As mentioned earlier finally there was not even money to buy food. Leen had more or less decided to go back teaching when after these week of absolute desert-experience a soft voice said inside Leen’s head: “go and see the bankmanager” . Leen could not believe this to be true. This must be your own imagination because bills were piling up, no assets, no activities, so why to go to the bank, as they were already in debt… but the voice remained saying: “go and see the bankmanager”. After 2 weeks Leen followed this impulse, made an appointment and went to the bankmanager. Leen explained the whole history, all what had happened, why he did not want to go to court, why he trusted God and that he expected that all would become well again… they only needed to borrow money to overcome 6 months of no income… no, they had NO assets as guarantee… The bankmanager must have never heard such a strange story. He looked at Leen, thought for a moment and said: ‘Well, if I viewed the situation properly, I should not lend a penny to you, but I see you stand for a noble cause and you have totally convinced me that you will be able to pay back in the future. I trust you and will get the money for you’. This bankmanager signed personally as a kind of personal guarantee, he has risked his neck for us. We got 45.000 Euro (we even went up to 55.000) and several months later the first money came in. It took 7 years to pay it all back. Now the lesson! If this man showed such trust, how much more trust God must have in us. This flash of insight helped us through this bitter year and helped us to start trusting new people again. We got new volunteers, new staff was hired after a while…
Something else was happening: one day a man walked into the empty office. He wanted to talk with Leen about setting up a big event, as God had spoken to friends in America and they wanted to see this happening. As Leen had all the expertise, could he help? Well, had they really heard Gods voice? Leen explained that to hire the giant Ahoy Sporting arena it would cost a lot of money. As Leen had no money, nor had Continental Sound which was technically bankrupt, money needed to come BEFORE anything could be done… the man understood, he would be back within a few weeks. Leen did not know what to expect. Anyway a few weeks later the man was back and put a big cheque on the table, now Leen could start. So new staff, volunteers could be found and the churches of Rotterdam gave a lot of help, as they slowly started to see that now Leen was still in the ministry and alive and Continental Sound had not gone bankrupt, maybe God was with Leen and maybe this ministry may be really of God? Finally this event in Ahoy brought appr. 7500 persons and till today you meet people who were touched by God that day.
And something else happened: just before the record-contract was broken Leen had visited Jimmy Owens in England to study the Come Together project. Leen got convinced that this musical and this message had a particular relevance for the Netherlands. And he started working on this project. And so it happened that just after the peak of the crisis Leen could launch the Dutch version of Come Together. The cast toured for 2 years and performed all over the Netherlands, making a real impact. This helped the creativity to go on… Isn’t it remarkable how a situation of distrust can change in a story of trust?