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White Rock SDA Church

Daniel Pel

My Dream and His Dream - A Story of Dependence

Father in Heaven we are so grateful for this beautiful, glorious Sabbath day that we can be gathered like this as Your people.

And I want to pray that You will pour out Your Holy Spirit upon us this morning.

Lord as we look at the ways in which You guide us.

And we know that You have, each 1 of us has a story Lord of how You have guided us in the past, and how You are guiding us today.

And Lord as we share these stories with each other we can be inspired and motivated to seek you more.

And Lord I pray that you will speak to our hearts this morning and Lord that you may be made known that you may be displayed for the 1 that you are.

Lord you have displayed yourself in the stories of patriarchs and prophets and kings in the past And we know that You want to display Yourself in our stories as well.

Remove from us all distractions and may we be filled with Your Spirit we ask in Your precious Name.

Alright, well my parents were born in Holland.

And they were raised up in Roman Catholic homes.

But when they got married they made the decision very early on that religion was not something for them.

And they also made another decision and that was when they got married they wanted to start a whole new life together.

And so they decided to immigrate, to travel away to start a new life.

They were not sure yet where they wanted to go.

And my mother she watched a nature documentary about the country, New Zealand.

And as she watched that documentary and these stunning pictures of the landscapes of this far away island there was a dream in her heart, that's where I want to start the new life.

And so my parents, they left and they immigrated to New Zealand.

That's about as far as you can go from Holland, by the way.

If you look at the map, you just drill a hole through the earth and you end up right there in New Zealand.

Some people call it the end of the world.

Well, we that are born in New Zealand we know better it's the beginning of the world.

And so I was born in New Zealand in 1980.

So, even though I look young I'm 32, don't get that wrong.

Many of you say, you know, you're like a child preacher.

I was born in 1980 and I grew up in New Zealand.

And I grew up in a home that was not Christian at all.

My parents as I said they were Roman Catholics but they distanced themselves from religion because it just hadn't given them anything in life.

I remember my mother telling how she went to a Roman Catholic school and they were actually forced to, the priest would come once a week and they were actually forced to confess their sins to the priest.

And my mother would never know what to confess.

So she would actually be lying to the priest.

And so for them it was just not something that they wanted in their life.

And so we grew up in a secular, normal home.

And yet it was not an easy life for my parents in New Zealand.

And there were some economical challenges that came.

And my father lost his business, and my parents ended up losing their home.

And at this critical time there was a colleague of my dad that started attending a Bible prophecy seminar.

And how this relates in this story has always really reminds me of the power of Bible prophecy and the importance of such seminars like we have just held here in the White Rock community.

And so the colleague of my father is going to these seminars and as he is meeting with my father he is sharing with him the new things that he has discovered.

And I just remember growing up that My parents at times would share a little bit about their, the insights of these friends that we had, and yet they really kept their distance though.

It was not something that they wanted to embrace or ready to change their lives in any way.

And yet, when these difficulties came about in my family, and eventually my parents lost their home.

And here we are a family by the time now my parents had 5 kids, I have 4 siblings, and no home.

And they were about to really return to Holland.

And it was at this time that the colleague of my dad that had just newly discovered these amazing truths of Bible prophecy invited my family to stay some weeks and months with them in their home until we were able to sort out things.

And they had this home in the countryside.

So you can imagine here a home with 9 kids running around.

And yet this was practical Christianity that was displayed.

And this was something very, very special for us as a family.

Even though the colleague of my dad had been sharing truths with him it hadn't really broken through.

But now when they were in this crisis and they opened their home for us as a family.

And we were actually there, we were seeing Christianity put on display.

And I remember for the very first time in my life I was about 9-10 years old at this time we would have morning and evening worships, devotions, where they would read something from the Bible, and we would sing together, and we would pray together.

And it was shortly after that that my parents as they figured out what was the next step in life that they decided to go back to Holland.

They had been now in New Zealand for 15 years.

With all this economical difficulties my dad was not able to get another job.

And there was a job offer for him in the Netherlands, in Holland.

And it was kind of heartbreaking for us kids because we loved New Zealand.

And here we are moving to Holland and coming to a country where we didn't know the language.

My parents had never imagined returning to Holland.

And so they just taught us English and this was the only language we spoke.

And so here we come to Holland and what a strange language.

It seems like, you know, it's just kind of the leftover languages put together in a soup, you know, stirred up.

And so we had to learn this language as kids.

And well eventually we started speaking the language and we would go to school.

And in this whole shift and this new life it was very, very fast that basically we lost the focus of what we had just discovered there in New Zealand, and the truth about God's Word.

And maybe some of you today you look at your own experience, your own story and you can praise God for a praying mother, or a praying father.

And though the rest of the family really didn't really follow any of what we had learned, and it just became regular normal life again, my mother always kept praying, and clung to her newfound faith which gave me much strength in my teenage years.

In my teenage years I really lived the normal teenager life, and yet I knew there was something more.

And when I finished high school I decided to go to a camp meeting.

I decided to go to a convention where Christians would gather together.

And this was kind of a step that came very sudden because before that time I was just really living the normal kind of teenage life.

But I thought to myself, you know I want to look at what that's about.

And I got this invitation and I thought, OK let me go there and see what it's all about.

And so I went to this camp meeting and really the messages I heard they just really spoke to me in a personal way.

And I realized that this book, the Bible is not just any common book, this is actually a revelation from God Himself.

And it was making such an impact upon me at that time.

And I thought to myself, you know what this is what I want.

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My Dream and His Dream - A Story of Dependence

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