Where will you be?

Hi to the cg that I love :)

Just wanted to share something.
I went to a CMDFA (Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship of Australia) State dinner last Saturday.

The main speaker was an Iranian asylum seeker. He came from a rich family in Iran and when he was growing up, his father had connections with the Shah of Iran. He was also sent to the US to study and was studying commerce in the University of Columbia (or something like that..haha I don't know if I remember his uni correctly). He was a very devout Muslim who prayed 5 days a week and fasted an extra day before and after Ramadan.

But then in 1979, the Islamic Revolution took over. Everything they had were confiscated. He had to start from scratch all over again. As he grew older he also felt he did not really understand what Islam was about. Although he prayed 5 times a day, he found himself thinking of his daily activities; planning what to eat where to go instead of understanding what he was chanting.

Over the next few years he built a successful business but was once again confiscated. He then started a bookshop but the religious police kept on visiting him and finally he was thrown in jail and tortured. He was then sentenced to jail by the court but was released on bail.

His family decided to smuggle him out of Iran because he might be imprisoned indefinitely.
He reached Jakarta, but then the smugglers stole his money and fake passport. He said that he was left stranded in a foreign land where he did not know the language and could not go to the authorities because he had no passport.

He stayed in Indonesia for 5 years, moving from village to village every 2 months to escape detention. He was tired of such a life and embarked on a journey via Torres Strait to one of the pacific islands of Australia. He said that he went on horseback and walked.

When he reached Australian soil, he turned himself in and then was flown to detention in Sydney.
There he spent 5 years; not sure whether he would be deported back to Iran to face execution or be allowed to stay. He described the detention centre where inmates would not be called by name but by number and where they were constantly reminded they were not wanted by Australia. There was nothing to do and they were isolated from the community.

Yet, yet.....he said that God had a plan in it all!
It was in detention where he was invited to join a bible study group by some Iranians (because he could translate as his english was good).
It was in detention he met God. It was because he was in detention for 5 years, he managed to complete 11 bible study courses by correspondence. And it was because of detention he met his wife, a former Buddhist but now Christian who was an asylum seeker from China.

He also shared that although he did not know God before, He was there guiding him all along. Where God protected him as he traveled in the jungle and that God could have sent him to any other detention centre in Australia, but he was flown to Sydney. Also that he could have been killed in Iran.

He is now in bible school and last year started a church for asylum seekers in Sydney. They now have 40 members, all ex Muslim in the short period of a few months.

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I guess the message that hit me was that no matter where we are, God is there in the details.
To be honest, my 1st year in Sydney was challenging; not really academically but because of family and personal turmoil.
Although I knew 110% that God has placed me in Sydney specifically, I could not comprehend how God would allow such suffering even though I was in the centre of His will.

Yet...I am so reminded by what the speaker said.
That for him, even in detention (almost like prison)...he still acknowledged God and His purposes for his life. That God has a plan, a plan not to harm but a plan to prosper us, to give us a hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)

Even as the sem5s are gearing up for matching or Seremban or even non sem5s...there are many unanswered questions in life. Uncertainties. Even our own "detentions" that we feel trapped by God in. Where we cannot understand the ways of God.

But I pray (esp for myself) that we will be reminded that God is the God of love and the God who only longs for the best for us. That no matter where we are or will end up in, He has a plan, and a good one :)