Itsara

We went to Chiangmai Fellowship Church today. This is the Thai church that the kids from Im Jai go to. Apparently today was some sort of praise and worship day, and we got to worship with Thais in a much more charismatic way than I would have thought them capable of.

As part of it, I saw one woman waving a pair of Thailand flags during most of the worship (a form of worship I have come to accept as valid, though I still don’t understand it completely) and it made me think. If we were in America, and I saw someone waving the American flag as part of their worship, I would probably question whether that person was not confusing patriotism for their country with devotion to their King and Kingdom.* But here in Thailand – where 0.5% of the country is Christian and Buddhism is embedded so deeply in the thoughts and culture of the people – her flag waving seemed less like potentially misplaced allegiance and more like a loving cry for her country.

*Not that it’s not okay to be thankful for one’s country, I’ve just seen the line between thankfulness and devotion crossed one too many times and now I’m cynical ;-)

Ray and Kaoru left just this morning (about an hour ago). I haven’t written much since they got here, and I haven’t taken any pictures, but Ray posted on his blog last night and, being the good photographer that he is, put up some great pictures. So read his post and be sure to check out his pictures of their time with us in Chiang Mai.

We started working at Im Jai this week. So far “working” just means “hanging out and playing with the kids”, but that’s cool with us. Hopefully we’ll get to do some more teaching soon. Anyway, I learned something about the culture today that I wanted to share.

First some vocabulary. Most Western cultures, and the United States in particular, are event-oriented. That is, the event is the most important thing. The advantage of this is that things get done in a timely manner. Work gets finished, people go to bed on time, nobody is late for lunch after church, etc. The disadvantage is that personal involvement is not as important and there is a dangerous tendency to value the schedule more than the people involved.

By contrast, Thailand and many other cultures are people-oriented. In other words, the people are the most important thing. The advantage here is that, at least from a Christian perspective, people are always given their proper priority. The disadvantage is that things don’t always start on time – they start when people get there, and therefore things don’t always end on time either. (more…)

Long before creation we were meant to be.
Long before creation He knew the colors of the sea.
Long before creation there were always three.
Long before creation we were meant to be.

Long before creation we were apart of His plan.
Long before creation Jesus was willing and took a stand.

Through the wages of sin we were meant to die.
But He took it upon Himself and now we are alive.
Alive and living in the resurrection reality.
The reality that He has with the Father.
Long before creation we were meant to see what Jesus sees.

Sleeping people, sleeping church, we can barely dress ourselves
with the armor of God, and where’s our sword? We don’t know what it says.
No more miracles, not enough faith, and the Gospel spreads like molasses.
Lord, we need You to wake us up.

Wake us up, wake up Your body. Do Your miracles – we believe!
We don’t need more talk, we need power and love. We are a family.
Wake us up.

Unforgiveness, selfish needs, there is war among God’s people.
“Do our own thing” has become our creed, and we wonder why we fall
and why we fail when by our own strength we try to make the Kingdom grow.
Lord, we need You to make us a family.

Wake us up, wake up Your body. Do Your miracles – we believe!
We don’t need more talk, we need power and love. We are a family.
Wake us up.

Send Your Spirit, just like fire in our lives,
burning up the anger, spreading through the fields. Lord, consume our sacrifice.
Show us signs and wonders we thought didn’t happen anymore.
Bring us all together. Bring us all together.

Wake us up, wake up Your body. Do Your miracles – we believe!
We don’t need more talk, we need power and love. We are a family.
Wake us up.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Ray and Kaoru are here and we’ve been spending time with them, and then our internet went down a couple of days ago. So we started language school a couple of weeks ago and just finished phonetics (exceedingly necessary for this language which not only has tones that we don’t have, but also makes distinctions between sounds that we don’t distinguish, and it even has a sound that doesn’t exist in English). Tomorrow we start learning basic conversation (though I’ve been cheating and trying to learn how to read on my own).

Hopefully we will start working with Im Jai House this week. We’re still not sure exactly what we’ll be doing, but we’ll be there five days a week – probably Tue thru Sat (evenings during the week, and who knows how long on Saturday). It’ll be fun and motivate us even more to learn the language (as if we needed it). Pray that God leads us in all that we do at Im Jai and pray for continued unity between the three of us as we try to live together with an enemy who hates us and wants to destroy us as a family.

We got to talk to Matt and Courtney the other day, which was really good. I don’t think I realized how much I missed all of you until I heard one of you again. Anyway, he asked how he could pray for us and it reminded me to post requests here too, as well as something I’ve been learning. God’s really been convicting me that we should be waiting on Him for every decision, so pray for patience, open ears, and a clear understanding of His will as we try not to make decisions just because we think we should, but instead because He specifically told us to. Also, be praying for unity. God’s really put it on my heart that He wants unity among all the Christians here in Thailand – between the Thais, the missionaries, the Thais and the missionaries, and of course between Cindy, Sean, and me. Satan wants to rip us all apart, and we Christians make it easy for him. It’s time to stop that.

So shortly before we left, our good friend Ryan had a word for each of us from God. We have found them all particularly poignant. His word for me was: “Don’t fight.” I’ve been slowly realizing the full extent of what this means. A couple of weeks after we got here, I was directed to these verses which expanded on the word I got from Ryan:

II Timothy 2:24-26
And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel. Instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

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Sean got back from the Burmese border on Friday. He’s got pictures and a journal entry on his own website (I’m just pointing you there so he doesn’t have to write it twice). The pictures from his trip are in the albums with “Akah” in the name.