We are doing well, praise God! At this moment we are travelling one year and we feel so blessed that we have this opportunity. We learn a lot during this journey, especially about surrendering to Jesus. Since we are born again we see revelations and the Bible is so alive for us now. We are totally enthusiastic about Jesus and the living gospel that we try to share by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We have great testimonies and we are happy to share some of them:

1. The Lord is always providing a place to stay. Most of the times we are on a camper park or camping, but we are not so small. We are amazed that even in busy times we get a place and it always feels like the best place on the whole site.
2. At the 9^th of February we celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary (always celebrate this special day!). We had a lovely day. We had a lovely meeting as well. When we bought a cake to celebrate, a man came to us. We always pray “Lord give us eyes to see the people who need to hear the gospel” but in real life the fact is that we have kids to watch. So we don’t always see the people who need to hear about Jesus. This man was doubting for a few minutes and then he came after us and started a little talk. God had sent him specific to us, even when we had no eye for him. He needed some money, but we really had almost nothing in our purse (like 3 euro’s we had). So Jeffrey said like Peter 😉 “we have no money now, but what we can give you we will give to you”. He shared the gospel, prayed for him and explained more about the Holy Spirit. We know we need to share the good news. The Bible is also saying that we need to act in deeds. Like caring for each other and also show them signs and wonders when they don’t believe. Some people need to see something first. It is an assignment out of the first hand: Jesus called us to do this. In this case I (Marianne) felt to get some more money. I sneaked out of the conversation and remembered that a bit earlier we walked next to a bank. I didn’t paid attention to it then, but needed it now! Praise God. So we blessed this guy with the gospel and money. We always call this “Jesus money” because we own nothing ourselves. It is all from Jesus. He paid it all, we may share and show that the Kingdom is not poor or only words.
3. At the time of our wedding anniversary we stayed on a lovely property in Portugal. It is a peaceful piece of land with not many travelers. When we looked back, the ones who were there were there with a reason. We could share the gospel with them and took care of some of their needs. In fact, one couple we met there is pretty famous, but we didn’t know. They were stuck in this piece of land because of a problem with their truck. It has a reason that they just ended up here, they literally couldn’t drive any kilometer further. For them is was a relieve that we were not paying attention in their “famous” world but just saw them as lovely people and were able to tell the good news.
4. We love the beach. So the Lord arranged a lovely place directly at the beach, is was such a blessing.
5. We visited Porto and had a great time with our family. After that we went to a mini farm in the woods were we got sick (Jeffrey and me). It was the right place to be at that moment, we just bought enough food for a few days and the kids had a fun time with the animals. When we felt better we went for a walk and found out we were parked next to a pilgrims route. From Porto to Santiago de Compostella. There was a kind of memorial place and we directly felt to put there some “Jesus cards” , these are cards with a little explanation of the gospel and we left our phone numbers on it. Most of the people are searching during this pilgrims walk. With Jesus you can end your search, you have everything you ever need. We blessed the cards that the right people will take them on their journey and that it will change their lives forever. We drove to the beach and said “goodbye” to Portugal and went up in to Spain again.
6. We are so impressed by the creation of the Lord, it is beautiful in the north of Spain. We stayed again at the beach for 2 nights and moved on.
7. The kids had a hard time, they are missing other Dutch speaking kids to play with. So we sat together with them and prayed something like “Lord you see us, you see the kids, they need some kids to play with. Please also Dutch speaking.” Jeffrey felt to reach out to another travelling family, so he did. We never met them but just heard about them. Jeffrey wrote an email. This persons never looks in their email in the evening but the man of this family felt to look in his email and saw Jeffrey searching contact. They are currently in the Netherlands and we are able to meet each other and maybe stay together for a while. They have kids in the same age as our kids. That was blessing 1. Then the man put us in contact with another family in the north of Spain, that family is Dutch speaking and it is totally on the route we planned to drive in a few days! They have 2 kids. We will meet them this week and stay some days. This is blessing 2. And then when we were in contact with all of them we see a big bus coming on the place where we are. It turns out that there is a travelling family inside, with 3 kids. They are from Belgium, Dutch speaking. The kids have a lot of fun together with them. This is blessing 3. We can explain our kids that our God is a loving Father and He provides in ALL their needs.
   
   We poured out our hearts and He gave. Because that is what a loving Father does. That is also what we read in the Bible. Ask anything in My name Jesus says, and I will give it to you (John 14:13&14, John 16:24, Matthew 7:7, ). He made the way through the Father on the cross. This is a revelation for us, we just began to know. In religion I always learned to pray “please Father when you want this or that then maybe you want to do it”. It seems full of respect, but in fact we forget we got everything already by the cross of Jesus. By His sacrifice. And when we ask boldly what we need (Matthew 7:7), as son or daughter of the Highest King, we may know we received it already (Marcus 11:24). Just stay in faith. For the reformed people: With this we are not molding God or pushing Him to do something or in a certain direction. Praise God that we can’t mold Him, or push him or let Him do something He didn’t promise.

We are driving these weeks to the Netherlands, truth need to be told, the kids and I are a bit homesick. We hope to be back around half of April. We hope to stay a few weeks. For everyone who want to see us: feel welcome to contact us and visit us somewhere (preferably around Amersfoort). But, we can’t catch up six months in a few weeks. We need to take care of our agenda, the last “we are back in Holland” time was hectic. So full with everyone we love and wanted to meet. We really want to have a more restful period in the Netherlands and try to travel as less as possible. Because we travel enough already… We hope you understand that when it turns out we can’t meet you in person, know that it is nothing personal.

With love,

The Draaijer family