Itsara

Up until recently, our nights here consisted of essentially wandering around and either (a) inserting ourselves into some activity that the kids were doing or (b) being dragged into said activity by said kids. That and trying to help get the kids to do things they don’t want to do but need to do (like showers, homework… the usual).

Recently, though, we have been drafted (by which I mean Ladda told us to do it, but we have given her permission to tell us to do things like this) into leading the teenagers. On Wednesday and Thursday night, while the little ones are doing worship and Bible study, we are doing the same thing with the teenagers. The difference being… well, whatever we want the difference to be. Generally, we want to have a discussion with these kids and get them thinking for themselves about the Bible and God and all the other things that life is about. So you guys want a prayer request? Pray for wisdom as to what and how to teach these kids. And pray for open ears and soft hearts. I don’t know where all of them are in their faith, but I’m pretty sure it runs from the kids who love God and want to learn more all the way to the kids who have had Christianity forced on them and have no interest in it anymore - with lots of stuff in between. We came here to raise world-changers, and this is one way we do that.

Last week we had them ask a bunch of questions which we wrote down, intending to answer in later meetings. Most of them were about America, but at least it was religion in America, and we answered a lot of that the second night. It was fun, but the whole meeting still feels… well, like it doesn’t have a point yet. This week my hope is to start talking about whether God is real or not, and how do we know. Maybe we’ll see where it goes. Pray for that. I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I have a heart for this and the opportunity, and in my experience God tends to step up when that happens - it’s just real scary taking that first step off the cliff…

Language-wise, the meeting has been fun. We were supposed to have one of the staff help us translate, but we didn’t. Fortunately, we seemed to be okay. Both Cindy and I can speak pretty well - or at least well enough to get our point across, and Cindy is able to listen pretty well too (better than me, anyway).

Also, on Friday nights, Cindy is with the teenage girls and I’m with the teenage boys to do more or less whatever we want - fellowship, prayer, etc. Cindy is trying to do many things with the girls (games, baking, etc.), and I think they’re really enjoying it. As for me I’d rather spend my time preparing for Wed. and Thu. and let Friday go like it has been - we (the boys) just go to the house of one of the volunteers, eat snacks, talk for a while, pray for a bit, and watch some of a movie. They like it and I don’t really have to do anything yet, so it seems to work :-)

So between this stuff and school, we’ve been busy. One more prayer request: in two weeks I go in to try and extend my visa. Based on the visa I have (a marriage visa, to Cindy the Thai citizen) I can get a 90-day stay, at the end of which I can apply to get it extended for 1 year (and at the end of that year, I can get it extended again 1 year at a time). I don’t know how hard this will be, although I do need a lot of documentation. On September 28th, we’ll go in and apply for the extension. Pray that I get it - I’m unsure what’ll happen if I don’t, but I know it will be… inconvenient.