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

For many years I made free apps in my spare time: Bibles, sermons and Christian quotes. Then, for several years, many of them stopped being updated, and some broke on newer phones. People wrote reviews about it. This is an account of those years, and a thank-you to God, who carried us through them.

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.

In January 2020 our passports expired. They can't be renewed in Tonga. The money for the trip to the Swedish embassy in Australia never came: a refund the IRS had approved after two years of waiting. Soon after, the borders closed. For about two and a half years we were stuck in Vavaʻu. The only way out was for the whole family, children down to five years old, to take the COVID shot and leave everything we owned behind.

Without passports our visas couldn't be renewed, and without visas I wasn't allowed to work. The way I had always provided for my family was closed.

Trusting God for tomorrow

From then on we had to trust God for everything, literally for tomorrow's food. He never failed us. They were hard years, and I'm grateful for them now. The Bible says 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 myself. Now I couldn't earn anything. So I did something I had never wanted to do: I put a reminder in the apps asking for help.

Cut off

In January 2022 my twelve-year-old computer died, with 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. Then came lockdown, and in the middle of it all our son Timothy was born at home. I didn't have a working computer again until the end of May, and the internet worked a few hours a week at best. That is when the apps fell behind.

Starting over

In November 2022 Tonga let us leave, and we left with what fit in our suitcases. After much prayer, I believed God was sending us to Paraguay. We spent almost three months in Greece renewing our passports, and then, at the last minute, the way was closed. I still don't fully understand it. Paul knew that too: “I have been much hindered from coming to you” (Romans 15:22). After two months in Switzerland, near our older children, we came back to Sweden in April 2023.

It took three years of hard work to build up a company again from nothing, and it still isn't easy to provide for my family. Those years left a lot to mourn, and some days it was hard just to focus. It couldn't be rushed.

The apps

Some reviews called the apps a scam. I understand how it could look: an app that stopped working, and a reminder asking for help. But the apps were always free, and giving never changed anything in them. On older phones they mostly kept working. It was newer phones, more of them every year, that made them crash, whether someone had given or not. A few ministries asked me to take down their sermons, or the reminder. I did every time, and that is why some of the apps disappeared. I'm still grateful for every sermon God gave through those preachers.

Thank you

God provided all through those years, often in ways we could never have arranged. Some of those days are told in Always on time. He did it through people, many we know and many we never met, who prayed and gave. I can't name them all. God knows each one. Thank you.

Now

This autumn, by God's grace, I've rebuilt the apps: the sermons, the Bibles, the quotes and Share the Word. They're all free, with no ads, and they work 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)

In Christ,
John