How One Mother-Daughter Pair Shared God’s Word Together Across Generations and Oceans
Immy van Gurp was born in the Dutch East Indies—what is now Indonesia—in the 1930s. Her parents were teachers in a Dutch school there. Immy’s childhood was anything but easy. When Japan took over Indonesia during World War II, she and her family were imprisoned for three years in a Japanese concentration camp. She was just a teenager when she had to sleep on a two-foot-wide plank, shoulder-to-shoulder with other prisoners. The trauma of those early years left her with deep trust issues and a lingering discomfort with organized religion.
Immy struggled to feel comfortable in communal religious spaces. But even in the most painful chapters of her life, God was at work. Her faith journey was at times more secluded, but it was real and growing.
Later in life, while living in the Netherlands with her own children, Immy became a Christian after reading the Bible cover to cover. She didn’t attend church regularly, but she stayed rooted in Scripture. The stories she had once admired in classical art became living truths as she encountered them for herself in God’s Word.
Immy’s daughter, Annemarieke, moved to the United States when she reached adulthood and found a spiritual home in a church there. On a visit back to the Netherlands, she brought her mom a small devotional booklet she had found at her church—the Words of Hope devotional.
“That wasn’t something I ever saw growing up,” Annemarieke remembers. “Daily devotionals weren’t really part of our Dutch church culture in the Netherlands. But I started bringing them with me when I visited my mom.”
And something beautiful began to happen.
A New Routine
During each visit, Immy and Annemarieke developed a rhythm: Immy would read the Scripture passage in Dutch, and her daughter would read the English devotional. They would talk about the reading together afterward. The simplicity of it became something sacred—a small act of faith shared between generations.
“It was a way of connecting—spiritually and personally,” Annemarieke says.
They tried various devotional booklets, but the daily Words of Hope meditations stood out.
“They were her favorite,” says Annemarieke. “They always start with Scripture, and they go deeper. My mom even got to know the different devotional writers by name. They became part of her Christian community.”
Even near the end of her life, in her 90s, Immy continued this routine. During her final days, Annemarieke brought the devotional with her and read it aloud by Immy’s bedside one last time, just as they had done together so often before.
A Discipleship that Looks Like Love
Not every faith story begins in a church pew or features a public baptism ceremony. Sometimes discipleship looks like a quiet room, with a Bible being read in Dutch, and a devotional being read in English.
God is always at work—gently, persistently, and personally. He meets people where they are. And he invites us to meet one another there, too.
Whether you’re reading the Bible alone at your kitchen table, or alongside a loved one in a hospital room, never doubt that the Word of God is living and active. It speaks into every chapter of our lives—during war and peace, doubt and faith, youth and old age.
Faith need not be loud to be lasting, to reach across generations, and to transform hearts.
