One of the greatest drawbacks of being on the mission field is you cannot purchase a new one. In many cases replacing a piece of equipment is either impossible (since you can’t get them there) or are too expensive.
This means you often have to “fix things.”
This is often an easy fix (nothing too serious) but occasionally you experience a demon-possessed piece of technology.
Of course, I am not being serious! It just SEEMS like that piece of technology is possessed by an evil spirit because what worked fine just moments before suddenly stops working!
These situations almost always challenge your patience and justification!
I experienced this yesterday when my beloved printer stopped working suddenly. The same one that had worked fine over the weekend (and could not be replaced) turned on, communicated with my computer, and refused to print! After trying everything multiple times I felt like throwing it out the window!
Finally with the Lord’s help, I was able to get it working (amazingly doing something I already tried before but didn’t work the first time for some reason). Honestly the sound of that printer beginning to feed the paper in was an incredibly beautiful sound!!
As frustrating as that experience was I thank God for it….
because I didn’t give up!
Often in life we can be tempted to give up (and sometimes do) because a job is too difficult. But in situations like my printer giving up is not an option. It HAS to work! So we wrestle with the problem till a solution is found.
Yes It’s exhausting….but also rewarding
May the God who can heal demon-possessed printers give us the strength and persistence to keep trying no matter what challenges we face.
Johnhwilburn.org 