For a long time I have wanted to tell about the unusual way in...

Aaltje Huijse-Stap with contributions from J. Rodolfo Huijse

For a long time I have wanted to tell about the unusual way in which Christian Science was brought to my attention. Years ago we resided in Latin America, in a town where an elderly Dutch couple also lived. They were simple people and together took care of a small chicken farm. I purchased my eggs from them, which the husband would deliver to my door each week. I would invite him to come in and rest a moment, but this moment often grew into an hour or longer, because he liked to tell about his beautiful religion. For what the heart is full of, the mouth speaks, and his heart was full of Christian Science.

The first few weeks I listened to be polite, but I did not understand. Among other things, he told me that, years before, he had been healed through the help of a Christian Science practitioner of a stomach ulcer after the doctors had said his case was incurable. His wife had also been healed of several ailments.

Little by little I became interested in his religion. When I asked him if there was any literature about Christian Science, he brought me two copies of the German Edition of The Herald of Christian Science and later also some Dutch Heralds. Besides their own language, they knew only a little German, with which they had to help themselves in order to study the Lesson-Sermons, because the textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, had not been translated into Dutch at that time. Still, they understood enough to express it in their lives. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 505): "This understanding is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments; it is the reality of all things brought to light."