Category: Alumni Profiles

Suddenly a man walked in from a door behind the counter, saw Julie crying, asked the woman in charge what was going on. She explained the missing paper, and he asked her, “Well, why can’t you do it?” “Because I am not losing my job over these people,” she answered. He looked at Julie, at Steve, at Myla happily bouncing her ball and singing, and said, “I will,” stamped “Approved” and sent the Meyaards off to catch their plane. Calling back over their shoulders while they ran, “What was your name again? Thank you! God bless you!”

Back in their old HCHS days, there’s no way Steve ’89 and Julie (Timmerman) Meyaard ’89 ever planned in the study hall that they met in, to have the 11 children they currently joyfully claim, age 24 down to 3 ½ . Once they actually thought about kids, they fully intended—like so many of the rest of us—to enjoy their 3-4 oldest biological children, live happily ever after in their 4 bedroom 1 ½-bath-house, and be finished.

“But looking back, we can see how much bigger and better His dreams for us were,” Julie says earnestly, before relating one amazing story after another how they unexpectedly added not just Myla, but four more adopted kids to their six biological kids, following God’s surprising lead every step of the way.

“And I don’t think I said yes to any of them, I never actually ever said yes,” added Steve. “I was always just like, well, why not? Why shouldn’t we?”

First came their four oldest biological children, twins Dalton ’13 and Jaden ’13, Casey ’14, and Charles ’16, and then came along the pleasant surprise of Court ’22, now a freshman at HC. At that point, being adopted herself, Julie thought that she would really like to adopt a girl, wanting a sister for their only daughter, Jaden, and another daughter for herself. So before Court was even born, they started the adoption process, hoping to bring a daughter from Guatemala, which made sense living in Zeeland with its new Spanish immersion programs, and round their family out to six kids, “and we would be complete” she said.

While waiting through the super slow Guatemalan adoption process, Julie gave birth to their son Caleb, now a sixth grader at ZCS. And then they all watched the Guatemalan government close the door to international adoption.

“We had already invested all this money, but thought maybe God was trying to tell us ‘You’re good, enjoy your six kids, take care of them, you don’t need two girls,’” Julie said.

But a couple of years later, when Caleb was two, the adoption agency called out of the blue, just when the Meyaards had learned to be content knowing that their money invested into the potential Guatemalan adoption was being used to house and feed other needy Guatemalan mothers and children. Suddenly the adoption agency was offering to transfer a portion of their adoption investment toward adoption from another country—either Vietnam or Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, VP of Operations for Quality Machine and Automation by day, Steve had traveled to Beautiful Gate in Lesotho on a mission trip with a buddy of his, Mike Verkaik, and their Pastor Tim at Haven CRC in Zeeland, and fell in love with all that is Africa.

“I would say that was when my husband became a true Christ-follower,” Julie said. Sure, he was raised a Christian, went to church, believed in Christ, “and yet are you living it out, and letting go? But after that trip, his heart was exploding (while I wasn’t there!) and he was right away on board; ‘Let’s switch!’ he said to me.”

But Julie wasn’t there yet, wasn’t ready to bring an African girl to Zeeland, telling God, “I can do Guatemala, but God, I don’t know about Africa. A black child in Zeeland?”

So they prayed.

And then this seemingly random article comes out from Holland Christian in the Holland Sentinel, declaring something along the lines that “God’s fabric is more colorful,” describing HC’s efforts already back then to diversify its student population.

“The timing was incredible!” Julie says, adding that is how they decided to send their oldest children, then just ready for high school, to Holland Christian. But it’s also how they agreed to switch to an Ethiopian adoption, and two weeks later received a picture of a darling four-year-old girl, dressed in a purple sweatshirt, with an “absolute sparkle in her eye” and “there wasn’t a question, never really even a discussion—and all the kids were absolutely on board.”

But after returning triumphantly from Ethiopia with Myla, things still weren’t exactly easy.  “Everything was different than we had signed up for,” said Julie. “I thought if this was God’s plan, why was it so hard?”

Myla’s transition was difficult, the most difficult of their five adopted children, Julie said, though Myla was really excited to have a dad. She had been used to being an only child, to getting her way, was strong-willed, and now she was suddenly the youngest child of seven.

But now, 10 years later? “She’s one of the first ones I call for help,” Julie said. “She’s one of the most capable.” Eventually life began to feel complete, almost normal with seven children, and with absolutely zero thoughts of adopting more.

But then, to make another miraculous, God-interceding story short, along came Desmond, an unexpected gift from northern rural Ethiopia, more Sudanese than Ethiopian. But also pure joy, sheer noise and energy, and so worth the boat Steve sold to pay for his adoption. “Desmond taught us that joy,” Julie said. “With Desmond, we realized that we almost missed this opportunity to have this ray of sunshine, this love for people that he has!”

And so there were eight. “We thought we were done—but we had let so much go by at that point, that we knew but if something is asked of us, we will keep our eyes open!” Julie said. So along came the offer of two sisters to adopt, again from Ethiopia.

“This was where I had more reservations,” said Steve. “We had emptied out our 401K at this point, we were still in our old house with 1 ½ bathrooms. We had sold a car, a boat, applied for grants and previously got nothing. We would have to fundraise every dime of this one, about $38,000. We were financially responsible for two 18, 19 year olds starting college…”

But Julie was already on board for this one: “We’re not going to make them wait, just because we aren’t financially ready for them,” she insisted.

So they were in the process of planning a dessert fundraiser, and on a random suggestion, contacted Joseph’s DreamCoat, a Texas family organization that funds adoptions, and hoped for maybe $3-4K from them. Maybe enough to make the first payment?

Instead they were told by the head of the organization that they were going to completely fund both adoptions, after they had checked with the Meyaards’ pastor, “Are these guys for real?!” So now they just had to figure out where they would put all those kids—how do you do 12 morning routines with only a bathroom and a half?

“Can I just tell you that bathrooms are life changing?! At our old house, we had lines for the bathroom, kids just peeing off the deck,” Julie laughed.

They had been holding on to a chunk of land for several years, planning to build their dream house on it someday, but now sold their house, and moved all 12 of them into Steve’s parents’ house in anticipation of building.

But then decided they just couldn’t do it. “I decided I don’t care what my countertops looked like, when two years earlier that had been my dream! The thought of going through the building process, and the financial burden of it all” was just too much, Julie said.

So they looked at houses one last time, exhausted even more possibilities than they already had, fully knowing that finding an affordable house in the Zeeland area to fit 13 people was no small task.

But miraculously (in the truest sense of the word!) they found one: “A house is just a house, but it was so handpicked for our family—huge kitchen, big bedrooms, five bathrooms, a laundry room that was huge—more than we could ever have imagined, 10 acres with a pool. We could not have asked for something more perfect! God knew when this all started, I will have a place for your kids. That house is such a gift!”

And their two new daughters? Both girls were very malnourished, thin and extremely small for their registered, but unlikely, ages of 7 and 9. And, again, did not have an easy start in their new home:

“It was rough. Rosina was madder than a hornet! She has a big personality, had been through a lot, and did not want to be loved. We wondered did we finally push it too far? Did we take on too much? But she has come so far! She is such a sweet, fun, sarcastic kid!” Julie said.

At ten kids, an even dozen for their family, the Meyaards felt complete. For real this time. But they wanted to help promote the “Safe Family” ministry of Bethany Christian Services, a passion of Julie’s through their church, Haven CRC in Zeeland. Since they wanted to be able to help others become safe families—families who could do short term child care for under-resourced families in crisis, hopefully preventing Child Protective Services from entering the picture—the Meyaards decided to walk through the certification process themselves, only so that they could better help other families walk through the process.

And you can guess the drill by now. Yup. Another kid showed up.

They were in the middle of Court’s birthday party, when they received a call from Bethany, saying they had a little baby, and were wondering if the Meyaards could take the baby for just a couple of weeks.

“I told Steve, ‘I’m not taking a baby! Tell her NO! We’ve got chickens and kids and chaos—this is no home for a baby. I’m so done, so over the baby stage!” Julie recalled.

But Bethany promised it was just for a couple of weeks, and Steve convinced Julie that “We can do anything for two weeks!” So in came child #11, and Julie now says, “We fell in love, our kids fell in love, it got complicated really fast, but it was incredible to see our girls heal through Eva. When she came into our house, it was suddenly not all about them, and they knew how to do this, since they had taken care of babies with their child care center. They instantly attached to her!”

But that time things weren’t easy, either. What was supposed to be only two weeks became a year, with Eva in and out of their house. She came back to them on the kids’ first day of summer break, and Julie was overstressed, exhausted, thinking “What is wrong with me? I need to learn to say no! I don’t have a crib, formula, diapers, and she came back to us with dirty clothes, and all the kids were home for summer…Eva’s screaming, I’m trying to wash her clothes, and I finally called Myla in for help.”

As Myla, then in Mr. Bouman’s class at Zeeland Christian, was busy folding Eva’s baby clothes, she suddenly recognized the clothes: These were the clothes that her class from school had given to a young pregnant mother that they had “adopted” to pray and care for. Had as a class filled a dresser for, with all the necessary first new baby clothes and paraphernalia.

“And now she’s in my house?!” exclaimed Julie. “And I said, ‘God, why do you always do this?!’ When we are just about at our lowest, and most sinful, He is like, ‘No, I’m going to turn your attitude!’”

“And everybody loves Eva! She’s taught us that God’s called us to love in the moment—would you still do this, if you knew you weren’t going to be able to hold on to her? Because there’s no signed paperwork, we’re still not guaranteed we’ll get to keep her,” Julie said. “Though we’re trying!”

But how do they make the daily details work? Of life with 11 children? A Christian education for every one?

“We use my crockpot a ton, eat lots of tacos, and eat buffet style. Do a lot of Aldi shopping…” Julie said matter-of-factly. “We’re definitely better with our resources! Things get passed around and utilized, and food seldom goes to waste. It goes through the kids, then the dogs, then the chickens. You learn as your family grows what works, what doesn’t. They grow up different and faster and learn things from their older siblings!”

Not the life Steve and Julie imagined for themselves back in high school, yet one they are grateful for, flourishing in.

“I would say that Holland Christian planted the seeds that made us aware of living for more than just the ‘American Dream,’” Julie said. “It also helped us develop Christian friendships that helped encourage us to step out of the boat when the time was right. A good Christian education gives you a worldview that looks at family differently than the typical American nuclear family. We were blessed to have been taught that Jesus calls us to live a life that matters, and doesn’t always make sense to the rest of the world.”

Winter 2018 Connections Alumni Profile

Just maybe there’s a surprise in middle school life better than a free ice cream truck showing up your last afternoon class on a glorious October Friday. But not many.

Then make it courtesy of your local Holland Police Department (HPD), and the officer handing out the free ice cream happens to have graduated from your school, oh, about two decades before. Totally cool.

Maybe not what you’d expect from your local police? But that’s one thing the Holland Police Department seems to be particularly  good at—surprising and breaking stereotypes, both consciously and unconsciously.

“It’s important in this day and age to be making positive contacts,” said HPD Officer Dan Keuning ’96, the one handing out free ice cream cones. “If you get ice cream out of that truck, you don’t forget it. And it provides us that opportunity to have positive contact in a non-confrontational way, to show that we are the good guys.”

Only the fourth police department in the nation to do so as one element of community policing, the HPD launched their free ice cream truck, the “Polar Patrol,” this June after receiving donations from area businesses, including the vehicle, vehicle graphics, and of course, lots of ice cream.

“We were hoping to be the first in the state,” Keuning grinned competitively, “but we were second. One other department beat us to it while we were in the application process.”

“We want people to see us as a person, so they’ll get a better idea of what we’re doing,” added Capt. Keith Mulder ’88. “Those who don’t have any officers they know personally, fill in their own blanks.”

Curiously, over a quarter of the 60-member Holland Police Department graduated from Holland Christian Schools—twice as many as any other high school represented in the department. Furthermore, there seem to be few Christian schools across the nation with as much pride and affection for, or connection to, their local police department as HCS seems to have for the HPD.

Many of the HC-alum in the HPD draw parallels between their Christian faith and their compassion shown daily for those they come into contact with, recognizing that compassion was instilled in them through their parents at home, their churches, as well as through their Christian education.

“I remember doing those service hours back in high school. ‘Servitude’ I think we called it then? But here we are still serving—it got ingrained in us a little bit,” said Mulder.

“Not everyone has the upbringing that most HC students have—with the school support and the home support,” said Officer Joy Nelson ’96, currently a booking officer who receives arrested individuals into the Holland jail. “People I’m booking say all the time, ‘Thank you for being so nice.’ Treating people well is something I would say we learned from Holland Christian—you’re more compassionate because of your faith.”

Plus, did you ever think of your police officers actually praying for you? Nelson added, “It’s not unusual to hear officers say to people they just arrested that they’ll pray for them, and people are pretty thankful for that.

“By the time they get here, they realize they messed up, that they made a poor choice, but you can still treat them with respect, offer forgiveness to people if they ask for it,” Nelson said. “As a Christian it’s good being able to sympathize with them a little—plus it’s not always not HC people going through here!”

One of the reasons many of the HC grads went into the HPD is because they “love the area” and “want to help people,” to be a positive contributor to their community.

“The faith community here is a lot different,” said Officer Joe Slenk ’96, K-9 officer. “How we treat people and interact with them. Something’s different about this place to outsiders. One of our visitors to the department the other day said, ‘Every time I come here, it’s just different.’ I believe it’s totally faith related—how we treat people and interact with them.”

When the national media floods with police shootings and beatings, showcasing police in a negative light, treats and cards of support show up in the HPD break room, delivered from local community members. Especially just after September 11.

“People around here truly do support the police, and that helps,” Nelson said. “I can’t imagine working where there are riots that are so anti-police—it would be hard to have so many people be angry just because of your career. We definitely feel the support!”

And it’s not like they don’t see everything that bigger American communities and police forces deal with, just maybe not as much of it. “People have no idea about the ton of crazy stuff we run into!” said Mulder. “You never know what’s coming next, but that’s what keeps the spark, the excitement—there’s always something different.”

“We live in a very broken world, and it takes a unique skill set to work with that every day,” said Captain Rick Walters ’86. “What we do is so different from every other vocation.”

Most of HPD who are HC alumni don’t draw a direct connection between their HCS experience and their career choice, but agree that their training in compassion and integrity, their Christian awareness of brokenness and desire to help in the midst of it, led them in part to their career, as well as connections through their Holland Christian associated community.

“I’ve always been a hands-on guy,” said Cadet Spencer Slenk ’15, who “always wanted to go into law enforcement.” But he also credits his eighth grade HCMS Shadow Day for pointing him in the right direction, as well as his friendship with Keith Mulder’s son Nate Mulder ’15, who invited him to assist with the scenario-based Police Academy training when he was a junior in high school.

A lot of them became interested in police work through Joe Slenk’s dad, Dave Slenk ’68, who first worked for the Michigan State Police, then spent the last 15 years of his career at HCHS as the Director of Student Safety, a fundraised position that was dropped when he retired after 15 years.

Most of them have four year college degrees from places like Calvin, Hope, Grand Valley. Several, like Walters, who started out as an accounting major at Calvin, realized a couple of years in that their first career choice just wasn’t going to work for them, that they would prefer a career with a little more unpredictability.

So it’s not like they all planned this back in high school together, to all work together for the HPD. It just somehow serendipitously happened.

“I work closely with four people I graduated the same year from high school with—four very different people with different friend groups back in high school,” Captain Mulder said. “I never would have thought back then that I would be working with these people. But you start to see different things in people that in high school you just weren’t aware of. We get along great now, and work very well together.”

Fall 2017 Connections Alumni Profile

Typically in this space here we tell you about Holland Christian alumni who are off doing amazing things in exciting destinations of the world elsewhere—like improving education in Honduras (Spring 2017), or saving AIDS orphans in Lesotho (Spring 2016). Exciting and important work for the Lord.

But we also recognize how many of you HC grads stay local and impact our place here for the better. Quietly remain “average” West Michigan Joes who help make our community pretty great. Do God’s work here, maybe get married, maybe raise kids, run successful businesses to pay the bills, go to church. You show up when needed, pray for us when we beg you to, donate items we didn’t even realize we needed until you give them, cheer our kids at sporting events.

There are a lot of you like this, but one such stand out is Robb VanderZwaag ’92, the owner of Hamilton Pullets, in, you guessed it, Hamilton, Michigan. A pullet, to preempt those of you reaching for your phone’s Google search engine, is a young hen, a guaranteed female egg-layer under six months old. Robb has close to one million of them, ranging from one day to four months old, all comfortably and cleanly housed in the most up-to-date chicken barns possible.

Basically out of his barns come chickens that eventually lay eggs for super markets and restaurants like McDonalds all over America. And if you drive up to buy a few pullets for your own back yard, he’ll sell you those, too, gladly—because his pullets have been vaccinated for things like salmonella to keep your kids healthy. Since all of these chickens need to eat, Robb also owns a feed mill, MD Farm Supply, with his brother Jon VanderZwaag ’98 and Doug Dreyer ’78, where they mix up over a thousand tons of feed for his farm and other local farms every week.

Talking to the man is like talking to a self-made audible walking chicken encyclopedia. Everything from chicken economics (Why are eggs so cheap right now? Only $.35 a dozen?) to chicken trends (What’s the difference between free range, cage free, and Eggland’s best?) and chicken biology (Why do they sell brown eggs in Europe, but white eggs in America?). Inside the barns, the air is always a balmy 70 degrees, supported by blowing fans and generators. They don’t stink, since all the chicken droppings fall onto a moving conveyor belt below, where they are fan dried and then shipped off as powdered fertilizer. Zero waste, zero smell. But biosecure, because they don’t want a disease to run through the whole flock.

All this, and no college degree.

“I’m a firm believer in the fact that a four-year college degree isn’t for everyone,” Robb says, explaining his one-and-a-half unfinished years at Davenport College. “Status means nothing—it’s what you do with life that’s more important. Making sure you’re treating people right, and living in a way that is God-honoring so that other people look at you and say, ‘They are different!’ You don’t have to do big things, but just by your way of life, be someone who takes care of others. You can be just as impactful as a farmer, as a bank president or a college professor. We need a good blend of both.”

It all started when Robb did not make the Holland Christian basketball team his freshman year—funny how God has a plan different, and so much more far-sighted than ours? Suddenly he had more time on his hands, and began working for a chicken farm on Holland’s north side, enjoying having the extra spending money. The farm also had its own feed mill and Christmas trees, and was soon running out of space in its north side location.

So, once he graduated HCS in 1992, Robb was the one to be shipped south, moving all the way to Hamilton, to run the new start-up location there. A young bachelor living on his own, he didn’t cook a whole lot, but ate out often at the Trestle Stop Restaurant in Hamilton, where the really cute daughter of the owners would wait on his table. Add in a few years of dating once Lisa Lampen ’94 graduated from Holland Christian in 1994, a wedding in 1997, and three darling baby girls followed.

Meanwhile, the farm took off, too, grew like crazy, and in 2000, when the original owner, a 1978 HC grad, wanted to give Robb the chance to advance, he sold him the farm in Hamilton, thereby creating Hamilton Pullets. For the first several years, Robb was it—the only guy running the show, and worked like crazy just to keep up. Slowly, though, he added employees as he could, eventually rising to his current payroll of 22.

Life seemed happily ever after.

Lisa, busy with their three girls, helped her parents as needed at the restaurant, but was also following her life passions— singing on their church, Central Wesleyan’s, praise team, helping with children’s ministries and with Bible Study Fellowship, besides busy caring for orphans whenever and wherever she could. She even flew down to visit and volunteer at an orphanage in Mexico in 2007.

“She was an awesome person—the best you can get,” Robb says of his wife. “Her number one goal in life was to be able to help others.”

The girls, Brylynn ’15, Mady ’18, and Tryna ’23, were nine, seven, and two years old in the summer of 2007, when the VanderZwaags started the process of adopting a nine-year-old boy, Irwin, from Mexico.

But before the adoption could be finalized, Lisa learned she had breast cancer—and on Brylynn’s birthday to boot.

You can’t pack all that pain into a paragraph—of innumerable trips to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for one treatment tried after another, repeated arrangements for the girls to be cared for while they were gone, Robb trying to be there for Lisa and still run the business. If there was any comfort, it was that they didn’t do it alone.

“We had so many different friends fly us out of Holland airport,” Robb says, listing one HC family after another. “There’s a reason these girls are at this school—there was such a huge support system here. There still is.” For seven years Lisa and Robb managed to fend off the cancer. “She just kept plugging away, in and out of bed. With no complaining, ever…” he trails off.

But then came spring of 2014. Lisa realized the treatments were no longer working, that she was just getting worse, and she decided she just wasn’t going to fight it anymore.

“How do you tell your kids that ‘Mom is not going to do this anymore?’” Robb says. “The kids were just used to her having cancer; I don’t think Tryna ever really saw Lisa with hair.”

Lisa died in May of 2014. Her funeral filled Central Wesleyan, and Robb had people coming out of the woodwork telling him how Lisa had blessed their lives in ways he had not known the 17 years he had been married to her.

“My biggest fear was that my girls would lose what their mom had instilled into them. How do we make sure our girls keep that same giving and loving spirit?”

So Robb and his daughters together started Lisa’s Legacy, a nonprofit committed to charitable giving, “so our girls could look for people struggling, and help them. It’s amazing once you’ve been through it—you become so much more aware of others going through it,” he says.

Robb and his girls took money donated at Lisa’s funeral, invested it, and pull it out when they see a good cause they want to give to. When Robb worried that the girls were getting lost in themselves, not paying enough attention to others with needs, he contacted a couple of HC teachers, asking them to look out for not only his daughters, but also for worthwhile needs they could donate to. Sometimes it’s a couple chick incubators for the elementary schools, or for another family who is walking through cancer and needs some distraction relief, maybe a family who can’t make tuition payments.

And so these girls of Lisa’s are learning to give generously just like their mother—who was excited at one time to see the pullet business grow only so that they would have the means to help more people.

“When your wife dies of cancer, you get a very good perspective of what’s important in life,” Robb ends. “You know, paying for Christian education can sometimes be a struggle, but it’s been one of the best decisions we’ve made. Lisa always said, ‘Don’t worry about the [money]—it will just come. I don’t know how, but it will be there.’ She always said it was because we have faith. And we were once told, ‘If you do business and live life with generosity and integrity, you will be taken care of,’” he says matter-of-factly with a shrug. “And so far it’s been true.”