MARIANDA
“When my husband first told me he felt God wanted us to sell our home and buy an ocean-going yacht, I told him he was crazy and that it would never happen! "There is no way I will take my four little children on a boat in the ocean. It will never happen," I said.
“But over the many years I had been a Christian, I had learned to seek God first in all things. So I committed the matter to prayer, asking God to make His will abundantly clear to me as well as to my husband.
“The Lord did confirm it to me, and yes, we were to sell our home in Tauranga, buy a catamaran, and sail away from New Zealand as missionaries.
“I believed with certainty that because God had confirmed it, and because this was what He wanted for us, He would provide, and I could trust Him completely.
“As a wife and mother of four young children, the responsibility of it all could have been overwhelming, but God made a way when I could not see one.
“Was it easy? No. Was our faith tested? Absolutely in ways we never imagined. Yet through it all, God was at work, drawing us closer to Himself and deepening the bond between us as husband and wife, and as a family with our four children.
Philippians 4: 6-7 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
“Before we left our home, suburban life looked much like any other. The older children had their own groups and activities and although we were a family, they didn’t naturally mix with one another. But as we began preparing to sail away from New Zealand, I took the older ones out of school to teach them from home, and that’s when I first noticed a shift.
“Abi was 11, Juan 7, Heidi 5 and Elijah just 3. Within a month or two living aboard Sonadora the age gaps seemed to fade. I remember one particularly long car trip when I realised they were not competing with each other. Only cooperating with a willingness to help one another. I hadn’t seen that before.
“After a month or two living on board Sonadora I noticed the age groups merged closer together and they were all getting along and helping one another.
“Life on board required us all to grow. Learning to be self-sufficient became essential. We had to pay close attention to weather forecasts, skies, clouds and sea condition and quickly learn practical skills of sailing and navigation as we had no previous experience.
“Before we moved on aboard, I had a conversation with God about our children. ‘I cannot force them to do this or like this Lord’. The middle two were very scared of the water and were not keen to swim or take even little dinghy trips. However, the very first time the kids were on board the boat they were jumping up and down on the boat and couldn’t wait to tell me how much fun they had all had. An answer to prayer.
“We understood the importance of creating a safe space for each other where we could speak openly without fear of judgement, and where grace and forgiveness were freely given when needed. This foundation became even more important as we stepped into our new life, and learning to sail together deepened that partnership. We came to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses in a new way, knowing that in an emergency, our ability to trust and rely on each other would be essential, not only for our own safety but for the wellbeing of our family.
“We trusted God completely, yet we knew the buck stopped with us. Our experience of the earthquake in Christchurch 2011, had already taught us a hard important truth. God does not always spare us from suffering, but He is always able to use it. When we talk about God’s perfect plan, it’s easy to imagine a path where everything goes well. We came to see His plan is not defined by the absence of hardship but rather, that He uses the hard things to make His plan good.
“When our catamaran and home Sonadora was wrecked during a cyclone in the Port Villa harbour, everything we had established was gone overnight. What remained was God and each other. As waves of grief overwhelmed us and urgent decisions needed to be made, we were brought to a place where there was nothing left but to rely on but Him. In the aftermath of the storm, the question before us became unmistakably clear – did we truly trust Him? In that place, our faith and commitment became the anchor that held us.
“I had never suffered from anxiety but in the aftermath, I would sometimes wake in the night in a cold sweat. What were we going to do? We were thankful we had been temporarily living ashore at the time of the cyclone. But we had 23 tons of damaged boat suspended in the water and we had no idea how we were going to deal with it. It was too heavy to go into the boat yard. Even if we could get it to the boat trailer, they couldn’t lift it as one hull was completely wrecked. It couldn’t be floated without great expense. There were environmental issues with the possibility of diesel leaking into the water and the village people complaining about the rubbish washed up on the beach. We had no money to pay anyone to do the cleanup. We felt stuck on every side, and it appeared there was no solution. It was a time of trusting God. In those moments when I felt my throat close over and my heart thumping, I had to make a choice like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. But not my will but your will be done Lord. No matter what happens I know you are in control, and you will lead us. I would say this prayer of confirmation over and over until it was not an issue anymore, and I could sleep once again. I remembered the words of Smith Wigglesworth ‘yield and yield and yield, then yield some more’
“It took a year to walk through the aftermath, to face the loss, and to slowly untangle what could be done with what remained. Through it all I was reminded again and again to yield and then yield some more.
“In the end it was not our strength that carried us, but the strength of the bond God had formed, first with Him and then with each other. As a wife and Mother, I saw more clearly than ever, when our lives are anchored in Him and our marriage is held together in that same faith, we become a strength for our family in the midst of any chaos.
“God called us to Vanuatu and that calling had not changed. If anything, it had been refined and strengthened. What we lost in the storm did not define us, but what God built through it did. A cord of many strands is not quickly broken”. Ecclesiastes 4:12.