Saving me from my own foolishness.

Have you ever thanked God for not doing something you had asked Him to do? Have you ever thanked Him for not giving you the opportunity to say something you had intended to say or to make something you had intended to do not work out? Have you ever had one of those moments when you feel so strongly and deeply how very foolish you are and how very wise God is?

These things are, of course, ones I have experienced recently. I have been dealing for weeks now with a challenging and complicated situation. One that I really had no idea what to do about and hardly even understood what I thought or felt about. I prayed to God continually for wisdom and to guide my every thought and feeling and action pertaining to this situation. In all my prayers, however, I never head any answers. I felt as though God was leaving me to act according to my own best judgment. But not so. He was acting; He was answering my prayers, just in an entirely different manner than I had expected. He kept me from saying and doing many things I had decided to in this situation. He kept me from it until I discovered enough information about all that was going on to understand that the things I had meant to say and do would have been very foolish indeed. He asnwered my prayers for wisdom by saving me from my own foolishness.

Prayer Requests

-- For two new readers I've gained the passed couple of weeks: Way and Dam. Both of them are very interested in learning more about God and have great understanding about what they are reading with me from Luke. Pray that God will put the right words in my mouth to say to them, and that He will continue to bring their thoughts and hearts closer to Him.

-- For our Spiritual Camp that is coming up near the end of the month. Pray for our preparations and as we invite students to come, that they will want to go.

-- For all of my team mates as they go about their ministry here, that God will strengthen and bless them every day. And thanksgiving for what a blessing they are to me.

-- For me that God will grant me wisdom, strength, steadfastness, and grace in all of my work and relationships with people here.

New Christian Camp

This passed week-end we had a New Christian camp in an effort to remain connected to those readers that have become Christian (and so do not study with us any more) and to continue to grow their relationship with God. All in all, I'd have to say it was a fantastic week-end!

We drove 4 hours out of Bangkok to the South to a beach. He had to hike all our things and food and camping gear for the week-end over a mountain to get to the area of the beach we were to camp at (a great way to start the week-end).

The week-end was filled with devotionals, small group times, meals cooked over the fire, hiking, swimming, sleeping (ok, so not so much filled with that), team-building activities, prayer, and talking.

The theme of the camp was "freedon in Christ" and all week-end long we talked about being slaves to sin, becoming free from sin, and how Christ takes our sins away. I have to admit it was as much of a growing experience for me as it was for most of the campers. I definitely felt stretched by God. As a group leader I knew that those in my group would only open up and share as much as I did, so I really had to put myself out there and share many things and be very personal (much more so than I am generally wont to do). It was such an amazing experience not only to get to watch God at work, but also to get to help with it (I suppose that might be considered what being a missionary is all about).

Prayer Requests

-- For New Christian Camp that will be this friday through sunday.

-- For three new readers that I have begun reading with this week: Gung, Way, and Joy.

-- Thanksgiving for my team. God continues to bless and strengthen me through them.

-- For personal strength and wisdom and grace to meet all the challenges God blesses me with every day.

This passed week in odds and ends (forgive the disconectedness)

Saturday my team and some of the Christians from the church visited one of the poor neighborhoods in Bangkok. It was Children's Day and the work place of one of the church members was hosting a Children's Day event for the kids of that neighborhood and we went to help watch and play with the kids. It was great fun. Alot of those kids hadn't seen white people much before and were very excited to see us and talk with us and play with some.

Sunday worship was very encouraging to me. I appreciate the woman who translates for me (Ann) so much. She is a very very good interpreter. Also Sunday I finished writting my lesson for Wednesday evening women's class and was very glad to have it done.

Monday (even though it was day off) I hung out at RCC with the people who live there. I played ping-pong most of the day (which I have become pretty good at in the passed two weeks. I've had good teachers) and I got to cook Italian food for dinner.

Tuesday I gained two new readers, and so my schedule is becoming quite full and busy now. I want to ask prayers for one of my new readers. Her name is Way and she is definitely interested in Christianity. I'm trying to get her to set up having a Bible study in Thai with one of my Thai team mates. Also Tueday, Thai language class was very hard. It was about classifiers. In Thai every noun has a classifier so when I memorize vocabulary I have to learn two Thai words for every one English noun (it's a little hard to explain). I'm actually feeling pretty good about my Thai learning right now. I've gotten to the point where I can usually understand the topic that people are discussing, maybe not what they are saying about the topic, but at least the topic.

Wednesday I gave my lesson to the women during evening worship, and I felt it went pretty well (especially considering that public speaking is not my gift). I got a lot of good feed back, so I thank God that he was able to speak through me despite my deficiencies.

I have been reading a book about Buddhism that one of my team mates recommended to me. It has been good to learn more about the religion that is pushed on most Thais. From what I learned in my reading this week, I think that Buddhism is a very lonely religion. Buddhism teaches that each person must work to gain their own salvation and that no one can help them; it's entirely up to them. Salvation is a very individualistic matter and others are not needed and may even hinder obtaining salvation.

Construction at RCC

As RCC has been closed for the New Year, we took the opportunity to do some construction. We put two walls and two doors in on the fifth floor (buildings here are very tall and skinny) so that those who live at RCC can move up to that floor from the 4th floor which has now become the office floor. There was also some touch-up painting and repainting we did on all the floors. We had originally scheduled two days to do this work, and it turned out to take 6. But we have completed it at last.

In the evening of construction days, when we were done working for the day, we took to playing ping pong (the table for it has always been here, but we had not had room for it until we re-arranged things). I started out being rather dreadful at it, but have gotten much better over the passed week. Due to the passed week's construction and subsequent ping pong playing there are several of us here with very sore backs and shoulders.

This time of our readers being away has been a good time to spend with some of the newer Christians (whom we don't always have as much time as we'd like with).

Sawadee bpe mai! Happy New Year!

New Years is something of a major holiday in Thailand. Many of our RCC frequenters returned to their home towns for the holiday. Those who remained in Bangkok had a big New Year's Eve party at the church building complete with gifts, a talent show, and lots and lots of food. The party was themed "back to school", and everyone dressed up accordingly. It was a great New Years.