Walking by Faith Through Hardship

Hardship now reminds me of hardship before

Things have not gone quite as planned recently. We couldn’t afford rent so we had to leave the apartment. I am staying with Renato and Ingrid for a while. We are going to make the best of this situation by working on our project to build a technology consulting and education program here in Goiana. There is significant interest in the electronic nose system, which we can use to teach data analysis.

Everyone involved in the project has the same desire, to make this a business with the mission to support the community.

My primary consulting project remains on-hold as my client gets his business started. I was concerned that it would take more than a few months, so I had started fund-raising and trying to develop more of a following. I also offered some training based on the missional living, and continued to work on my web application framework and technology consulting services. Unfortunately, nothing has brought in solid income.

After 20+ years of caregiving, this really isn’t anything new for me. The area we live in has a poverty rate of nearly 50% so everyone here struggles. When I get paid, I get paid in dollars, so even when a bank balance of $5, I am still better off than most of the people I work with. I won’t share specifics, but in the past several weeks I have seen and helped people struggling with basic living expenses.

• children needing school supplies

• people going back to school to learn skills to give their families a better future

• food insecurity

• loss of income from severe illness

The Severity of Hardship

When we moved into the apartment 6 months ago, we had hoped for a stable location to keep our stuff. I won’t be in Brazil long-term, but will be her for a while, so we thought we could establish a home-base. It is a little frustrating to move out, but God has provided a place for each of us to stay. This is still so much easier than what I went through several years ago, when Debi was very ill. We had to keep moving for both medical and financial reasons. Some of those moves were very nerve-racking. Each of those experiences taught me to trust God through the hardship.

Back during the height of our struggles, when Debi’s illness has taken a very severe turn. We had just opened our store and major problems in the craft supply industry resulted on our online store going from $15k in sales in May to almost $2K in sales 3 months later. We had already moved out of our house into our motorhome, and now needed to leave it for a wheelchair accessible apartment. We were on a waiting list for one of the few apartments in the area. We had to find something else in the meantime. We happened to drive by an apartment being renovated. We asked one of the guys working about when it would be available. He said they were just finishing one and the other would be available later the next week.

We called the property manager who was in the city. He offered to rush through the application if we could get to his office within the hour. We were nearly an hour away. While we were driving their, the repossession agent from the bank called and said they were on their way to repossess our motorhome. My jeep became a truly mobile office as I high-tailed it to the property managers office while negotiating with the bank for more time.

The final negotiation was me calling the propane company and asking “I’m sure it would take at least a week for you to send someone out to disconnect the propane tank. Wouldn’t it?” Her response was “That is an unusual request. Back up and tell me what’s going on.” A quick explanation of the situation, and she reassured “You are our customer. You tell me what date you want, and I will be happy to tell the bank we can’t get there until then. And I will explain the severity of them trying to have anyone else disconnect it.” The bank relented and gave us the time we needed. That negotiation was difficult enough, but doing that while zig-zagging through traffic down a mountain pass, takes it to another level.

That was only the beginning. Over the coarse of three years, we moved six times. The final move was the most nerve-racking of all. We were getting support from social services, and had to move to a lower-priced area. They had offered to put us up in a hotel for a few nights while we were looking for another place. Surprisingly, there aren’t many options for wheelchair accessible homes above 10,000ft in altitude for under $1000 a month. Nothing in came close, so we had to look in the next county over. Since hotels there were cheaper, we figured it would be better to be there. The only problem: the hotel vouchers were only good for the original county. There wasn’t a similar social services available in the other county. So we were on the hook for the hotel bill. It took over a month to find something during which time we racked up a $4000 hotel bill. The hotel manager, felt for our situation, so he did whatever he could to help us. During that entire month I was afraid we would come back after looking at a place and find we were locked out. I often had to call family to ask for some money to buy food.

We finally found a place that was wheelchair accessible. The landlord allowed us to move in after talking to my employer to verify that my paycheck was in the mail. But we had no hope of paying that hotel bill. The manager told me he could give me some time to start making payments. He called a few months later to see if I could pay anything. I told him we were still waiting on other assistance, and still weren`t in a position to even start making payments. He explained that the hotel is being sold, and he can’t have an open account on the books. So he was going to just write it off, and pay that the auditors don’t notice.

A few months later, I called to try to start making payments. The hotel had been sold and no one who worked there couldn’t find any trace of the account. They said all the books were closed under the previous management and that business had been liquidated. There was no one to make those payments to.

I spent at least an entire month worried, and in the end, God was like “You didn’t need to worry. I had it taken care of.” I’ve learned not to worry so much about housing. I still struggle when I am having trouble covering bills, but somehow it works out.

I wanted to share this, because I know several people who subscribe to my newsletter are struggling through some very difficult times. It is hard and frustrating at times, but keep hoping and trusting for a brighter tomorrow.

Our Next Steps

For the past several months I focused on building my substack following and a passive income stream. Unfortunately, that hasn’t gone so well. I will continue to work on getting some of the training programs up.

I have connected with the technology incubator in Recife. We have a meeting there tomorrow. I now have a good team so that we can start looking for more technology projects. Here in Goiana, the team is developing a marketing plan to start selling services around the electronic nose as well as our web application and data analysis platform. My primary goal remains to find ways to apply technology to make a social impact. We continue to need financial support to cover our startup costs. If you would like to learn more or contribute to our technology lab project use the button below.

Upgrade to paid or to provide additional support, choose the founding member option. My primary project is supporting people who can’t pay, and economic development in poor communities. Your financial support, helps me focus my time on those projects.