What a fantastic week. People’s lives changed, salvation, water baptisms, Holy Spirit baptisms, prophecies, healings, teaching, preaching, sharing, giving, meeting new friends, growing, traveling, eating, digging, stringing, praying, singing, meeting, greeting, bandaging, sweating, playing (with children), but not a lot of sleeping. Sleep is optional.
What can I say?
Saturday we rounded up our trip with a tour of a large tangerine farm (the owner built the hotel we were staying in.) Our tour guide is the Hotel manager. We were kind of expecting to trudge around in muddy orchard but we had a nice duck/truck that drove us to various viewpoints. It was in a huge valley, incredibly meticulously landscaped, a beautiful place.
In the afternoon we had a 3 hour service and pig roast to dedicate the church in the Akha hilltribe we built last year. Laurie did the main preaching but several others also spoke, the ribbon cutting was supposed to be Laurie and Bruce but we had Tom the Lahu pastor who lives with and is the pastor of the Akha tribe, and one old person and one young person who help last year. We all put our hands on the scissors and cut it – that was cool. There were dances and songs, and talks, and prayers, and laying on of hands. Since this building was built (the first for Grace Church) they have built 5 other hilltribe churches. Timothy and Fong have also built an orphanage (they call it a children’s center) that can handle up to 40 children. And this year our team started the 7th church building and the largest.
The needs here are great, Breaking into the kingdom of the snake is very difficult. The gospel has been here for 190 years but not a lot to show. The Tribal people who are ethnically not Thai and not Buddhist have responded to the gospel. For the Thai’s what has started in the mountains will sweep down the valleys and spread. Hilltribe people learn ‘the way’ and English from the missionaries and the Thai government teaches them the Thai language. These second class citizens become first class pastors, teachers, and reaching the lost in Thailand. This along with orphanages (Thais don’t adopt and pretty much only Christian organizations take care of them.), God is doing powerful things here.
We also come across children who have fallen between the cracks of Thai society; parents have ‘green cards’ to work legally in Thailand but their children are illegal and so cannot go to school. Grace church is trying to work out a way to help these students with a school to allow them to get a complete education. (They get none now.) On the other hand, the orphanage is for the poorest children in the worst situations of abuse, poverty, lack of education. For now Timothy has limited the numbers to about 20 because he just doesn’t have the funding for more, but he also needs to establish the children’s center with the basics like a refrigerator, a Clothes washing machine; then teachers, cooks, groundskeepers, transportation. The dining hall still needs to be built and the list goes on.
There is also a bible training center (maybe some day a college) in the church with young and old, pastors and lay, who want to learn more of God.
Sunday, we attended church at Grace church in Fang (population 400,000) several spoke but Pastor David from Singapore preached in English and translated himself to Chinese and Fong translated to Thai. “cross over to the other side to where God is working and he has a plan for us.” Was the topic Mark 6:45 and 53 on. And acts 16:9 and 2 chron 16:9, “if you do the ridiculous he will do the impossible.”
We caravanned to Chiang Mai. Tonight (Sunday and tomorrow) we are at the www.raminglodge.com (1200 baht per room which is about $30). It is midnight and the youth and Angie are out shopping, the rest of us have wisely put our heads on pillows. We’ve invited and Timothy and his family have come along for couple days of relaxation.
We will be flying back to Bangkok on Tuesday morning and besides some shopping and maybe Thai massage, we hope to also attend English classes in Bangkok. And leave for home on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Bruce and Laurie will travel on to the south for R&R see http://www.heimbig.wsu.edu/schedule/
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