Itsara

About a month and a half ago, I hinted that God has been telling us new things about the future, and I said that we would say more when we knew more. I apologize for the teaser (Matt ;-), but now you can know to what I was referring.

As our About Page says, “Our long term goal is to start and run an orphanage, but our overarching goal is to follow God’s call for our lives and we go with the understanding that it may change over time.” I must be prophetic because that’s more true than I knew at the time. Originally, we started working at Im Jai House as a place to learn from while we learned the language at the same time. We intended to move towards building and starting our own place over time - within 1-2 years probably. However, many things have happened since, and we believe that God is calling us to remain at Im Jai for a time - perhaps for a long time.

This fall, Im Jai is moving to a new site, but also a new structure. Currently it is more like a dorm, with one big building housing about 50 kids from ages 6-17. At the new site, Im Jai will be run as 4-5 smaller houses, or families. Each house will have a couple serving as house parents, and they will be the parents of these children in every sense that matters, and hopefully the children will learn even more what it’s like to have a real family.

Cindy and I are going to be one of those couples. We don’t know exactly what it looks like yet, and we don’t know what we’ll need to be good at it, but we know God has called us and that’s good enough. In reality, we know about as much about this change as we did about moving to Thailand when we made that decision.

This fits perfectly with the whole “Hearing From God” thing I’ve been posting on, and I intend to go into greater detail on how God has spoken to us as a practical example of what I’m talking about, but it will have to wait until I’ve talked about the other aspects of hearing from God (conscience, direct words, and circumstances). For now we’d be happy to field any questions publicly (via comments) or via e-mail.

Oh, and on an unrelated note, we now have a P.O. Box so you can write us or send us stuff if you wish. It’s on the Contact Page, which I do my best to keep up-to-date.

The Bible is one of the most important parts of listening to God - and probably a lot more important than we give it credit for. Everything we hear, or think we hear, must be tested against it. If something we think might be from God goes against anything the Bible says, then it is not from God. It’s so simple - almost child-like. That’s how I know it’s true. This is probably the only straightforward thing I can tell you about hearing from God, but it’s amazing how often we forget it.

What’s even more amazing is how little we actually know the Bible. Someone else on the web recently mused what life might be like if we suddenly lost all of our Bibles. Imagine what would happen if you had no access to a Bible anywhere. Could we survive, spiritually speaking? (And for those that think this is unrealistic, consider the churches in China and a number of other closed countries where Bibles are outlawed, Bible smugglers are imprisoned, and access to the Internet is restricted or impossible. For many, this is a very real situation.)

In The Heavenly Man, Brother Yun recounts how he had no Bible when he became a Christian. He was so hungry for what God had to say to him that he prayed and prayed for days on end and finally he miraculously received one. He read it constantly, and had memorized Matthew within weeks - again a testament to his hunger. It was the only Bible available for miles around. Later, when he went to another town to share the good news he had learned, he didn’t know what to preach or how. So instead of preaching with many words and crafted arguments like we do, he simply recited Matthew that he had memorized. When he had finished, the entire town was in tears; they believed and were saved. (more…)

Two days ago, there was a man visiting Im Jai named Johnny - an older man from Texas. He had a great love for the kids and was refreshing to talk to (especially in the midst of the aforementioned depression). He has been doing God’s work all over Asia for a long time now.

During dinner, as we were talking about our respective work and callings, he said, “Would you like some advice from an old man?” Of course, we said. So he replied simply, “Find God’s will for your life, and do it.”

Good words. Even though that’s why we’re already out here, it was good to hear him say it - to hear confirmed that the life we have set out to live is not only viable, but desirable.

But how do we find God’s will? I don’t have an easy formulaic answer, and what I do have you have probably already heard. The short answer I have, from my own experience, is to listen, which when we think about it is something we hardly ever do.

How does one listen? In my life God has spoken to me primarily in four ways - and more often than not, in some combination of the four: (1) the Bible; (2) my own feelings and conscience; (3) dreams, visions, or other direct words; and (4) circumstances around me. So in order to listen I need to learn to study God’s word, to quiet my heart and learn how to be honest with myself, to pray constantly both alone and with others, and to keep my eyes open to what God is doing.

This is just a brief intro. I’ll talk more about these later, especially the first one which is by far the most important. But I do want to say that if we are to ever hear anything, we have to take time - significant time - to listen. Something I learned from kids: quantity time does not equal quality time, but it is impossible to find quality time without quantity. So it is with us and God.

A bunch of little things combined with one big thing are causing a bit of depression over here. Little things: our MP3 player won’t hold a charge, so it doesn’t work; the battery charger for our camera stopped working at about the same time, so we have no camera either; the internet at our house has inexplicably stopped working again (hopefully only for today); the free internet we have access to is having issues with Compose and Reply, so we can’t write to people very much.

Like I said: little things. Stupid things. Alone, each would be nothing. Together, they could be dealt with. But on top of these things, we are all (I think) struggling with a sort of post-mission-trip depression. For nearly a month straight now, we have been constantly around lots of people - people we know and love and who love us. Our Coast family came to visit and it was awesome. Then we visited our Heine family in Hawaii which was equally awesome. Now we have discovered ourselves back home with no one but each other.

Don’t get me wrong. We like each other, but we have been around 10-30 people all day for 3-4 weeks, and the sudden lack of that kind of human interaction and love has caused some depression. We’re sad with no reason. We’re unusually lazy with no desire to get things done. It sucks.

I know this is the cause because it’s happened before. At the end of every Mexico trip and the Thailand trip last summer, I felt the same way. At least I know it’s temporary, but it’s no fun. On the other hand, I’m sure we’ll feel better once we go back to Im Jai tonight. Yeah, that and the Internet would be nice.

Despite the fact that nobody’s really watching the news here in Hawaii, someone in my family caught wind of the bombings in London so we watched the news for a bit. The only reason I’m mentioning it here is because of something I heard on CNN. They were asking the question: Can we ever be completely safe?

Ray and I both posted about exactly that many months ago. Instead of repeating myself, I’ll just point you in the direction of that old post (especially for those of you who have not read it). In short, my answer is no. Here’s an excerpt:

The pursuit of security is not inherently a Bad Thing (probably).

But the kicker is this: there is no such thing as absolute security. It doesn’t matter how much money one has - the security gained by it is not perfect and it can still fall apart. Even if I have all the money in the world and everybody is my friend and nobody is my enemy and all the guns are on my side (or nobody has any guns, depending on your political preference)… even if I have complete control over my life, I still don’t have complete control over my life!

We tend to think that if we could build the walls around us just a little higher, we wouldn’t need to worry anymore - and ultimately, we wouldn’t need God anymore. But that’s just it: the only real security can be found in God. He created us, He has a purpose for our lives, and He is the only one who has any real control.

And lots of them. So instead of wasting your time with more of my babbling, I’ll just point you in the right direction(s). There are 3 new photo albums: one from when our friend from Hong Kong visited and we took a couple day trips around Chiang Mai, one with a bunch of Im Jai pictures, and one from when we were with the Coast team (in which are probably some entries to the “What Would Ray Shoot” contest).

Also, on the sidebar there is now a list of our recent photo albums for you to check out. I’m probably going to move these to a single Photos page under About This Site eventually, but probably not while we’re in Hawaii ;-)