Bill and Wanda’s Incredible Journey

Do we pretend when we turn up and speak or preach in a Church?  No one there knows us.  We can sound really keen, really pious.  Or is it as Jesus acidly said – beautifully done on the outside, but rotting flesh onside?  Well – we like to think we are keen.  But we admit “the heart is deceitful – who can understand it?”

We had a surprise this week – when we were preparing for the deputation to St Paul’s Wimbledon Park on 21^st October 2007.  Two readings (Gen 32-22-31, Luke 17:11-19) were lessons on struggling with God in prayer.

And then we get this email from Dr Tonny Tumwesigye, or future boss in Kisiizi Hospital.  He wrote “….. It’s now coming to pass – an answered prayer indeed.  After our meeting at Greyfriars [Church, in Reading] in 2005, and your being unable to join us then, we just resorted to prayer that God would still convict you to come [here].  Our expectations were so high and so became rather downcast at the outcome then.  But God taught me a very good lesson, that He does good things at His own timing.  We are therefore so thankful at His own timing. He is sending you here ……”

Our experience and knowledge is of the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan and Nepal in particular.  When we applied to CMS we expected to go there.  We had hoped to return to Nepal, where we had worked before.  We know some of the language, culture and church.  But despite all the possible placements, nothing worked out.  It was not just that Kisiizi were keen.  For us, Nepal positively dried up!  Dr Tonny and co had wrestled with God, and in the Divine scheme of things, we’ve been directed there. 

We are not saying one can bombard God with prayers to get one’s way.  But it is that just too easily we assume the opposite – no prayer really works.

Well – Medical Superintendent Dr Tonny Tumwesigye and colleagues were not pretending, and Bill and Wanda subsequently got a surprise.  And we are just chuffed by all this.