shalom

May 28, 2008

So, here I sit, at yet another coffeeshop-CoffeeToday-to be precise. J I’m not sure when this blog will get posted, due to the lack of internet but I wanted to write it nonetheless. I sit here on May 28 with under a week left of my time here in Thailand. It is absolutely and completely surreal. In one of my last e-mails with my MBMSI mentor/friend, Andi, she said it seemed like just yesterday I was sitting at Denny’s with her and getting ready to go-I completely agree with her. Somehow it almost doesn’t seem right that I’m leaving. I can’t quite describe it the way I want….maybe that’s because its not really supposed to be described.

So many thoughts this last week and a half, I’m still processing so much! Last week, I had the opportunity to meet some of the people Bob and Chris will be working with in the Beth El cell group here in Chatchensago. Such dear, sweet, gentle people. A short term team from Canada was here, specifically to give supplies (blankets, toothbrushes, toothpaste and clothes) to the cell groups of Beth El. We had the chance to go with the team and Louise, a member of Team 2000, and sit with these people and pray with them. I was so moved by the stories I heard. There were four women in one village who had recently become Christians, a few months ago. We met in the house where the cell group meets-this house is truly a home even though it is made of wood planks with holes in them and a tin roof that leaks. It was church that day as we sat there together and God was so present-his heart was in that room.

One woman, Pi May, who is Bob and Chris’s meban has such an incredible story. She is such a dear woman and has this beautiful heart for God. When she was five, her farang American father left her family and as she grew up to have a family of her own, she had two kids with her husband and was pregnant with the third, her own husband left her for another woman. She had to get a job while she was three months pregnant and the only job that would take her was construction. So, she shoveled cement for the next 3 months or so. The baby came early, but was fine. She always struggled to put food on the table and a few months ago became a Christian. It still has been a struggle. Then, a few weeks ago, when Louise went into the village to see if anyone wanted to work as a housekeeper for Bob and Chris, she was literally making food from nothing. They didn’t have anything to eat that night. She is the meban for Bob and Chris now and is so grateful for it. My heart began to break for her. Her eyes-her soul was in her eyes. As she was talking and telling her story, her emotion came out on her face-I know that is something that Thai’s don’t do as much, and it moved me so much to hear her story.

There was also this older woman who became a Christian at the same time as May did, but has been having problems with her eyes. She needs glasses but can’t afford them. She wanted to read her Bible so badly but couldn’t because sheh couldn’t see the words. The driver of our van for the day (who wasn’t a Christian, but wanted to come in and listen anyway. He’d driven Louise and others to Chatchensago before), lent her his glasses, she put them on and began to read her Bible. This light just dawned over her face and a smile reached her eyes and just glowed there. Such a simple thing-and so easily taken care of. One of the team members gave money so she could buy glasses in the market.

Or the story of this gentle little girl, Bre, who had been coming to cell group until her grandfather found out. When he found out, he took her outside and beat her. She went back in to tell the others that she couldn’t come anymore and they didn’t see her for about a year. Then, last November, when a short term team was building a playground at her school, she started getting interested again. A grandma on the team had been praying for Bre for a year, and was able to love on this little girl. She gave her a Thai Bible, and after some convincing Bre was able to use it and has started coming to cell group again. This little girl-her eyes are so gentle yet seem to hide a pain that is so deep.

Jesus is in their faces. Its like when I look into these people’s eyes-there is hurt there, there is this need for love, there is this desperation for hope. These people seem to be crying out for something. Crying out for Someone. God is slowly breaking my heart for this nation, these people. Their eyes say so much—but sometimes its like Jesus is looking out. Its like those verses in Matthew 25 which say (paraphrased here):I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was naked and you clothed me….whenever you did this to the least of these, you did it to me. I don’t fully understand it but these people seem to be reaching out or maybe its like God is showing me that the need is so great. Its hard because as he is breaking me I struggle with the idea that I’m leaving. I hope and pray that if he continues to want me back here I will trust him for that and that he will continue to grow this desire. Though sometimes, I admit, it doesn’t feel like enough.

In Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning says, “The lives of those fully engaged in the human struggle will be riddled with bullet holes. Whatever happened to the life of Jesus is in some way going to happen to us. Wounds are necessary. The soul has to be wounded as well as the body. To think that the natural and proper state is to be without wounds is an illusion. Those who wear bulletproof vests protecting themselves from failure, shipwreck, and heartbreak will never know what love is. The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi.” (p.158) Sometimes I wonder if God is allowing me to learn a bit of his heart. As much as the suffering of those around me here hurts me so much and breaks me inside it must break him so much more.

I don’t even know how to end this blog. So perhaps I will just end it. I am so grateful that I will be coming back to see everyone in a few days. I am grateful to have people and family to go back to. Yet I definitely continue to pray for this nation and for what God is doing in my heart here. It is a hard thing to trust him with one of the deepest desires of my heart-to serve him here, a hard lessons but yet a good one.

Shalom.