Hello! Above you see my wife Paulina, our two daughters and myself sitting at a bridge over one of the old canals in Delft, the picturesque city in The Netherlands were I grew up. It's a relatively small city with just over a hundred thousand people, located close to The Hague, the seat of government, and Rotterdam, the major port city where I studied.

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Long ago, whilst still at university, I participated in a workshop with a multinational consumer goods company that owns a host of famous personal care brands. At the time, it was the type of company many marketing majors like myself were keen to work for. The workshop's best participant would be awarded a sought after internship. After completing various exercises, I was happy to make it to the last round. Now it was between a girl and myself. I was getting more and more excited about the prospect of working at that company and gave it my best shot. But in the end, the girl won and I was massively disappointed. She got the internship and I got to bring home the product of our last exercise: a tube tooth paste.

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In hindsight, losing that internship was the best thing that could have happened to me. Wanting to do something else that was challenging and interesting, I signed up for a Chinese language course at the Beijing Language and Culture University. That was a defining moment in my life. My family and friends were surprised. They didn't expect me to – pretty much at the spur of the moment – take off and travel to China to stay there for four months to study Chinese. For me it was an opportunity to experience something completely different, as well as – given that I am one quarter Chinese – a great chance to discover the Chinese part of my roots. So in August 1998, I flew to China to start a new adventure; a new part of my life.

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I fondly look back at my time at that university in Beijing. Indeed, China was totally different from what I was used to in Holland. I know the term "culture shock" has a negative connotation but I loved it. I never really impressed anyone with my Chinese language skills but I did make great new friends and together we experienced lots of fun, interesting and crazy things. Most importantly: I met Paulina at that university! She is Chinese Indonesian, grew up in Jakarta, studied in Canada and Australia, and like myself signed up for the same language course. Although we didn't sit in the same class (she was in a higher class), we spend a lot of time together after class. After completing the course, we decided to stay together in Beijing, travelled around the country, found jobs and started our careers in Beijing as well.

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After being together for four years, we got married in August 2002, the year in which we left Beijing and moved to Shanghai. There, we became the parents of two beautiful daughters: in 2004, Paulina gave birth to Naomi and two years later to Sienna. We lived in Shanghai for eight years until our lives were thrown upside down in February 2010. What happened with Naomi that month made me question the meaning of live and lead me on a search for God. I may as well call it a quest because, although initially unintended, that search turned into a rather elaborate effort. Little did I know that it was God who had been patiently pursuing me, much more so and for much longer than I had been looking for Him.

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Up until February 2010, I lived life without paying any attention to God. Frankly, I was convinced that organised religion caused more trouble than good around the world and that it involved too much hypocrisy for me to ever feel comfortable with. I was no atheist but more of an oblivious theist who believed in the existence of a higher being, a God, but never made an effort to find out who that God actually was.

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That all changed. I finally got to know God as He revealed Himself to our family in entirely unexpected ways. All it took was for me to give Him a chance. In 2013 I became Catholic and now have a very different understanding of life. I even dare to say that I have become a new and better person.

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Even though becoming Catholic is nowadays very much a countercultural thing to do, I'm so glad I did, which is why I'm writing this blog: to share my experiences and to testify that God is real and that He loves you.