It was our second to the last day in the Netherlands.

We had been visiting family as well as driving around favourite and previously undiscovered attractions, for two weeks. There was still one final visit – my last surviving auntie in Holland who had been married to my mother’s youngest brother.

My wife and I received an enthusiastic welcome. A cousin and her husband were also present. Later a grandson arrived. After the pleasantries, coffee and cake, there was a surprise–a box of books, letters, photos and other memorabilia that had been discovered in the house, that many years earlier, had been where my grandparents lived.

The story is amazing!

The grandson, 27 years old, had been showing some relatives, two young women in their twenties, around Rotterdam when they asked if they could see the place where their grandfather (my uncle) had been born.

When they arrived, the grandson, being polite, knocked on the door of the house and asked the owner if minded if he took some photos of the girls in front of the house.

“Not at all,” was the reply, “But maybe you can tell me if a box of material I found in the attic belongs to your family. I was about to take it to the Rotterdam archives.”

So, this is how these eighty to ninety year old treasures came back to the family.

There was a wedding photo of my grandparents which included many other family members. Also, letters from a nephew who was in a Spitfire squadron in Indonesia during the uprising in the late 1940s, along with pension slips, post cards, school books, books that had been presented by church and school to my aunts and uncles.

But my favourite, a certificate belonging to my mother for completing her primary education at the “School met de Bijbel”.

This is particularly special because I have been involved in Christian Education in Australia all my adult life, as a parent, school board member, teacher, and now, grandparent.

The certificate puts into perspective a history of family involvement in Christian Education. Even today, two of my daughters teach in Christian schools.

Psalm 78 speaks of telling our children God’s statutes, and “even the children yet to be born.” My mother as a 13-year-old had no idea what the future would bring. There would be war and migration, but there were also children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who know God because God’s Word had been passed through the generations.

Driving away from my auntie’s that night I had tears in my eyes and reflected how God’s covenant promises work through generations; one generation passing on the truth to the next.

But the certificate also signifies the end of my mother’s formal education. She had to go to work to support her family in the years between the depression and the war.

Even more, it is a reminder to me of the choices and decisions of faithful parents, who sent their daughter to a school that would support them in their parental task. Generations later, the impact is still felt.