests. He loves us first, and then he washes us and cleanses us. We are filled with His Spirit for the perfection of our own heart. These rays were like magnets reaching out and drawing all to Himself. The scripture come to me, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me."
Then I noticed that there were big circles, like big whirls or stars and one would unfold from another one. Each time the rays from the cross would go over these areas, I would hear a wonderful sound of praise. It was actually the music of the stars, the music of the universe. It was glorious, wonderful note of harmony!
When I came out of this vision, I was overwhelmed by what God had revealed to me. Yet, there was a small doubt in my heart, because it was so different from what I expected a vision to be. I wan't taken to heaven; I didn't see mansions or streets of gold; I didn't see my loved ones, nor did I see Jesus. I couldn't understand it. Furthermore, I didn't see hell. I never saw this place of torment that I had been taught existed. I had been teaching others that if they weren't saved that they would go there forever.
All I saw was this wonderful Light, the glorious cross with the rays reaching out and drawing all things back unto itself. I didn't understand what these big circles were, but I have never heard such a beautiful sound of praise before, and I had never seen such Light! It was all so glorious.
When I awoke from the vision, I found myself stretched out on my back with the scorching desert sun beating right down on my face. I was afraid that my eyes might me damaged and my face blistered, but then I thought, "No, when you are in the Spirit, nothing bad happens to you."
Then I noticed that my husband was coming to meet me. I was wondering to myself just what I was going to say to him about this vision, because there was this doubt in my heart that was asking, "Did all this happen because I had been questioning God?" From childhood I had been told not to question God, but here I was questioning God's righteousness and His love. So, I didn't want to say anything about it.
But when he saw my face, he said, "Mama, you've received something from God."
I said, "Yes, I did, but I don't know what it means."
And he said, "Well, Mama, don't worry about it. It will all fall together." Coming from Holland, he had some of those old Dutch phrases, and instead of saying, "It will all fall in place", he would say, "It will all fall together."
So, we walked home together in silence.
That night, brother and sister Geeson and their children came over and they were curious about what God had revealed to me. I kept saying that I didn't have anything to tell them, but that I had had a vision, and I didn't know what it meant. Perhaps it was only for me. They went home disappointed, but I just didn't feel that I could speak of something I did not understand myself.
THE VISION EXPLAINED
A day or two later, I got desperate, and I said, "Lord, you are going to have to reveal this vision to me in the Bible, because I know that the Spirit and the Word agree. And, if it's not of You, Lord, You're going to have to take it out of my mind. Otherwise, please show me in Your Word.
I was standing in the bedroom with my Bible, and I opened it at random and put it on the bed. Then I dropped to my knees and began to read. The first chapter of Ephesians was staring me in the face, and my eyes just seemed to be drawn to the tenth verse. Then, one word jumped out at me, and it was the word "times". I had read that verse on many occasions, but I had never noticed the "s" on times. It reads, "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times God would draw together in one all things that are in heaven and in earth, even in Him." I just sat there and gazed at that phrase, "...in the fulness of times, He would gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and in earth." "Times". I didn't know there was more than one time. We had been taught in the Salvation Army that the coming of Jesus would be the end of the world, the end of time. Yet here it said, "times". And in my mind's eye, that vision flashed before me - the cross, the rays reaching out, the cirlcles going around the cross. Then suddenlly I realized that those circles represented great periods of time. God's plan of salvation was being fulfilled in great periods of time. The cross was standing in the center of time, reaching out from the beginning and going forward to the very end, and everything was in the cross.
Then my eye floated across the page to Ephesians 2:7 which says, "in the ages to come God would show His exceeding kindness." So, there were ages to come. And the thought came to me, "if we're all in heaven, and all the rest are on earth, and they're all lost' then, who is He showing this kindness to?" Then I noticed that one place it says, "times" and the other place it says "ages". I realized I must verify this, so I went to my father's Dutch Bible, because that was the only other translation I had to compare it with. Well, the Dutch Bible was the Geneva translation; it wasn't a King James translation. So, I got the Dutch Bible and looked up those two verses and the word was exactly the same in both verses. It was the word, "ewen", and it means ages. In fact, it means even longer than ages. Ewen is the Greek word transliterated, a word that is coined. We did the same thing in English. We took the Greek word "aion", meaning long periods of time, an age, or more than one age and transliterated it into "eon". So the first thougth that came into my mind was, "Could it be possible that the Bible wasn't translated word for word? Could there be an error?" That's when I understood that neither the King James nor the Geneva translation were literally translated word for word.
Even after that, I surely didn't have all the answers, but I did know one thing; God's love is real. Deep down in His own heart, he had a Great Plan of Salvation for all His creation. In Ephesians 1:9 it says, "Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which he hath purposed in Himself." That means to me that God has a will, and God is making His will known unto us, and this will is according to His own good pleasure. And deep down inside Himself, He has a prupose and a plan, that when time is complete, He will have gathered together into one all things in heaven and earth.
We have a part in this Great Plan of Salvation for all people, for we have obtained an inheritance. We have been predestinated according to the prupose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. So, God has predestinated a plan from before time began that everything would be drawn back into Himself through the Lord Jesus Christ. No one has been prredestinated to be lost. All have been predestinated to be saved. I knew that deep down in my heart, and I never doubted it after that morning.
In order to retain what the Lord was giving me, I knew I needed to draw what I had been shown in the vision. So, I got a big carboard box and borrowed by children's crayons. Then I took a yard stick and some plates and saucers to use as patterns, and I drew a big chart. I still have that chart to this day. In fact, I've written two books on this subject: GOD'S UNFAILING LOVE REVEALED IN THE CROSS, and GOD'S UNFAILING PLAN REVEALED THROUGH THE EONS.
This vision changed my life, and it changed Herman's life. Following the revelation, we tried to be in fellowship with other Christians, but this message was so different that it wasn't received very well.
Then one day, as my husband was praying and asking the Father what we should do, he got a vision of working among the Indians, and he knew that God was calling us to be missionaries to the Indian people. God was about to change our lives again.
A TURN IN MY LIFE
During the time that I was caring for my father I quite unexpectedly came in contact with my old sweetheart, Herman Van Assen, the young man my father had banished from our property some ten years earlier. Now, here we were together again, and that old attraction sprang up between us.
To make a long story short, I left the Salvation Army in 1934 and married Herman, but since Herman wasn't a member of the Salvation Army, I lost my rank.
About this time, everyone, including me, began to think I had backslidden. But I still loved the Lord, and as it turned out, I was walking out the plan and purpose that was destined for me.
The next five years of my married life I couldn't get away from that call of God. Many times Herman would wake me up in the night and say, "Dora, Dora, you're preaching again." So, I would even preach in my sleep.
Here I thought I was lost, yet, all the time, it was actually God dealing with me. Of course, I thought it was the devil, and I was being tormented before my time. But, all along, it was God speaking to my heart and causing me to realize that I wasn't in His perfect will. I was learning the grace of God.
I had come into the thought that I was the one who had heard the Salvation Army drum beat. I had said to myself, "I'm going to listen to them." I am the one who followed them to the hall. I am the one who knelt at the altar. I'm the one who prayed through, and I was the one who got saved.
I had to learan that it wasn't I at all, but it was the Spirit of God who caused me to hear those drums beat. It was the Spirit of God who put the desire in my heart to cause me to listen to them. It was the Spirit of God who caused me to hear those words, "God loves you." It was the Sprit of God who caused me to kneel at the altar and open my heart unto Him and thank Him for His great and wonderful salvation.
During those five years, I learned that it was the grace of God that teaches us to live righteously and soberly and godly in this present world. Paul said, "I am what I am by the grace of God." So, I thank God that He led me out of the Salvation Army into the deeper truths of His wonderful grace. And it was also by marrying Herman that God united us together to work in the gospel.
It wasn't long after we were married that I discovered my husband really was not a believer. All the time he was courting me, he just consented to go with me to church and to the young people's meetings. He said that he couldn't be in church on Sunday all day. I could go in the morning but he wanted to have his meal at twelve o'clock like he did any other time during the week. So this little friction was between us, though we did love one another. And, in a measure, we were happy and compatible. But deep down inside, there was something lacking. Eventually, I began to realize that he didn't even believe in God or the Bible, and he called himself an atheist.
In those first six years, we had two children, Herman Floyd, our oldest, and our daughter, Tillora.
HERMAN'S CRISIS
At that time, we were living in Banning, California and Herman became very sick with asthma. It grew so bad that it was diagnosed as bronchiectasis, which today might be called emphysema. He would get these very bad diaphragm spasms and would have to be hospitalized. He spent the greater part of four years in the hospital. Finally he said that he didn't want to go the hospital anymore, because they really weren't able to do anything for him. He said he would rather stay home. So I learned to take care of him at home; to give his shots of adrenaline, amytol pills and morphine shot so he could sleep a few hours. Eventually, he was totally beridden.
My sister, Tilly Hendricks, came to help me, and the first night she was with me, she said, "Now, Dora, you need to go to sleep and get some rest. I'll take care of him."
In the morning, Tilly handed me a letter and said, "I dont' know how he did it, I don't know how he got the strength, but he wrote this letter." The letter was to his friend, Henry Boertje, who had come to America with him, and who had married his sister Gertrude.
The letter said, "Henry, I wish I was dead. If I were dead, Dora would be a widow and she would get a widow's pension, and she wouldn't have to pay out all the money for medicine for me. She's still young, and she could get married again, and a stepfather would take better care of my children than I can."
Well, this just stabbed me in the heart. So, I said, "Herman, I'm not going to mail this letter."
He countered, "Oh, yes you are."
I said, "No, I'm not going to mail it."
And this made him very angry, and he began to curse.
GOD'S GRACE MADE REAL
I realized then that he didn't know what he was doing, and I said, "All right, all right." And I put the letter down. Then I walked into the kitchen thinking, "You don't have to mail it, just don't do anything more about it. He'll just forget about it." But while I was putting the coffee pot on, which was only a few seconds later, I heard my husband crying, really crying hard.
I rushed out of the kitchen into the parlor where he was. My sister, Tilly, got there at the same time, and we were both leaning over him and trying to get him to talk to us. I kept saying, "Talk to me, Daddy. Talk to me Daddy", thinking he was dying right before us.
When he could talk, he said, "God spoke to me."
And my sister said, "Oh, you must be dreaming."
But I thought, "How could he be dreaming; he was just cursing a moment ago."
Then he said, "I did not want to pray; God made me pray."
And, I began to realize that something was taking place.
Then, he said, "God reached His hand down and touched my side, and I'm healed, and I'm going to get up."
I kept saying, "No, Daddy! You've been in bed too long. You've been sick too long; you're too weak to get up." And I tried to hold him in bed.
But he pushed me out of the way, and he walked to the dresser in the bedroom. He wasn't able to find his underwear, so he took a blue shirt and blue overalls and put them right over his pajamas.
The whole time, I thought he was going to fall over.
My sister kept saying to me, "Humor him! Humor him! Don't you realize that he is out of his mind? People get superhuman strength when they're like this. Humor him."
So, I didn't touch him or do anything.
Then he looked out the window and saw the garden, and he said, "Oh, look at the weeds in the garden. Weren't you able to keep the weeds out of the garden? Look at that puncture vine." Then he went outside to the garage and got a hoe and he began to chop the weeds.
Tilly and I were riveted to the window just watching him.
All of a sudden, he began to shout at the top of his voice, and he threw the hoe down and jumped up and down, shouting like the Dutch people do "Yay, yay, yay! (Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!) And, then he began to run, stopping every once in a while to shout. I thought, "Oh, my, my sister is right. He has lost his mind."
Then he came into the house and threw his arms around me and said, "Oh, Mama, I'm saved! Aren't you glad I'm saved?"
I said, "Yes, Herman, of course I'm glad. But you mustn't get this excited."
Then he walked into the bathroom with me trailing close on his heels. You see, I didn't quite trust him, because he had already tried to commit suicide twice by taking overdoses of medicine that the doctor had prescribed for his pain. But, here he was standing, looking in the mirror.
I said, "Herman, what are you trying to see?"
And, he said, "I'm trying to see Jesus in me."
Herman realized that Christ had entered into his heart. Then he told me what had taken place outside. He said, "Jesus appeared to me. I saw his light form." And he waved his hand from side to side saying, "I could not feel anything. And then he walked right inside of me." In that instant, Herman had come into the revelation of Christ in you, the hope of glory. He had such a tremendous experience that he actually expected to see the face of Jesus reflected in his own face as he looked in the mirror.
Then, he said to me, "I have to know God's will. I must read the Bible. I'm thiry-eight years old, and I don't know God's will; I must read the Bible. I'll read it on my knees, so I'll know His will for my life."
So, I went and got the Bible and opened it up, while he was on his knees beside the bed. It fell open to Ezekiel, chapter thirty-eight, so that's where he began to read.
I thought to myself, "That's the wrong place to read the Bible. He should be reading the New Testament about Jesus. You see, he had never been brought up in church or Bible school, and I know that's where he ought to begin in order to learn about Jesus and not those prophets in the Old Testament who were so mysterious that we hardly know their meaning even to this day.
Well, he read that chapter out loud, and he got up and said, "Mama, that's talking about Russia, this army of the North and Gog and Magog." He said, "That's actually Russia. Germany is not our real enemy, our enemy is Russia." Then, his eyes looked far off and got real sharp, and out of his mouth came the words, "Look unto the hills from whence cometh thy strength."
I recognized that as a verse from the Psalms, and I wondered how he could know that verse.
Then he said, "I see a road, it is a military road; it is a road coming down from Alaska into America, and America is financing this road." I know now that he was seeing the pipeline extending from Alaska to America. At that time, Alaska wasn't even a state. Herman was actually having a vision.
He announced, "I have to pray." So, he went outside on the porch and knelt down and began to pray out loud with his hands up, and he began to speak in a strange language which, I know now, was tongues.
When he came in the house, he carried a stern look, and he said, "A miracle has happened to me. This miracle can happen to you too."
Tilly and I were both frightened, and we didn't know what to do. But, she said to me, "I'm going to pack up my clothes and go home. You don't need me here any more. Besides, too many strange things are happening here for me." So Tilly packed her suitcase and left.
Then, Herman said to me, "I don't want to overdo it; I'm going to lie down." So he went into the bedroom and lay down and went to sleep.
The next day Herman walked down town to the drug store where we got all his medicine. He went in and told the druggist that the Lord had saved him and healed him and he wouldn't be coming in very much any more.
There was a scale in the store, so Herman stepped on the scale, and he weighed a hundred and thirteen pounds. His regular weight had been about a hundred and sixty-five pounds. He had lost all that weight because of his illness.
So, here we was, up walking around, witnessing to everyone, telling them about the change that had come into his life. He was testifying of the saving grace of God and his healing power.
Herman was a man of one book, and that was the Bible. He would read the Bible, word for word, from Genesis to Revelation, even the begets. I would usually skip those, but he would read every word, and he would put a mark in his Bible every time he would go through it. When I was going through his Bible after the Lord had taken him home, I saw that there were eleven marks. He had read that Bible through eleven times! Of course, his favorite scriptures he had read hundreds of times. He really loved God's word.
It wasn't long until he found work in the army hospital in Palm Springs washing pot and pans. I remember the first time he stood up in church and testified how God had saved him and given him work. He was so thankful to be able to work after being sick for six years. He was crying and everybody else was crying too.
However, Herman didn't stay on the kitchen crew for very long. One day he told the sergeant that he would like to have a job outside as a plumber's helper.
But the sergeant said, "We can't transfer someone from the kitchen into the plumbing shop."
So, Herman and I just prayed, and soon the Lord answered, and he began working as a plumber's helper. He worked in that Army hospital for three years.
It wasn't hard to see God's nature shining forth in Herman. He always looked on the bright side of things and had a quick humor. Children just adored him and called him the "The Candy Man", because he used to carry lemon drops in his pocket for them.
During those early years, we each learned the miracle of God's grace in our own way.
CHAPTER 8 - GOD'S PLAN REVEALED
RETURN TO THE MINISTRY
I, too, came into the experience of being filled with the Holy Ghost, and we began attending the Assembly of God Church in Banning. It was during that time that my husband got the call of God upon his life to go into the ministry.
It told him, "Herman, you'll have to go to a Bible School and get credentials."
But, he answered, "No, I'm going to go out by faith and just trust God."
And I said, "But you have to have some license."
Then he responded, "Who gave Paul license? Who licensed Peter, John, and James? They just went out and preached. Nobody gave them a license. Why do we have to do it today?"
I even said to him, "Would you like to go to the Salvation Army and go through their school. Then I would get my credentials back and be an officer, and we could go out together."
But, Herman didn't want to do that either. So, he began to pray for me. One night I woke up, and he wasn't in bed, so I went to look for him. There he was out in the garage praying, and he was crying out to God. I knew he was praying for me, because he said, "Wake her up, Lord. Don't let her just sleep there. You know that You've called her. You know that the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. You know, Father, it was my fault. I enticed her, and she married me and that 's why she's not preaching today."
Well, I got under such conviction that I just couldn't stand it. I walked back into the living room and I knelt down by the davenpost, and I prayed, "Father, I'll go back into the ministry, if you'll just make the way. I'll go back, even if I have to live on bread and water."
By this time, we had two children, and I didn't see how we were going to have very much just going out by faith. But the Lord opened up the way for us to start our first mission, called the Door of Hope, in Stockton, California.
The only work that I had been trained for was to minister out on the street. So, we obtained a permit, and we would minister out on the corner of El Dorado and Center Street; then we would go into the building and have our little service. And God began to bless us. I know we were a blessing to those who heard us, because many people came in and gave their hearts to the Lord.
Eventualy, Herman began to fall sick again, and because of that, he felt that we were not in the center of God's will. So we thought that it would be better to go into the desert. The Lord led us to Lancaster, California and we found a place to live about two miles outside of town. It was there God led me to open a little Sunday School where I taught a few children and some of their parents.
Herman soon began to realize that he didn't exactly believe what I was preaching. He came to me one day and said, "Mama, you not preaching salvation, you're preaching probation. You're putting people on probation. You're saying that after they're saved they have to do certain things in order to remain saved. They're not really saved; just on probation. If they do right and live right and endure until the end they'll be saved. But that's not what the Bible says. It says, "Believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house." I know that I have salvation, and I got it freely, and I don't have to work for it in order to keep it. It's the gift of God."
QUESTIONING THE ALMIGHTY
Well, after hearing him say that, I realized that I just had to have some answers. So I began going through a period of great questioning. With my mouth I was saying, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" But deep down in my heart, I was asking, "Father, I don't understand how you can love everyone and not be a respecter of persons, yet, I see so much difference in life. I see little children born in poor familes whose father and mother, themselves, are really almost retarded. They're born in ignorance, and they're born in want. Many of them never have enough to eat, while other children are born into rich families and have every opportunity. Some are born healthy and strong, while others are sickly and deformed.
Then, I see the difference in the way people hear the gospel. We live in America, can hear the good news of salvation thousands of times, yet there are places in the world where people have never had the opportunity to hear the name of Jesus. It doesn't seem that everyone has been given an equal opportunity."
It was because of this pressure on me that I and my friend, Rhoda Geeson, who lived in Poplar Grove with her husband and family, decided that we would fast and pray. So, after we saw our husbands off to work and the children off to school, we walked down a wash in the desert and came to a juniper tree where we spread out a blanket and sat down to pray and worship God.
In spite of all these questions in my heart, I began to feel the moving of the Spirit deep down within my being. And it began to rise into my throat and into my mouth. I couldn't say, "Hallelujah", any more, and it seemed as though two voices were coming out of me, my own voice saying "Hallelujah" and another voice deep inside me saying "Hallelujah", like an echo.
"Hallelujah!"
"Hallelujah!"
It was so wonderful that I didn't want to stop. I felt something crawling over my feet, and a fly was bothering me, and I thought that I might swallow the fly. So, I said, "Lord, please take me out of the realm of the flesh. I want to continue on in Your Spirit." And that was the last I knew.
THE GLORIOUS VISION
Sister Geeson said that I just flopped down on my back and broke out in unknown tongues. Then I got real quiet, and she knew I was was having a vision.
Finally, it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon and Rhoda had to leave me there, so she would be home when the children came in from school. She knew that nothing could harm me, because I was caught away in the Spirit.
The first thing I remember was a radiant, dazzling, vibrating, white light, and I know it was the Shekinah Glory of God. In the light, I saw a small cross. It looked like it was standing deep down in a funnel. Through the years I have come to understand that the cross I saw was deep down inside of me. And that's where God begins - in the heart of every man. This cross became larger and larger until it filled my whole vision. It pulsated and throbbed and pulsated , and I heard the words, "You are seeing my heart." Through that I realized that the greatest manifestation of God's love was demonstrated at the cross.
In my vision, I noticed that the rays of light radiated from the cross in all directions, and these rays were the very Spirit of God. It was actually the Spirit of God's love reaching out everywhere and drawing everything back unto itself. That's what love does; it reaches out and draws everything back to itself. It's just like when one of our children falls in the mud. We run out and pick them up and draw them to our bosom and begin to soothe them. It's not till afterwards that we see how dirty he is and that the dirt has even come off on us. Then we go into the house and wash him. There is a scripture that says God loves us and washes us and makes us to be kings and priests. He loves us first, and then he washes us and cleanses us. We are filled with His Spirit for the perfection of our own heart. These rays were like magnets reaching out and drawing all to Himself. The scripture come to me, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me."
Then I noticed that there were big circles, like big whirls or stars and one would unfold from another one. Each time the rays from the cross would go over these areas, I would hear a wonderful sound of praise. It was actually the music of the stars, the music of the universe. It was glorious, wonderful note of harmony!
When I came out of this vision, I was overwhelmed by what God had revealed to me. Yet, there was a small doubt in my heart, because it was so different from what I expected a vision to be. I wan't taken to heaven; I didn't see mansions or streets of gold; I didn't see my loved ones, nor did I see Jesus. I couldn't understand it. Furthermore, I didn't see hell. I never saw this place of torment that I had been taught existed. I had been teaching others that if they weren't saved that they would go there forever.
All I saw was this wonderful Light, the glorious cross with the rays reaching out and drawing all things back unto itself. I didn't understand what these big circles were, but I have never heard such a beautiful sound of praise before, and I had never seen such Light! It was all so glorious.
When I awoke from the vision, I found myself stretched out on my back with the scorching desert sun beating right down on my face. I was afraid that my eyes might me damaged and my face blistered, but then I thought, "No, when you are in the Spirit, nothing bad happens to you."
Then I noticed that my husband was coming to meet me. I was wondering to myself just what I was going to say to him about this vision, because there was this doubt in my heart that was asking, "Did all this happen because I had been questioning God?" From childhood I had been told not to question God, but here I was questioning God's righteousness and His love. So, I didn't want to say anything about it.
But when he saw my face, he said, "Mama, you've received something from God."
I said, "Yes, I did, but I don't know what it means."
And he said, "Well, Mama, don't worry about it. It will all fall together." Coming from Holland, he had some of those old Dutch phrases, and instead of saying, "It will all fall in place", he would say, "It will all fall together."
So, we walked home together in silence.
That night, brother and sister Geeson and their children came over and they were curious about what God had revealed to me. I kept saying that I didn't have anything to tell them, but that I had had a vision, and I didn't know what it meant. Perhaps it was only for me. They went home disappointed, but I just didn't feel that I could speak of something I did not understand myself.
THE VISION EXPLAINED
A day or two later, I got desperate, and I said, "Lord, you are going to have to reveal this vision to me in the Bible, because I know that the Spirit and the Word agree. And, if it's not of You, Lord, You're going to have to take it out of my mind. Otherwise, please show me in Your Word.
I was standing in the bedroom with my Bible, and I opened it at random and put it on the bed. Then I dropped to my knees and began to read. The first chapter of Ephesians was staring me in the face, and my eyes just seemed to be drawn to the tenth verse. Then, one word jumped out at me, and it was the word "times". I had read that verse on many occasions, but I had never noticed the "s" on times. It reads, "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times God would draw together in one all things that are in heaven and in earth, even in Him." I just sat there and gazed at that phrase, "...in the fulness of times, He would gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and in earth." "Times". I didn't know there was more than one time. We had been taught in the Salvation Army that the coming of Jesus would be the end of the world, the end of time. Yet here it said, "times". And in my mind's eye, that vision flashed before me - the cross, the rays reaching out, the cirlcles going around the cross. Then suddenlly I realized that those circles represented great periods of time. God's plan of salvation was being fulfilled in great periods of time. The cross was standing in the center of time, reaching out from the beginning and going forward to the very end, and everything was in the cross.
Then my eye floated across the page to Ephesians 2:7 which says, "in the ages to come God would show His exceeding kindness." So, there were ages to come. And the thought came to me, "if we're all in heaven, and all the rest are on earth, and they're all lost' then, who is He showing this kindness to?" Then I noticed that one place it says, "times" and the other place it says "ages". I realized I must verify this, so I went to my father's Dutch Bible, because that was the only other translation I had to compare it with. Well, the Dutch Bible was the Geneva translation; it wasn't a King James translation. So, I got the Dutch Bible and looked up those two verses and the word was exactly the same in both verses. It was the word, "ewen", and it means ages. In fact, it means even longer than ages. Ewen is the Greek word transliterated, a word that is coined. We did the same thing in English. We took the Greek word "aion", meaning long periods of time, an age, or more than one age and transliterated it into "eon". So the first thougth that came into my mind was, "Could it be possible that the Bible wasn't translated word for word? Could there be an error?" That's when I understood that neither the King James nor the Geneva translation were literally translated word for word.
Even after that, I surely didn't have all the answers, but I did know one thing; God's love is real. Deep down in His own heart, he had a Great Plan of Salvation for all His creation. In Ephesians 1:9 it says, "Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which he hath purposed in Himself." That means to me that God has a will, and God is making His will known unto us, and this will is according to His own good pleasure. And deep down inside Himself, He has a prupose and a plan, that when time is complete, He will have gathered together into one all things in heaven and earth.
We have a part in this Great Plan of Salvation for all people, for we have obtained an inheritance. We have been predestinated according to the prupose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. So, God has predestinated a plan from before time began that everything would be drawn back into Himself through the Lord Jesus Christ. No one has been prredestinated to be lost. All have been predestinated to be saved. I knew that deep down in my heart, and I never doubted it after that morning.
In order to retain what the Lord was giving me, I knew I needed to draw what I had been shown in the vision. So, I got a big carboard box and borrowed by children's crayons. Then I took a yard stick and some plates and saucers to use as patterns, and I drew a big chart. I still have that chart to this day. In fact, I've written two books on this subject: GOD'S UNFAILING LOVE REVEALED IN THE CROSS, and GOD'S UNFAILING PLAN REVEALED THROUGH THE EONS.
This vision changed my life, and it changed Herman's life. Following the revelation, we tried to be in fellowship with other Christians, but this message was so different that it wasn't received very well.
Then one day, as my husband was praying and asking the Father what we should do, he got a vision of working among the Indians, and he knew that God was calling us to be missionaries to the Indian people. God was about to change our lives again.
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