This has probably been the toughest couple of months in my life. India is great, adjusting to the culture, food, people has been fine but I think adjusting to how, what, where and when has been a battle in our minds.
It's like we have been completely stripped naked of everything and brought to a place of total reliance on God. I know this is where we should always be but even though we think we may be there, in reality we often are not. I can say this now because I thought we were pretty good at relying on God but what I have found is areas of our lives that we didn't realise we had too much control over. We have been tested in everything.... finances, our relationship, friendships, work, church, you name it and we have been dealing with it. We are still working through some issues and are still working on being able to relax and not worry about things like finances. In our heads we know God is our provider but if we are still worrying about finances then we have not fully grasped that God is in control. It's funny how the things we thought we had put in place have not been working out like we thought they would and I do not think it's because they are wrong in themselves but I do beleive God has been showing us that it is him who will provide. For example.... Our rental property back in NZ has not made any money yet as the tenant was not paying and then had to be evicted and left the place damaged so we had to pay out money rather than earn it. I still believe God wanted us to get this property but I think he wants us to see that he will be our provider. Also the money we were going to draw from our company has not quite worked out as we thought it would as we ended up having to pay 10 months bond on our rental here in India and that was about NZ $10,000. Any extra money we thought we had has been tied up in this bond so no sitting pretty for a while as we thought we might have been able to do. So all in all, we are not upset that things have not worked out as we had planned but we are very aware that we need full reliance on God for finances. God is our Provider.
We are still trying to work out how our business is going to work and at this stage we are not earning anything. David feels the pressure of this but again we know God has it in hand.
There have been times when we have felt and still feel very out of our depth, feelings of being inadequate sometimes creep in and we need to keep reminding ourselves of our clear calling here. We have never felt like returning to NZ but there have been times of feeling overwhelmed and feeling like we are going slightly insane as our minds deal with all sorts of new pressures and issues that arise. We are being refined and our character is certainly being molded.
We have had some great encouragement from friends in NZ and here in India and that has been so good. We know we will look back on this time and see the benefits but when you are going through it it feels like you are in the kiln.
