Technology Troubles

For several months, my computer had been struggling to boot up correctly, frequently crashing before it could finish the start-up process. As my computer is nearly 4 years old, I intend to purchase a new computer shortly before I leave for my first term of missionary service, so that it will (Lord willing) last for a whole 4-year term (there are no computer shops in southern Chad!). However, I'm not ready to do that yet, so I coaxed my computer along for a while, hoping it would not suffer any fatal problems for at least a few more months. But last Monday, the hard drive finally gave out completely and the computer would not start up at all. Oh well, I thought, time to get it fixed!

Getting equipment repaired while on the road can be challenging, since it's hard to know which businesses are reliable in an unfamiliar area. Praise the Lord for my supporting church here in Cincinnatus, New York! One of the church members knew of a good computer repair shop not far away, and they really went "above and beyond the call of duty" by taking my computer in themselves, and loaning me one of their cell phones so I could communicate with the repair shop (my cell phone company doesn't get any reception in Cincinnatus).

Last time I had to replace my hard drive - over 2 years ago - it took a month to get it fixed, though that was mostly because of having to order the restoration disks all the way from Australia. I wondered how long it would take this time, but thankfully it wasn't very long: I had my computer back on Thursday evening, just 4 days later! After a couple of busy days of reloading files and programs, my computer was almost back to normal and ready for a busy day of deputation meetings on Sunday.

Although it was frustrating to be without my computer for several days, the Lord did provide several blessings through it: I now have a properly working computer (no more start up troubles), I made some new friends at my supporting church, and during those 4 days of waiting I got a lot of good reading done - almost as much as I'd expected to do in a whole quarter!

So, I am thanking the Lord after all, now that it's all over. Well, maybe it isn't all over, after all. On the very day I got my computer back - before I even got back home from picking up my computer - my phone battery suddenly died. I immediately stopped at a cell phone store to get a new battery, only to find out that the company no longer makes batteries for my very old (?!) 3-year-old phone. I was soon able to order the right kind of battery from the internet, and it hopefully will arrive this weekend or early next week. I'm glad for how the Lord worked out the timing, too, because if my phone had to be out of commission for a while, better that it be now when I'm in an area without reception so can't use it much anyway. But I wonder what piece of equipment will be next to fail! Or will everything else survive until I'm ready to leave the country? Well, at least I can take comfort in the knowledge that my technological equipment, just like everything else, is in the Lord's hands.