This Saturday I celebrated my 75 years of pilgrimage on this planet with my family on a sailing outing.  

Our vessel is the 125-year old tjalk, or sailing barge, appropriately-named Jacobsschelp. 

For the ‘St James shell’ or scallop is the symbol of the popular Camino pilgrimage converging on the tomb of the Apostle James in Santiago de Compostela along many routes across Europe.

My pilgrimage started on the other side of the world and has taken me from place to place before eventually starting a new Fountain tribe in the Netherlands.

I am often asked if I have a Dutch background, to which I reply: ‘No, but with nine grandchildren I do have a Dutch foreground.’

Let me tell you how it started.

Late July 1972, I was sitting at my reporter’s desk in the Auckland newsroom of the New Zealand Herald newspaper. The phone rang. Would I be open to going to Wellington, an old university friend inquired, to be interviewed for a job?

The job, she explained, would be as travelling secretary with the Christian student movement, InterVarsity Fellowship (IVF), as it was then known.

I was flattered by the invitation. It would involve travelling up and down the country, encouraging the Christian student clubs at the various universities.

I was young and unattached. The thought may even have crossed my mind of the opportunity to look up and down the country for a life partner among the cream of the young Christian students. 

But I faced a dilemma. I had just started work at the Herald six months earlier. How could I leave after barely a year? Lord, was this a door you were opening, or a distraction? 

That evening I read in the Daily Light devotional book my father gave me when I was baptised: ‘Behold I set before you the way of life and the way of death’. That sounded pretty drastic! But which way was which?

The next morning, July 26, I read in my devotional book: By faith, Abraham called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed. Then: He shall choose our inheritance for us. And: He led him about… Further down I read: Arise ye and depart; for this is not your rest…

Travelling secretary

Long story short, six months later I left for Wellington to start the travelling secretary job. It also involved setting up a multi-city ministry tour with leading English student evangelist David Watson, and a husband and wife musical duo from Canada, Merv and Merla Watson (no relation to David).

What a rich learning time that was for me, holding campus events and conferences with the Watsons and travelling together!

But it gave me another dilemma. Merv and Merla then asked me to move to Toronto Canada to become their manager.

They had plans to take a large team of singers, dancers and musicians to Europe the next summer and needed someone to manage this group called Shekinah. 

IVF wanted me to continue for another year, and the Herald wanted me to return as the religion reporter. John, my boss, gave me a deadline to tell him my plans so that he could find a successor in time.

On the day of the deadline, I was sailing into Wellington harbour on the inter-island ferry and went up on deck in the morning breeze, pondering my decision. I pulled out my Daily Light – it was July 26! Again I read: By faith, Abraham called to go out… 

I recalled the sense I had the year before when I first read these verses: that a door was opening that would lead to other doors and eventually, like Abraham, I would find my land of inheritance.

After seeking counsel from David and my parents, I was ready to tell my boss I needed to ‘go out’.

That led to 18 months based in Toronto, involving travel across North America and to Europe for the Shekinah tour in summer of ’74.

The Europe tour – with over sixty of us – started with David in the huge Yorkminister Cathedral and ended in the Netherlands where I had my first contact with Floyd McClung.

Impressions

A few weeks after returning to Toronto, I was attending a seminar about the future when I sensed three strong impressions: I should return to Europe, return to journalism, and live in a community.

Just days later, a letter from Floyd arrived inviting me to join him in Holland to edit a magazine he had started. I would be living in the new training community in the Dutch countryside, called Heidebeek. Europe! Journalism! Community!

As I flew out from Toronto headed for Amsterdam, I pulled out my Daily Light to read on the plane. It was July 26 again! By faith, Abraham…

However, one day after several months living at Heidebeek I sat in my office looking out the window. What on earth I was doing out among the cows in the Dutch countryside? I wondered. Was I really in the right place? I asked myself. 

There was a knock at the door. An American girl named Paula sheepishly entered holding a sheet of rice paper with neat writing in Indian ink. ‘The Lord gave me these scriptures for you,’ she said, handing me the paper.

In couldn’t believe my eyes! Here it was sometime in the fall, yet out of all the 730 readings in the Daily Light, Paula had reproduced the morning reading of July 26! By faith, Abraham…

In the course of the following months, another story began to unfold. I began a relationship with a young Dutch lady named Ronnie de Graaf.

Could we be a team for life? I wondered. She showed me a card which she felt confirmed the rightness of our relationship: God gives the best to those who leave the choice with him. That’s what Psalm 47:4 said from the July 26 reading, I thought: He shall choose our inheritance for us.

So on July 26, Romkje (she reverted to her original name) and I were engaged, and that reference was inscribed on our rings. 

That was the start of our inheritance together, now spanning almost five decades. A pilgrimage worth celebrating, don’t you think?   

Jeff Fountain, Director of the Schuman Centre for European Studies. This article was first published on the author's blog, Weekly Word.