Ruth Ellen Vander Lugt

Ruth Ellen (Mokma) Vander Lugt, of Ocoee/Winter Garden, Florida, moved home to heaven on Thursday, October 2, 2025, at age 86. Born on September 20, 1939 in Holland, Michigan, she attended Holland Christian schools and Hope College, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Education. Married to “the boy across the street”, Robert W. (“Bob”) Vander Lugt, on August 19, 1961, they embarked together on a thirty year adventure through his service as U.S. Navy officer that took them to live (and raise their family) in the District of Columbia (where she taught in the public schools), North Carolina (where her first two children were born), California (where her third was born), Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Naples (Italy), Florida, and South Carolina and then Florida again, before their “first retirement”, from the Navy. After a “gap year” travelling the country and visiting with many close friends and family in their motor home they returned to the Orlando area and built their dream house, which became a center for hospitality and ministry for nearly 30 years—welcoming family, church family, and friends from all over the world.

Ruth’s deep and abiding faith in her Heavenly Father, experience of salvation and redemption through his son Jesus, and of the empowerment for living through the baptism in the Holy Spirit marked her life and drew people to her and to her Savior and Lord. She shared the love of God with others through teaching, leading bible studies and life groups (often with her husband, Bob), music (both piano and vocal), hospitality and homemaking, art (painting, needlework, sewing, etc.), and music (vocal and piano).

Her love for and commitment to her husband was also extraordinary. Their marriage of nearly 62 years was both her primary ministry and the strong underpinning for most of her other endeavors and ministries. She loved being a wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, and nurturing and then celebrating the work of God in the lives of her family “at every age and stage” in their development.

She also loved to correspond with and extend hospitality to family and the friends made over a lifetime. She was always eager to send and to receive a letter of encouragement, to reach out with a call to exchange news, and to have family and friends come to their home for a meal or for an extended stay.

Among the things she was very good at and especially loved to do were: sing (especially in church choirs and ensembles, but also in an award winning ensemble in Hawaii), play the piano (especially for worship), paint (she was an accomplished artist in oil and watercolor on canvas, and also in toll painting on wood), make crafts (for home decorating, for family, and even in large quantities for fundraisers), provide hospitality (she was in her element designing menus and laying tables for dinners from two to fifty people), decorate cakes (she made many professional-looking cakes for all kinds of occasions), decorate for holidays (especially Christmas), teach (everything from professional classroom teaching of elementary students and adult “English as a Second Language” students, to volunteer teaching of Vacation Bible School students and adult bible studies and classes on Biblical financial principles), travel (all over the world), and meet new people (she “never met a stranger” and always showed a sincere interest people she interacted with, even in passing).

A devoted daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, she is survived by her sister Joan Broersma (and husband Rich), her daughter Sandra Haines (and husband Richard), son Robert Vander Lugt (and wife Ruthie), son David Vander Lugt (and wife Amy), as well as grandchildren Andrew, Josh (and wife Madison), Julie, Lauren (and husband Brandon), Rebecca (and husband Doug) and Joel, and her great-grandchildren Anna, Kate and Davie. She is preceded in death by her parents Dean and Josie Mokma, as well as her husband Bob, brothers Gordon & Ken, sister Jan, and grandson Michael.