This past summer was a difficult time for us, and it took me a while to be able to write about what happened.

This summer my grandpa passed away as many of you already know. In the first few days of June, we started hearing from our family that Grandpa wasn’t doing well, so we decided to fly back to spend what time remained with him. About a week after my mom and I arrived in the Netherlands my grandpa passed away. We are so happy that we were able to spend that last week caring for him and just being there for grandma and the rest of the family. This loss hit us all very hard and in the middle of that loss my wife, Pim, and dad arrived. They had been delayed because they were waiting for Pim’s visa to come through which took longer than we’d hoped. The next few days grandma and my mom and her siblings spent a lot of time planning the funeral ceremony. While they were doing that, I spent some time building a website dedicated to grandpa. You can see the result as well at the following link: https://bert.vantongeren.eu

While the reason for being in the Netherlands was very sad, we did try to make the most of it and see as many friends and family as we could. We also spent some time touring our beautiful country and showing it off to Pim. We really enjoyed our time spent with all of you who we managed to visit. We recently spent several hours going back over the photos we took during the summer, and we remember that time with sadness in our hearts but also with joy at being able to do and see so much.

After roughly 2 months of being in the Netherlands we had to start our journey home. This began with 2 flights from Amsterdam via Abu Dhabi to Bangkok. Once we arrived in Bangkok, we were taken to our quarantine hotel where we spent the next 2 weeks inside of our rooms. We had to undergo 3 PCR tests during that time which were really no fun. The hardest part was that we were not allowed outside at all, whereas in the past, when my parents first did quarantine, they were allowed to have 30 minutes outside per day after the first negative test. At the end of the 2 weeks, we started to think about how we were going to get home to Chiang Rai and realized that the best and cheapest option was to rent a car and drive home as we had quite a bit of luggage and domestic flights were highly restricted during that time. After 10 long hours of driving, we made it home.

We are so thankful to God that we were able to make this trip and that we got home in 1 piece without any incidents. We are also thankful for His provision because with all the people who donated we ended up having lost no money to this trip. We are thankful for you, the people who prayed for us and supported us during this difficult time!