An immigrant from India to the U.S., Mabel is a writer, speaker, and Bible teacher. Her mission is to inspire believers to fix their eyes on Jesus as they navigate the ups and downs of the pilgrim path and to encourage them to anchor their trust and hope in Him.

In her award-winning book, Far from Home: Discovering Your Identity as Foreigners on Earth, Mabel draws from her experience as an immigrant and examines the lives of biblical immigrant heroes to shed light on how to live with purpose and joy as citizens of heaven.

Through her podcast, Far from Home with Mabel Ninan, she hopes to urge Christians to think biblically about immigration and migrant communities. Mabel holds an M.A. in Theological Studies from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She lives in Northern California with her husband and teenage son.

Connect with Mabel:

• Get a FREE 3-day devotional journal on finding home – https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/675117/163222582784427402/share
• Website - https://mabelninan.com
• Podcast – https://mabelninan.com/far-from-home-podcast
• Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mabel_ninan

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you Mabel, it's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

Hi Angel, thank you for having me.

I'm in San Jose, California.

Tell me about your journey that connects to this accent being from all the way on the eastern side as I would imagine to all the way to the western side of the world.

So I came to the U.S. in 2008 as a newlywed.

In fact, within a few months of getting married, my husband and I had to move to California and we moved because of his job.

So I quit my job and I moved to support his career.

Spiritually, at that time, I was also, you know, kind of on a mountaintop because I was involved in my church.

There was, it was a time of spiritual renewal and growth for me.

I was leading a small group of young people in our home church in India.

And so for me, that was, I was in a good time in my life.

And I thought moving to the U.S. with my husband would be adventurous and fun.

I was looking forward to, you know, starting a new phase of my life with him, building a home with him, a family.

But within a few weeks, I realized I was far from home.

So I felt isolated and lonely.

And the thing is that nobody prepares you, you know, when you leave a country and move to another, nobody prepares you for what's ahead.

They prepare you for the good things.

But I think what surprised me was that I had to face all these issues that I was not prepared to handle.

For instance, homesickness was very intense.

And I realized that I was in an unfamiliar, you know, foreign place, even though for many of us think that when you move to the U.S. or any other country, that from day one, your life is going to be this is going to be magical and everything that you have dreamt of would come true.

But that's often not the case, because one, you have to deal with the transition first, and then you have to adjust to the transition.

And what made the transition worse for me was that we moved a lot within the U.S. To give you an example, I think in the first 10 years, we would have lived in 10 homes, you know, from Southern California to the Northeast.

We lived in New Jersey, then we lived in Arkansas, and then back to Southern California again.

And so I did not, yeah, I did not get to put down roots.

And so gradually, I began to struggle with deeper issues, because all the markers of my identity were stripped away, like my culture, family, country, you know, language, even work or ministry.

I was very close to my church family, and that kind of gave me some of my identity and purpose.

And when all these things were taken away, I really wrestled with who I was, where do I belong?

And what was my purpose?

I also had to start building, and when I say I, it's both my husband and I, we had to start building a social network, you know, from scratch.

And I felt like I was given a clean slate when I didn't want or need one.

I had already built up, you know, contacts, whether professionally or ministry-wise or personally.

And coming to the U.S., I found that I did not have that kind of a safety net, or any kind of contacts with anyone to build on.

And also, I was highly productive when I was in India, working in the corporate world, serving my church.

And so moving to the U.S. and finding myself without a job or anything meaningful to do, my self-worth took a beating because of that.

And so various things like this, also the stress of integration, right?

You're getting to know a new culture, you're adapting to a new way of life, and that can be stressful.

So overall, emigrating to a new country tested me spiritually because of all these deeper issues that I had, I was struggling with.

I wondered why God allowed this transition when it was hurting me.

And, you know, and like I said, when I started, that I was in a good season of my life.

When this happened, I said, God, what happened?

Why did you let this?

What did I do to deserve this?

Oh, did things turn around so quickly?

Weren't we going well?

Did I do something?

Yeah, yeah.

Those are usually the questions.

Did you pursue your master's in theological studies before getting to the U.S. or after?

After.

That's quite new.

I think I started in 2021 and graduated 2025.

When did you realize why God did what he did?

Hmm.

So after my son was born and we had moved back to India to give birth to my son and my husband took up an internal assignment with the company in India so we could be there for a year.

And so when we came back, my son was almost a year old and sometimes motherhood can be very isolating.

And so I hit rock bottom with things that I was going through anyway, plus add to that the fact that I was raising, I felt at least that I had to raise my son all alone without family or friends or community.

And so I just Googled Bible study near me and I just went to the first option that came up and that happened to be a group called Bible Study Fellowship.

And that year, we studied the book of Matthew.

And if you know this parachurch organization, their Bible study runs for nine months in a year.

And so meeting every week, you know, with women sharing my lives with them and they sharing their testimonies, learning God's word together.

I think it just brought back so much joy in my life and spending time with God's word, going deeper into God's word and him and getting to know him in a completely new way was what just turned things around for me.

I just enjoyed spending time in God's word and every question in the Bible study I felt was for me.

And so that changed my perspective also because, you know, from going from a place where my problems had taken over everything.

And that was just always at the top of my mind.

But now what was at the top of my mind was just God and his word and loving him.

And I just wanted to do what I wanted to follow his plan for my life.

And so now he became, you know, the top priority in my life.

Does it change where one of the things you've done, you've talked in past tense, right?

You've said it sounds as though it's completed.

It doesn't bother you as much again, or does it bother you but your perspective is different and you make the choice to move forward in spite of?

Yes, absolutely.

You've just articulated that so well that it's never complete.

The struggles that I face, they keep surfacing because we have different triggers again and sometimes there are new trials that pop up and they trigger the same issues that I have already faced.

And so, but at least now I can lean into that lessons that I'd learned, lean into the perspective that God had taught me earlier, and rehearse those truths again.

So I feel like I'm better equipped to deal with those issues.

Yeah.

If we're looking at the possibility of you listening to this conversation five years from today, you would have heard the evolution of where you traveled to support your husband, you traveled back to India, you traveled all over the US, you then had a child, you had to raise the child and you're listening and you smile because of the success that God has given you.

What's a message you'd leave for future you five years from today?

Well, that whatever comes my way, I can know and be sure that it is part of God's greater plan for me and that I'm never alone because one of the things that the enemy has tried again and again to attack me is to put this false notion in my mind that I'm dealing with things alone.

And so I would, yeah, I would hold on to that belief that I'm not alone and that all the trials that are, that I'm going through on the journey are only shaping me and making me grow closer to God.

They are strengthening my relationship with God and that by just following him one day at a time, I will be walking in my, in the purpose that he has for me.

Mabel, it's been an honor to preserve your voice and just all the small parts of your story.

Is there any question that I could have asked that I didn't ask that would have helped you serve us better?

Well, I think I just wanted to talk about one of the perspectives that are a new way of thinking

that, you know, that God showed me and God revealed to me when I was going through my struggle was

the fact that I was a foreigner on earth anyway, because I was really looking for rootedness

and God showed me that I cannot find that kind of rootedness and belonging anywhere on earth

in one place because we are made with eternity in our hearts, like the Bible says, and that we

are foreigners and strangers on earth.

And it helps me even now to remember that it's not that India was home or is home or America is home and no place on earth really can be home because our home actually is with Jesus.

And so that's one thing that I wanted to mention.

This has been a great pleasure, one I treasure.

Thank you for being on What Is Inspired by Torben Cronenberg.