Have you ever
prayed so much about something that you just knew God would surely make His
will clear, but He seemed to remain silent no matter how often, how loud and
how hard you cried out to Him during the storm?
Recently I felt like the disciples in the boat watching the storm wage
around me, calling out for God to rescue us (simply to reveal His perfect will)
only to wonder if He would continue to sleep while we poured out our hearts to
Him. Surely He knew our hearts desire
and heard the constant knocking that beckoned Him to meet with us so that we
might hear from Him. Was that not what He
meant when He asked us to be perseverant in prayer?
We
were eager to start our ministry here in Tana when we moved here over a year
ago in the beginning of January 2013. It
took us a while to adjust, but after our second move here, we began to adjust,
at least the kids and I did. We had
hoped that Andy’s allergies would get better after our move to this new
house. We loved the openness of our new
house that let in a lot more sunshine and a nice breeze from our two big
windows. But Andy continued to struggle
with little sleep, headaches, constant congestion & itchiness, puffy eyes
and exhaustion. I really didn’t realize
the extent of his misery until he called our medical contact in the states (in
the beginning of February) to be able to get to Johannesburg, South Africa
to see an allergist (for the 2nd time) there. It was also apparent that all of the
medicines he had been taking were not cutting it.
It
was our hope that when Andy got to Joburg, he would have some relief because we
had begun to realize that the pollution in Tana was making his allergies quite
a bit worse. Unfortunately things did
not get better there right away, and the allergist told Andy that he needed to
have allergy shots or he needed to avoid the things that he was allergic to
(which include dust, fresh cut grass, dogs/cats). He was also told by the allergist that the
pollution was lowering his threshold to combat his allergies (because he had
been exposed to the same allergens in Antsirabe minus the pollution and he did
not have these same problems). The
problem with allergy shots is that we can’t get them here in Tana and it is
impossible for them to administer them to him as often as he would need with us
being so far away and the cost being so great—we soon realized that this was
not an option if we wanted to stay on the mission field. So we were left with one other option, we
must move again!
So
after much prayer, we have decided to move back to Antsirabe (the city we were
in for language school). This decision
was very difficult for both of us, and personally, I wanted to kick and scream
and say no, but I just couldn’t. I am
finally beginning to realize that I was in denial at first, not wanting to
think about another possible move or transition for our family, but then God
began to open my eyes to see how miserable Andy has been and how difficult it
was for him to function, let alone do his job he was called here to do. And I guess this is how God was showing us
His answer, by me letting go of control of the situation and having all the
signs point to yet another move. Of
course, there were many concerns for our family in this move, but we were also
concerned with how this would affect all our workers (our Malagasy
family). Would they be able to get
jobs? How would they respond? But our peace about this came only after we
had already made the decision to move and began to tell them and others. The most telling response was when Rinah (our
day guard & close friend) told us that God had already revealed to him that
we would have to move! We had planned to
take him & his wife, Zo, with us to Antsirabe because they are from
Antsirabe to begin with. They are very
excited to be going back to be close to Rinah’s family again (side note: they
had also been looking for another house here in Tana for a while, but they had
not found anything). It amazes me how good
God is-- I couldn’t even see all these pieces of the puzzle until this very
moment I wrote them down!
Thanks to our
logistics coordinator, Taisir Emeish, we already have a house in
Antsirabe. We don’t have a set date for
our move however, but we are hoping to move in mid to late April during Eli's
school break. We would ask that you pray
for us to finish our time here in Tana well.
We would also ask you to pray for our family as we transition to a new city, new house and
new school (for Eli) as this has already created a good bit of stress for all
of us. Pray for all of us as we say
goodbye to good friends and finish discipleship relationships earlier than
expected. Please also pray specifically
that we would have a lot of people that would help us as I (Ruth) will be doing
a lot of the sorting, tossing and packing up (because of Andy’s allergy to
dust). Thank you so much for your
partnership with us through prayer!
Thank you also for
your prayers for Andy’s day trip to Andilamena today! He hopes to update soon.
