#2023GivingThanks 14

It is really encouraging to read all the testimonies, everyone's trials and struggles are different, but God is good and faithful all the time.

I have many to share, thought of sharing my testimony related to my work. A very long one. Apologies. 

For those of you who do not know me, 

I joined Infosys as a campus recruit in 2007 and after working there for four years, I resigned my job in Nov 2011 as my second pregnancy was a twin pregnancy, I had complications then and was advised to be on bed rest. Since then, I was a full fledged home maker for more than 9 years until June 2020, looking after my 3 children, never had any intention to resume my career, though I had tried for a job a couple of times in between due to pressure from home. It was then during lock down, when my kids were taking their school lessons from home, and my husband was working from home, I came across the ads for online teaching for coding and math. I just thought of giving it a try, and so I joined one of the Ed Tech companies to teach coding and math to kids in the age group of 10 to 14 years and in the meantime, I also got an introduction to some of the latest technologies there. It was nearly a year I worked there, when my husband got a job in his client place in the UK and so we moved to the UK, we had many challenges during this time, when my husband was given an offer, and India moved into UK's red list indefinitely due to the high intensity of the second wave of covid. The situation was very uncertain, that we were so fearful to move ahead. But God gave us the courage to move forward in faith when no hope was in sight, we took one step at a time, and we could clearly see God at work, guiding us, opening closed doors, one by one, just in time. After moving to the UK, we found it difficult to run our big family, with 3 grown up children relying on one salary, and I was forced to go out for work. By God's abundant grace, I got the opportunity to go around schools as a cover teacher(basically a teacher who covers other teachers in their absence). I didn't have a proper teaching qualification, but since I had worked as a Sunday school teacher for quite a long time and had some online teaching experience, and with the prevalence of covid at that time(had to cover teachers who were absent from work), I got this job easily. But as new as I was to the country, and with extreme weather conditions, I found it difficult to go around schools. Moreover, I had to rely on public transport, and the services where we live are not as good as they are inside city limits. I would have to go to different schools each day, making it even more difficult. I used to come home every day with terrible headache and, I suffer from terrible migraines too. I was longing for a work from home job, was trying to apply for some IT jobs, with my past experience. I applied to thousands of jobs, never got a reply, somehow managed to get a couple of interviews scheduled, only to hear that they were looking for someone with more experience. It was then I received an email out of nowhere for a job as a mobile application developer. I had not applied for this job. This was related to the last one year of online teaching experience in coding. The way I got this job itself is a long testimony, but long story short, I got a job miraculously in a very small US based company with only 10 employees of which three employees from the UK, with a good pay more than what I expected and demanded. 

Everything went well and God granted me favour in my employer's eyes. He was very good to me in the initial few months. My father passed away after seven months of our relocation from India, and I was unable to go back to India for my father's death, due to certain procedures which were in place during our visa renewal. My employer even came forward to sponsor my air ticket if I had the chance to travel back home. That was the situation during the first few months of me joining the company. I was given some assignments initially and I had to work alongside a senior developer and my programing head. At the the end of the fourth month, the actual work was handed down to me, I was the sole mobile app developer, and no one had any knowledge about the app or the technology, no documentation, nothing related to it. I had to dig deep into the code base and find everything by myself. Whenever I reached out for help, they could not help me with anything that I asked for. I was only told, that I could use any resource I wanted, I could take my own time to study and do my best. But all by His grace, I only relied on God for help, even I cannot believe it now, how it was possible for me, a novice in that technology to take up the project, understand every single component without any body's help, and was able to fix all the issues and bugs, do all the enhancements demanded of me, and in a span of just 3 months. It was only God who taught me and worked in me to accomplish so much, that I never even dreamt about. When they saw that I was performing well, without having to go back to them, asking for help(probably they expected me to ask for some paid courses which I could take up and study, or help from previous developers who worked on the app), my employer's attitude towards me started changing and he became indifferent to me. He started sidelining me, and the appreciations I had been receiving until then for doing even trivial assignments stopped. He stopped direct communication with me, he made himself unapproachable. He even stopped calling me to the office for work, when he visited the UK. My senior developer would also make some sarcastic remarks about my Indian English(using zero instead of o, things like that) in his emails. When my peers started reacting differently, I could understand that they were doing it out of envy, but I was totally confused by my employer's attitude. Whatever they asked me to do, I was able to do it beyond their expectations, with God's help. The app was finally published without any body's help. They were waiting to see if something would stop my progress at every step of my app development so I would get back to them, saying I couldn't proceed any further. But when they saw that every thing was done without their help, it seemed impossible for them to appreciate me. I was given a increment without any formal communication about it or any appreciation. My programming head is an African American woman, she was at least better to me than the others. That was also from God. On some occasions, when meeting in person, my employer would appreciate me sarcastically and reluctantly. When the mobile app was published and he sent an email to all the employees in our company, he literally showed his contempt through his words. 

It used to worry me so much and I never had any motivation in my job. It used to be so depressing, especially the fact that I was treated indifferently because I am an Indian and on top of it, because I am a Christian. 

I kept crying out to God about this, and I tried switching job, but nothing worked out and it was very clear that God wanted me to stay here. Matthew 5:10-12 was most comforting and helped me to push on. After the app was published, I had no work left on the mobile app, I was forced to take up another project, which was again a commercial mobile app, basically a full stack project, which my employer was doing with some of his partners. Again there was no documentation for this and nobody to turn to. Whenever I reached out to my employer for something, all I would get is 'I have no idea about it'. The backend was built on Ruby on rails which was totally new, and to me, it was like learning Chinese. I would quote Daniel in prayer everyday and ask God, Lord, if you can reveal the dream and it's meaning to Daniel when the king was stubborn and would even tell him what the dream was.. If you can do it for Daniel, I believe you can do it for me too. God helped me amazingly, far beyond my comprehension. I was asked to give a demo last month before my employer and his partners, they had no clue as to what was going on, how I was progressing, there was literally no communication between us regarding the project for more than six months. On the day of demo, I was in poor health, I had a sore throat, and could hardly speak, but again God gave me the courage and strength to face them and to perform well. My employer was expectantly waiting to trap me, trying to find fault with anything and everything, but God helped to remain calm as he had already shown me what it is going to be like. God granted me favour in the eyes of his partners and they appreciated me for my work. My employer was left with no choice, he ended up sending an email appreciating me for all the work I had done so far with both the apps. God and God only helped me make such an extra ordinary progress, far beyond my ability. It has been a journey of faith, these two years, and this year in particular with the current project, literally every day was a challenge for me, full of prayers and tears, a battle between good and evil. Every time God gave me success, I was encouraged to face the next challenge with more faith. Looking back, I'm baffled by the way God has led me not just this year, all through the years, for all the learnings, for all the mistakes, all the struggles, all the pain, nothing is in vain. Thankful and grateful to God for everything.

Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.

The Lord alone led him, no foreign God was with him.