Foreign Nation, Present God

I was recently asked this question: “How is your relationship with God in a foreign nation being impacted?”

Let me first begin by saying that I am a believer in Jesus Christ, a Christian, living in a foreign nation, where there are few others that share my beliefs.

I have no doubt that I lost some readers, already, by claiming the previous sentence. However, I also know that some of you, just moved in closer, curious about this post. If you are still with me, lean in and get ready for a few stories about a moving God.

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When I was first asked this question, I honestly had a little anxiety. Am I going internet public with this? Is that okay to claim? Is this safe? All of these questions and worries have been silenced since I began writing this, which I have no doubt is all because of the Lord.

I guess I have to say that He was the One that started all of this. The Lord. He is the reason that I picked up my life and moved it roughly 9,000 miles away (kitties and all), when there was nothing I was running from, and nothing I really had any desire to leave behind. I was just being obedient. During the chaos of preparation and actually leaving, I was a mess! There was nothing other than the Lord that was keeping me going. [Note: If you want to go back to some of my first few posts from March 2021, you will hear a lot more detail on that.] Now, being on the other side of the world, things are not much different. I still have to cling to Him, the Father, daily. Why? If I didn’t, I would not be thriving here. I would not really say that I am thriving all the time, but I know it would be a whole lot worse if I did not have the Father to pick me up and carry me when I could not stand on my own. I will share just a few stories to give an answer to that question at the beginning of this post.

In the Lonliness, God is Present

My first story is about God showing up in the loneliness. I am a single woman at an age that people find that fact interesting. I have been made keenly aware that I apparently “need” a boyfriend here. These are not my desires at this time, but to others, a single, young, American woman in a foreign country, is found to be not normal. In addition to that, I arrived here in the midst of a global pandemic that shut things down in my city. Staying in my new home, with a bed but no other furniture and forced to stay in my home, was not fun. The first month, I was completely reliant on my neighbors and the other Americans here to order things and get food for me, while I waited in my house. It was something that was uncomfortable and quite lonely. People knew I had just come from America where the pandemic death rates were rapidly rising, and thus gave them fear. Add a lack of language understanding and no mode of transportation and you have a breeding ground for loneliness.

Did I paint the picture well for you? I don’t want your pity for those times, because in the loneliness, I realized that God was present. If I did not have the abundance of time on my hands, I would not have been able to see all the little blessings.

For example, I would not have developed a strong relationship with my neighbors if I had not needed to go outside and call out for them, asking, “How do you get water?”, “What is the address for this place?”, “Where do you take the trash out?” Yes, we are talking basic questions here. Things I could not do on my own. If I did not have the time to feel lonely, I would not have been able to listen and observe as much when I went around town with people. I would have missed all the cultural things that the Lord was showing me. I would not have needed the Lord, if I was able to do all these new things on my own. With feeling lonely, God allowed me to see that He was still present and working. God allows loneliness to bring us to Himself.

In the Night, God is Comfort

This story is really unpleasant but leaves me with no doubt that God is comforting me when I need Him most. For many years, the night is where I have felt fear. No, I am not afraid of the dark or anything like that, but I do recognize that there are evil forces at work in the darkness. Sometimes they take the form of rats and cockroaches.

Yep, you heard that correctly. Rats and Cockroaches.

For anyone that knows me, yes, I have no problem camping or being outside, but that doesn’t mean that I like bugs. In fact, I find them repulsing. For any of you that claim the phrase “everything is bigger in Texas”, I have spent a summer in southern Texas in the woods as a camp counselor, I know that to be true. However, Texas bugs have nothing on southeast Asia. The bugs here are massive, quick, and everywhere. I think because my house was vacant for a month, there was some that made homes here. For a few nights about a month into my time here, there were loud scurrying sounds in the ceiling. Rats. Long story short: a week of restless nights and many calls to the landlord and the technician, resulted in cutting down the tree that rested on my roof and setting traps. After that week, the rats were gone!

About a month or two later, there was several massive, flying cockroaches in my bed that would wake me up crawling on me at random hours of the morning. I slept on my couch (which I just received about a week prior to this) for about two weeks, constantly waking up to check everything. I spent days spraying the potent cockroach spray everywhere in the house, and washing everything. After much exhaustion and frustration, I found out that the mattress was where the nest was. I was able to get a new mattress soon after, but I still have not taken the plastic off even months after. Every night since, I pray over my walls, floor, bed, and mattress before inspecting between the sheets and pillow, prior to finally getting into bed. This has now become a bedtime ritual.

In the nights that I slept on my couch and the many nights after receiving my new mattress, I found the Lord’s comfort in the night. I found Him providing even an hour or two of restful sleep. I felt his comfort in new sheets and a new mattress. I recognized his comfort and his strength in the day time after nights of no sleep. In the dark of night, I knew God was my comfort.

In the confusion, God is Steadfast

I am in a town that has few people that speak or even understand the English language. I again, need to remind you that due to my coming in the midst of a pandemic, my plans were interrupted. I had intended to spend some time in another province going to language school and having a basis of the survival basics of language. Now, five months into being here, I would say that I am still at a basic understanding of those survival phrases, no where near fluency. When I ask a question in a few words in the local language, I am met with a very fast paced, response in a language I know nothing about. Not a day goes by without me experiencing confusion in this language. It is something that I just get used to and slowly motivates me to learn more.

The pandemic has increased the amount of delivery and online shopping that everyone does, but I would say that is especially true for me. When a package is being delivered, they call if they are not exactly sure where your house is. So many times, I have explained in broken language where my little pink house sits on an unnamed street in the back of an unmarked community. There was one day that I was out for a run on the school track and the delivery driver was there to deliver a package. I tried to explain I was not home and if he could leave it at the gate, but because of the rain, he did not want to leave it there. I said, “I’m sorry” in the language after explaining. He laughed and said what translated to, “It’s okay, I understand you. I will wait.” I went home because of the rain and as I turned into my compound, someone down the street where he was, must have said the foreigner is home, because rounding the corner, as I parked in my house, his delivery truck came in just behind me and delivered it.

I share this story, because even though I am confused with everything here, all the time, God is always steadfast, never confusing. He gives me little moments to laugh about my failures and get “jump-up-and-down” excited in my successes with language. God has not authored confusion in my time here. He has been never-changing in a world of constant change.

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I write all this to say that my relationship with God has been stretched, furthered, matured, strengthened here because in the midst of learning, I am seeing God in ways that I would never have seen him if I had stayed in my home country. Being a foreigner here has allowed me to see God, not as a foreign god, but as my present, comforting, steadfast Savior. I am thankful for the lessons I have learned from Him.