Tonga · Greece · Sweden · 2020–2026The quiet years

For many years I made free apps in my spare time: Bibles, sermons and Christian quotes. I covered the costs myself, and I was glad to. Then, for several years, many of them stopped being updated. Some broke on newer phones, and I couldn't fix them. People wrote reviews about it, and some of them were hard to read.

This is what happened in those years. I want you to know, and I want to give thanks to God, who carried us through it.

Locked in

In 2015 we moved to the South Pacific with our family: three years in Vanuatu, then Tonga. The Bible apps began out there, in 2017.

By 2019 our passports were about to expire, and they can't be renewed in Tonga. We planned to travel to the Swedish embassy in Australia, paid for by a refund the IRS in the United States owed me from the sale of some land. In November 2019, after two years of waiting, they approved it. The money didn't come. In January 2020 our passports expired, and soon after, the borders closed.

For about two and a half years we were stuck in Vavaʻu: the only way out was for everyone in the family to take the COVID shot, children down to five years old. For a time we also lived with the threat of prison. A law could bring fines or prison to anyone who refused it, and children were told at school that their parents could go to prison if they didn't take it. It's almost hard to believe now. Living there, I had to be careful about what I wrote at the time.

Our visas had run out too, and they couldn't be renewed without valid passports. Without visas I wasn't allowed to work or run a company. The way I had always provided for my family was closed.

Thrown into ministry

We didn't step into ministry. We were thrown into it, and from then on we had to trust God for everything: literally, for tomorrow's food. He never failed us. I'm grateful for those years now. The Bible says that God has chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith (James 2:5). We felt that.

Until then I had paid for the apps out of what I earned. Now I couldn't earn anything at all. So, in faith, I did something I had never wanted to do: I asked the Church for help, and I put a reminder in the apps, because how else would anyone know? I didn't like it, and I longed for the day it wouldn't be needed.

Cut off

In January 2022 my computer died. It was twelve years old, and there was no way to replace it on the island. A few days later the Hunga volcano erupted and cut Tonga off from the world. For almost four weeks no one could reach us. Then lockdown followed, and we were shut in our village. In the middle of it all, our son Timothy was born at home.

It was the end of May before I had a working computer again, and until then the internet had worked a few hours a week at best. That is when the apps fell behind.

On the road

In the autumn of 2022 the doors finally opened, one by one, and Tonga let those of us who had been stuck leave without a penalty. We left in November, with what fit in our suitcases.

After much prayer, I had a clear answer from God: we were to go to Paraguay. On the way we had to pass a Swedish embassy to renew our passports, and we ended up spending almost three months in Greece, often not knowing where the next week would take us. Then, at the last minute, the way to Paraguay was stopped. After that came two months in Switzerland, near our older children.

I still don't fully understand what happened. I don't believe it was God who stopped it. I believe it was the adversary. It's hard to grasp how that can happen, but Paul knew it too. He wrote to the Thessalonians: “We would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us” (1 Thessalonians 2:18). And God used it anyway.

Coming back to Sweden

In April 2023 we came back to Sweden. On the practical side, life became easier. Compared to the years before, we had what we needed, and slowly more things have settled. But it hasn't been an easy road. It took three years of hard work to build up a company again, from nothing, and I still struggle to provide for my family.

In other ways it was painful to come back. We were expected to fit in, in every way, and to squeeze back into the box. But for years we had lived free, trusting God alone. Coming back, everything clashed.

We're not rich, and we still live well below the Swedish standard. But we're happy, and not ashamed of it. We had almost forgotten how sensitive it can be in Sweden not to have the things everyone has. Even among Christians it can be hard to understand, perhaps because few have had to trust God for their daily bread.

There were also trials here in Sweden that I won't write about, out of care for the people involved.

What the reviews said

Some reviews said the apps were a scam, or that they only wanted money. I understand how it could look: an app that stopped working, and a reminder asking for help. But the apps were always free. Giving was always voluntary, and it never changed anything in the apps. When an app crashed, it crashed for everyone, whether they had given or not.

Some of those words hurt, and I won't pretend they didn't. But I hold nothing against anyone who wrote them. I only wish more had asked before they judged. To be fair, not everyone who asked got an answer. I tried to reply to most emails, but some days I had nothing left inside, not even for that, and some went unanswered. I'm sorry for that.

What some ministries said

A few ministries whose sermons were in the apps wrote to me, asking me to take their sermons down, or to take away the reminder asking for help. That was their right, and every time I did what they asked. That is why some of the apps disappeared.

But some came with lawyers and deadlines. One told me that what I was doing was unchristian. One wrote that they never make their needs known to anyone but God. Another, that it was against their policy to use the gospel to raise money, while their own website had a button for giving. None of them asked how we were, or whether they could help, though our situation was there for anyone to read.

Of everything in those years, this was perhaps the most painful thing to discover. These were ministries I had looked up to and thought were healthy. For some of them, it turned out to be just words. The blindness is still hard for me to understand.

I thought of what Jesus said about the Pharisees: “For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers” (Matthew 23:4). Some of those ministries carry the name of a preacher who has already gone home to the Lord. I sometimes wonder what he would have said.

I'm still grateful for every sermon God gave through those preachers.

The lights along the way

First, God. He was with us on every island, in every lockdown and on every road, and He provided, often in ways we could never have arranged. Some of those days are told in Always on time.

Then His people. When I asked the Church for help, I learned that it was smaller than I had thought. But it was also bigger, because it turned up where I never expected it: a man in Vavaʻu who kept bringing bananas to our door, a Tongan family who gave us a house for nothing, a plumber who gave us a ride and then twenty paʻanga for the baby, a woman in a Greek village who took us in the day we had to leave our flat, and people we have never met, who prayed for us and gave.

There were also a few faithful givers whose help always came right on time. I won't name them, because I'm not sure they would want to be seen here. But their help mattered more than they may know. We needed the money, but it was more than money. Through them we felt seen by God. He had a faithful few who heard the Holy Spirit and obeyed.

And one man in Greece I will never forget. He came hurrying after us down the street, on his crutch, with a banana and a few biscuits in his hand. He was homeless himself. I still can't think of him without tears.

Now

Those years were painful, and there has been a lot to mourn, more than I can explain here. Some days it was hard just to focus, or to work. It has been a process, and it couldn't be rushed.

Now, finally, the time has come. By God's grace, this autumn I've been able to rebuild the apps: the sermons, the Bibles, the quotes and Share the Word, all of them free, with no ads, and working offline. If you wrote a hard review in those years, I'm sorry for the trouble you had. I hope you'll give them another try.

Freely you have received; freely give. (Matthew 10:8)

Just don't forget: behind what you see, or think you know, there might be a brother, a sister or a family in need.

In Christ,
John