July 12 – Our last Sunday in Thailand! This morning we went to Muong Tong Church to join in their 12th anniversary celebration. They are also celebrating the dedication of their new sanctuary building. We arrived there about 9:30 and spent a few minutes doing our group devotion since we could not understand their Sunday School class in Thai. Dr. Apithan was the guest preacher this morning, and he used pictures of our ministry time to illustrate Jesus' command to the seventy in Luke 10. We then ate lunch at the church which actually had many members who spoke Mandarin. After lunch, we were driven to Bangkok Christian College where the BH church meets. We rested until start of the service at 2:30. They had invited a guest speaker who told a lot of Thai jokes and used Chinese characters to talk about redeeming the time. We sat in small groups huddled around several translators who told us in real time what the speaker was saying. After and hour and a half, 2 hours after the service started, we finally got to sing, but we shortened our program to 15 minutes, singing only 3 songs, with Tiffany giving her testimony of what she learned on this trip, especially visiting the sick children at the hospital. Dr. Apithan then showed a great short video highlighting our tour put together by his 12 year old daughter, Alice last night. The service finally ended in about 3 hours, so we should never complain about how long services are at FEC anymore. After a quick snack, we broke into 2 groups, youth and adult to share. The youth played a quick game and asked us what we learned, etc. Joesph started the adult sharing talking about Vision and empowering the youth. Marshall followed with the challenges of convincing parents that they need to allow their kids to serve God as a higher priority. Ben then shared about how parents need to be more transparent and vulnerable to their children, and gave a moving testimony about eating a banana that fell on the floor and how that enabled him to really connect with his 3 year old son. We then ate a catered dinner in the breezeway below where the church meets and finally returned to our guest house at 8:30, a long day for us oldies. One aspect of our Trad visit is worth noting. There were 8 adult members of the BH church that went to Trad with us. Of course, Dr. Apithan and his wife and Wanni were directly involved in our ministry. But these other ladies went because Dr. Apithan brought his parents with him and hired a van just to take them. His father is a non-believer although his mother has come to faith. He refuses to come to church, so these members from the BH church went to bring the church to the father. Dr. Glome's husband is also a non-believer, but all these BH members stayed at their home and brought the church into their home for 3 days of living there and serving. Dr. Glome's husband, Dr. Somponge, is also an Ob-gyn like Dr. Apithan and he serves at the Trad Hospital where we sang. He was the person introducing us at the meetings. Ben told us that he did listen intently to all the messages and songs, and we think he is very close to the kingdom. So continue to pray for these two, Dr. Apithan's father who seems very resistant and is quite old, and Dr. Somponge, who seems quite open. How many in our church would take 3 days off to bring the church to a non-believer in order to win them for Christ?
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